Experiments in Life

Who would have thought that upgrading to a new DVD player would have been so difficult? For those of you playing the home game, here is what happened. Sunday afternoon, the driver motor on my Panasonic 5-disc HTS died. After doing some research, it turns out that this is a relatively common occurrence with Panasonic DVD players of any kind, not just the particular model that I have. Now, this is not a complete loss. I can still use the HTS as a rather fancy radio and a sound system for the GameCube — it just cannot play DVDs, nor will it ever provide 5.1 surround sound again (since there are neither digital nor analog 5.1 inputs to the system, only stereo inputs). I have come to realize that while the Panasonic was a good starter system — it lasted me for three years — I really do not want to get burned by another all-in-one unit. So, Sunday afternoon I set out on a quest to find a replacement DVD player with the intent of just getting a the player itself and upgrading the surround system with a receiver and speakers at some point in the future.

Now don’t get me wrong — I do my research. I searched many different sites, from electronics stores to review sites, looking for a DVD player that would fit my needs; that is, another multi-disc player that would have a variety of video outputs and at least analog stereo and digital optical audio outputs (I am thinking ahead to a receiver that will handle the Dolby 5.1 that the optical output will provide). Finally, I settled on one that I liked, a Sony 5-disc player whose biggest problem according to reviewers was that it could not shuffle among all five discs, but only in one disc at a time. It was reasonably priced, all I had to do was find it in town, which became the problem. No store had it. Let me correct that. Several stores had the unit as a display: Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, etc. But not a one of them had it in the store, nor were they planning on getting any more in. My hopes dashed, I turned online. There, I could find it available through Amazon and other retailers, but with a several week lead time. It appears that I had to find another DVD player to fill the void left in my HTS.

After some more research, I found a replacement system. It is an Onkyo 6-disc changer. Now, the difference between the Onkyo and the Sony, beside holding an extra disc, is that the Sony appears to have a better video processing unit, while the Onkyo can perform the mystical multi-disc shuffle that Sony cannot. Also, the Sony supports SACD, while the Onkyo does not. Finally, the Onkyo is approximately $80 more. However, the price difference comes in from the quality of the player — Sony is on the high end of the low-end consumer electronics market while Onkyo is on the low end of the high-end consumer electronics market. However, I was foiled yet again in my attempts to find the unit in town. The only store that carries the unit is Circuit City and they will not have any in for a few more days. Further more, Circuit City (and Best Buy) are extremely misleading in their sales information. From the research that I have done, I have a pretty good idea of the feature sets and specs of every DVD changer that I have looked at in the stores. However, both stores have blatantly mislabeled their products, both online and inside the stores as to what the specs of their changers are. Either that or the manufacturer is wrong. However, given the two alternatives, I would lay the blame on the electronics retailers. I will not go into the kind of service I received, let us just say that I was more an expert on the system than the sales reps.

So, frustrated once again, I returned to Sony’s website where I found a new model of 5-disc changer that looks to be replacing the one that I found originally. Doing a side by side comparison of the manufacturer’s website, along with at Crutchfield, it appears to have a superior featureset to the Onkyo in every respect, except for the shuffle and the lack of support for one disc. But I think I can live without those two features since the price appears just right for me. Now, I just have to find one somewhere. I think that if I cannot find it in town this weekend, I will give up and order it off of the Internet, since it only has a one or two day lead time.

As a side note, I have to admit that I was tempted by the Sony 400-disc changer that was had a similar feature set to the one that I think I will ultimately get. However, even if I put all of my DVDs and CDs in the changer, I do not think I could fill it and I am pretty sure that I would never be able to find what I wanted to watch/listen to in it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2005 at 10:20 am and is filed under General Crankiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.