KOSS KS3120-2

This Koss KS3120-2 is a DVD player with Karaoke mic jacks built in. Purchased at Costco for $79.99 CDN in December 2003. I would not recommend this unit for those playing non Hollywood DVDs because it clips the black pedestal & white headroom detail.

Likes:

• 100 IRE white & 7.5 IRE black level is exactly correct.
• Will play PAL DVDs & convert them to NTSC output.
• Will play some DVD-Rs with slight authoring defects.
• Will play DVD-RW discs.
• Plays MP3s ok.
• Plays VCDs (Mpeg1s) from a CD-R.
• Plays CD music ok.

Dislikes:

• Some buttons on the remote can get stuck in the "on" position.
• Does cut off black "pedestal" detail in the 0 - 7.5 IRE range & white "headroom" in the 100 - 108 IRE range. This shouldn't affect the viewing of most Hollywood produced DVDs because they strictly adhere to the 7.5 - 100 IRE luminance range, but DVDs created by corporate producers or consumer DVD recorders often have black & white detail in the "pedestal" & "headroom" areas that wouldn't be seen by this DVD player. (In my view that is a serious design flaw).
• Hue (tint) is way off.
• Won't play certain DVD-Rs with slight burning defects.
• Can't measure colors on vectorscope because burst isn't standard.
• Picture raster is slightly wider than standard D1 allowed.
• won't play more than 265 MPEG pictures from a CD.

By Doug Hembruff.