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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Black-Scholes who wrote (44489)	9/5/1999 2:49:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

The $179 Konka DVD player. Put a bag over its face, and it's a champ............................. x22.deja.com Subject: Konka KD-1800U player Date: 1999/08/27 Author: Glenn Gutierrez <glenn@planethype.com> Posting History Hi all, I was lucky to pick up a "Konka" DVD player on sale at Fry's Electronics last weekend for a very nice $179. I've always wanted an extra player for the bedroom. I figured I'd take the chance, since I could always return it and upgrade to a $249 Panasonic 120 if need-be. As it turns out, this player is very nice! I'm assuming the company's Chinese origin lets them manufacture for less than the Japanese competition (everyone else?). After looking up some info, I found stuff about Konka working with C-Cube on all-in-one MPEG2 decoder chips, which might also be why the price is so low. Oh yeah, they also didn't put Macrovision in there.. oops. :) Double nice. The thing -is- ugly IMHO. It's got a silver face from the 70's and the front panel buttons are so small, you can't see them from more than 2 feet away. There is a funny little round controller on the right side that looks like a jog wheel, but... But the remote works fine and is laid out like most others (I'm used to my Sony, anyway). It's for the bedroom, so I could care less about the looks, though it did make me think twice while in the store. But so far so good: The video and audio quality is excellent - I first tested it in my living room setup on a Sony 35" Trinitron and DD 5.1 via optical. I've tested a few known trouble discs, and all have played perfectly. Colmbia/Tri-Star discs have no glitches in the letterbox bars, Ghostbusters' MST style commentary works perfectly, etc. Layer changes are very quick and seamless, like the Sony players, even on Robocop (Criterion). Only one snag on "Blade" @ about 1:20, the picture froze. The player was still responsive, though, and I could "Pre-Stop" and play again. When I scanned back to the point, it worked fine (forwards and backwards). I guess I'm looking for other people who might own Konka devices, since my question now is longevity. Or if you see these players going for cheap, don't be put off by their strange looks! From what I was reading at eTown, Konka also plans a big push into the US TV market by releasing an HDTV set this year for under $3K. We'll see... Any other test ideas? If this player does have some kind of problem, I want to know before my 30 days are up. :) I'm going to try audio CD-R, and a few more things this weekend... Glenn