We would have never reviewed this DVD player if we had incidentally not received it from a friend some weeks ago. At first I was quite sceptical whether this low-cost product would be worth a single test but, I have to admit that my first impression was wrong. More on that later.
The DVD is on the way to become the most important video medium. Thanks to dics capacities between 4.3 GB (DVD-5) and 15.9 GB (DVD-18), a DVD can hold more than two hours of high quality MPEG-2 video with several audio tracks (multi-language) and subtitles. In order to avoid illegal copies, commercial video DVDs come with a region code that defines the origin. For example, 1 is North America, 2 is Europe, etc. A European (code 2) DVD player will usually not work with US (code 1) DVDs, as the industry does not want DVDs to be brought to Europe as long as movies are still in the theatres there. However, there are ways to short-circuit this view protection. Most players only need a little change in their firmware.
Gradually both video cassette recorders and later the conventional compact disc will be replaced by the DVD. First DVD recorders are available now (very expensive), making recordings possible as well.
The Jianghai DVP-9000C seems to be suitable for DVD newcomers with average demands and a low budget.
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Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
