Samsung DVD-M105 Review

Good Points
Region selectable, MP3 playback, VCD playback, cheap.

Bad Points
Not macrovision defeatable, never truly switches off.

General Comments
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.