Ronin Media Works P703

I purchased from dabs.com, they call it dabsvalue p703, only £37!

I wanted mainly for mp3 & jpg playback, mp3 is hard to use, continue dont seem to work, i need to put the tv on to start the the cd playing.

Bought this Ronin Media Works P703 dvd player from Cymax (www.cymax.co.uk £59.99 inc p&p) after reading the specifications on www.rmwx.com which sounded pretty good.

When I finally got my unit (original courier sub contracted to night speed who are crud) almost a week later. It comes with remote, batteries and audio connectors but no scart lead.

Using a gold Scart socket, picture quality a good and sharp with good definable lines and no bleeding. This can be further altered to your taste within the video setup menu which allows you to control brightness, sharpness, contrast and luma delay.

Sound quality via a set of Medion 5.1 surround sound speaks are excellent and possibly the best I've encountered within this price range, with a 3 stage increase in bass and 7 separate audio equalizers. There are also setting for what type of environment the DVD player is playing in ie, home, arena, church, etc. The instructions included with the unit are poor at best. At the moment I can't seem to access the DTS capability of each disk no matter how I juggle with the audio settings.

It gives you step-by-step guide as to how to connect the audio leads, but there is a 1-page diagram layout as the setup menu system, which doesn't actually explain what some of the audio setting do.

Depending on your outlook if you are playing a film and access the menu system the film continues to play as you change the settings, it was a bit strange at first but I actually find that it's more user friendly this way.

The unit is also region hackable. The instructions are listed below:

Enter "SETUP"

Type in 13698888 or 13798888

"VERSION" Appears on screen and enter the that sub menu

Go into "REGION CODE" and scroll down to the region number that you desire

There is only 1 major problem with this unit. I have a large number of "imported" DVD's I placed one of them into the machine and it made one hell of a racket!

Some of the disks are slightly imbalanced. In any of the other machines that I have tried I haven't had any problems with playing them, but the Ronin P703 vibrates like mad. It only occurs with some of the imbalanced disks and lasts for about 15-20mins. I have placed a Ikea catalogue under the player and a Argos catalogue on top to lessen the effect with some improvement.

I'm very tempted to open the machine up, but that would invalid the warrenty. I have emailed the Ronin support team and hope they can give me an answer.

Conclusion

If it wasn't for that damn vibrating I would highly recommend this unit without any reservation. As it is, there are a number of different DVD units that do the same job at a similar price.

If you only play original DVD disks then this unit does the job and does it very well. If like me, you source of disks are from a varied number of people then think long and hard before getting this player.