Samsung DVD-M105

With the Samsung DVD M105 being the first DVD player I've owned/used, I had little idea of what to look for in features against it's price tag. What good is being able to play VCDs, but NOT support CDRs?!!?

This player is for me a big piece of trouble it dosn't play one dvd normally.

I bought this player a few months ago, and would agree with the other reviewers that overall its a good piece of kit. It doesnt seem however to be CD-R compliant so any Video CD's ive burnt dont work! Is there anything that can be done to overcome this? I am thinking of upgrading to a DVD re-writer but will I still have the same problem with home burnt DVD's?

I bought the Samsung M-105 DVD player from Home Electrical Direct for £99.99 inc delivery.

It came pre-hacked to region 9 (all regions) but the hacks found on the web worked if you needed to select any specific region. This hack doesn't defeat macrovision so you'll need an external box if you want to tape your DVDs.

I was a bit unhappy that the power button only puts the machine into standby, rather than truly depowering it, but it proved quite useful in the end, as it remembers the disc position when you turn it back on and resumes play.

The manual and adverts make no mention of MP3 audio playback, but the machine does have a disc browser built-in, even though it only displays the first eight characters of the file name. When you put a disc with a bunch of MP3 in, it takes quite a while to work out the contents (something it does with any type of disc) and starts playing the first track in the first folder.

This isn't the quickest machine around. It takes a good 8-10 seconds before playback of any disc (CD, DVD, MP3) starts but once it's off the results are quite impressive. The clarity is superb, and fine detail is nicely resolved for both luminance and chrominance. The digital audio outputs (optical and co-ax) sound stunning on a decent 5.1 amp but you have to change the menu settings to "bitstream" to enable the Dolby Digital coding.

The remote is nicely designed with good finger position grooves on the underside but the on-screen display is a bit of a mixed bag.

Pressing display dives you a bunch of information at the top of the screen, some of which you might be able to change depending on the disc.

It would be nice to know how much time is left on a disc, if you're about to go out for instance. Is it worth watching those last 5 minutes, or is there another 30 minutes to go.

The "no-go" symbol - when a function isn't available - is a nasty low-res circle with a line through it but that's only a minor niggle.

That apart, I'm happy with my purchase. It looks and sounds impressive and if you could disable the macrovision it would be a total winner. As it is, it's a 9/10.

As a first time buyer I was on the look out for a good quality low cost multiregion DVD player. The Samsung DVD M105 doesn't disappoint.I got mine from CDWow.com for the measly price of £99.99 and it came as multiregion compatible too.

When hooked up to my hifi giving dolby pro logic sound it is simply awesome and the picture quality is fantastic.

The remote is a minor fault as you sometimes need to push twice to get it to work but hey at the price I paid I ain't complaining.

So if you want a well built high spec low cost dvd look no further than this baby.

Available from CDwow.com or hed.co.uk(same deal)

The Samsung DVD M105 DVD player is available from £129.99. It's a bargain for the features you get with this charmer.. It's a shame on a single point.. it lacks MP3 capabilities (was advertised in Argos as MP3 comp...so watch out!!) but who am I to complain.. I now have a multi region playing unit linked up to a 5.1 decoder and I could not ask for anything better in the sound quality dept. It has Quasi Pal support for those who wants to play back NTSC dvd on a PAL TV!!