Back to the big screen...
After a couple of weeks of enduring the death of our existing DVD player, which unfortunately is an all-in-one home-entertainment system, plus searching online for the best deals in town, the hubs and I finally got a replacement.
Thankfully the old player only conked off relative to the player head (player head was not detecting discs nor reading anything), but the sound system was still working fine. So after checking with some reliable sources (a.k.a my dad and his sound-enthusiast friend), we realised the cheapest way to solve the problem was to get another DVD player, together with an optical cable and hook that up to the existing player, which would then act as the A/V receiver.
So off we went to Courts to take a look at the DVD players on sale. What we wanted was something cheap (preferably less than $200), had the optical cable slot, could read multi-region, and had HDMI capabilities.
At first we had settled on a LG DVD player that was going only for $169, with HDMI, USB and card-reader capabilities. But when we were about to pay, the salesperson recommended a Pioneer DVD player, which was going on 50% discount at $199, with HDMI & USB capabilities, and supported multi-region code and all recordable types of media, as well as DivX, WMA/MP3, WMV file types.
Pioneer DV-400V-S DVD Player
We ended up going along with the salesperson's recommendation and bought the Pioneer, together with an optical cable, which came to be slightly less than $300.
Once we reached home, the hubs spent less than half an hour to do the entire set up with the old player and in no time, we were able to enjoy our rented DVD "Untraceable" on the big screen, that is our 42-inch LCD TV. So much for having survived watching rented DVDs on our laptops for the past couple of weeks.
Thankfully the old player only conked off relative to the player head (player head was not detecting discs nor reading anything), but the sound system was still working fine. So after checking with some reliable sources (a.k.a my dad and his sound-enthusiast friend), we realised the cheapest way to solve the problem was to get another DVD player, together with an optical cable and hook that up to the existing player, which would then act as the A/V receiver.
So off we went to Courts to take a look at the DVD players on sale. What we wanted was something cheap (preferably less than $200), had the optical cable slot, could read multi-region, and had HDMI capabilities.
At first we had settled on a LG DVD player that was going only for $169, with HDMI, USB and card-reader capabilities. But when we were about to pay, the salesperson recommended a Pioneer DVD player, which was going on 50% discount at $199, with HDMI & USB capabilities, and supported multi-region code and all recordable types of media, as well as DivX, WMA/MP3, WMV file types.
Pioneer DV-400V-S DVD Player
We ended up going along with the salesperson's recommendation and bought the Pioneer, together with an optical cable, which came to be slightly less than $300.
Once we reached home, the hubs spent less than half an hour to do the entire set up with the old player and in no time, we were able to enjoy our rented DVD "Untraceable" on the big screen, that is our 42-inch LCD TV. So much for having survived watching rented DVDs on our laptops for the past couple of weeks.