Medion MD40814 DivX Multi-region DVD player

Good points about this unit:
- Fast reading of discs (both regular DVDs and DVD-Rs)
- Solid multi-region DVD playback. I had no problems playing R1 Bad Boys II, as well as R2 Return of the King.
- Very good DivX playback. The *majority* of my DivX's played with no problems. The couple that failed could be slightly broken files (though they play on my PC okay).
- Handles my DVD-R discs fine (I have no DVD-RW to test with)
- Excellent zoom function! 1.5x zoom will turn a super-wide-screen (2.35:1) movie into regular widescreen (16:9) and 2x zoom will take it up to fullscreen (4:3) - with the edges chopped of course. Quality of zoomed video is very good.
- Lots of video outputs: Composite, S-Video, SCART and component video
- Lots of audio outputs: Digital (Coaxial & Optical), plus 5.1 channel out (built in Dolby Digital and DTS decoders)
- Progressive scan! I have no way to test this feature as I do not have a TV that supports it, but if you have a TV that takes component video and supports it, it's in there.
- Build quality - much better than you'd expect for the price, looks good too!
- SCART cable included, as well as 2xAAA batteries for the remote
- 2 year warranty! (according to the included warranty card)

Bad points:
- The remote works okay but could be better - button layout is poor, and the buttons are 'clunky' (not a nice feel to them). Fortunately I have a learning remote ;)
- MP3 / DivX disc navigation has a large font, and so can't display many characters of a filename (the first 15 or so are visible).
- The track time indicator is turned on by default for DivX's - you have to press Display on the remote twice to get rid of it each time.
- No mention of the product on the Medion website (www.medion.co.uk) although they do mention that they make DVD players.

The bad points are fairly minor but I can't give it a full 5 stars with a clunky remote / menu font and the rogue timer - treat my score as 4 1/2 stars. For the asking price it is truely a bargain!

The player arrived two days after it being ordered, all carefully wrapped to ensure it wasn't damaged in transit. The first thing I did was set it up (which is very easy, just plug the cables in) and try a DivX movie I had simply copied and pasted onto a CD-R in Windows. I was amazed, the movie played perfectly throughout, with image quality superior to on my PC (2200+ AMD, 512mb ram, 128mb GeForce graphics). I tried various other divx movies in the same way from different sources using varying editions of the codec and all worked very well, no stuttering of frames or problems with sound sync. The only problem I did have was when switching between zoom (x2) and normal viewing of DivX files which resulted in a 1sec stutter after which everything was fine. I must point out I was continously switching between the two modes, which caused the problem, normally everything is perfect when zooming. Overall picture quality in divx mode is outstanding, there is little or no real image quality difference between this and dvd playback depending on the codec settings used (including for feature length films on a single CD).

I haven't tried my surround sound speakers yet although the DVD player supports them, including all possible audio connectors at the back of the unit. The unit itself is silver and relatively thin, it looks very well made and the DVD/CD tray is quiet coming out and sturdy. DVD playback is eveything you would expect with a player twice the price of the Medion, although I cannot comment on surround sound.

I am very pleased with my purchase, for £50 you won't currently find a better dvd/divx player for the money. The days of needing a P.C. to watch divx is now gone, if you want a home divx player, get this before it goes too!

DVD, CD, MP3 on CDR/RW & DVD-+R/RW, SVCD, VCD, XVCD, XSVCD, DIVX on CDR/RW & DVD-+R/RW, XVID, DVD +-R / -+RW, JPEG on CD & DVD & CD-R/RW audio discs.

The only file format it won't play is .wma (Windows Media Audio).

Along with 5.1 audio output, S-Video output, RGB Output, & Progressive Scan output this player has to be seen to be believed. Snap one up now before they sell out.