CITIZEN JDVD3841w

This Citizen JDVD3841w is a DVD player made in China, with Karaoke mic jacks built in. Purchased at Shoppers Drug Mart in January 2004 for $50. CDN. I would not recommend this unit because it plays back white levels too high & because it clips black levels.

Likes:

• Hue is good.
• Plays some discs with minor authoring & burning flaws a bit better than some other players.
• Plays DVD-RWs even though there is no mention of this on the packaging.
• Has a VGA out jack for direct hook up to computer monitors (doesn't mention this feature on packaging).
• Handles extra stuff like Kodak pictures, JPGs, Karaoke, Windows Media Audio (WMA) & High Definition CD (HDCD).
• Claims to be firmware upgradeable.
• Has progressive scan on component output.

Dislikes:

• White levels are too bright. 100 IRE levels read 108 IRE (significant design flaw).
• Has menu set up levels for video, unfortunately they cannot bring all levels back in line with proper North American standards.
• All black "pedestal" detail below 7.5 IRE is clipped. This isn't significant when playing Hollywood movies, but can be significant when playing corporate DVDs or consumer recorded DVDs which might have detail in the dark areas.
• Loads PAL DVDs & does a standards translation to NTSC, unfortunately it doesn't play video smoothly except the first section recorded near the hub of the DVD. Set for region #1 DVDs.
• Will not load & play MP3s recorded on a CD-RW even though packaging said that it would.
• Horizontal sync was a -42, it should be at -40.
• color saturation was slightly high, although there is a menu setting to adjust for this.
• Packaging says "capable of more than 800 lines of resolution" but this is incorrect, no DVD player is capable of more than 500 - 540 lines of horizontal resolution & there are never more than 720 total lines in any MPEG2 DVD.

By Doug Hembruff.