Samsung DVD HD860

Advantages Stylish, well built, range of features, HD
Disadvantages none really

...Here you have the Samsung DVD-HD860. I can find pretty much only good things about this beauty- and yes physically beauty. It looks brilliant. I currently have this set up to my TV in the living room with a home cinema system attached. Setting it up was very easy. Plug the cable into TV, and then just attach speakers from the home cinema system into the back. For 5.1 surround sound it took around 10 minutes. The instruction where very easy to follow. Here are some specifications for you of this product: General Dimensions (W x H x D): 430 x 50 x 205 mm Weight: 1.8 kg Playable media: MP3, WMA, JPEG, CD-R, CD-RW, DivX, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, Audio system Digital audio format: Dolby Digital/DTS On-board decoding: No Surround sound effects: Virtual Surround Sound Connections Composite: 1 output S-video: 1... Read review

Advantages Near HD upscaling at a very cheap price
Disadvantages No virtual surround sound, not all DVD upscale well

...As soon as I heard about upscaling DVD players I discovered the Samsung HD860 was one of the latest models (2006). As I had purchased an HD compatible plasma it needed to have the best available source I could afford for the money and at £65 this slim and modern looking player was a bargain. The player will output a normal scart signal (composite or RGB) and via the HDMI lead upscale the signal to either 576p, 720p or 1080i respectively (only with an HD TV). What this means if that the clever chip within the box will take the normal 704x576 pixels of the DVD and increase them to near full hd resolution. The results can be simply stunning on a clean or new DVD, older DVD titles do not benefit as much as they contain more noise which does'nt help with the upscaling process. The DVD comes with a simple remote to access the various... Read review