Medion MD40814 DivX Multi-region DVD player

A good piece of kit at a good price - well worth the money.

***

After comparing a few players, the Medion looked like the best value, at least on paper. It seems I made a good choice.

After unpacking the player I found it very simple to set up. The player comes complete with a scart lead which you can plug directly into your TV or your video.

The first thing I tested was a DivX file burnt to CD. Upon inserting a CD you are presented with a user friendly interface that let's you browse the contents of the cd and choose which file you wish to view. The DivX image quality was superb as was the sound. I tried several other DivX of varying quality and they all played as well as or better than they would on a fast PC.

I then tested other PC video formats including mpeg, asf, mov, and XviD. The mpegs played perfectly, mov files were ignored by the file browser so I couldnt even try to play them, three of the four XviD files I tested played perfectly, one played very badly although I think it was probably a codec issue. I was especially hoping asf's would work as this is the format my digital camera produces but the player only seems to produce a picture (no sound). This can be resolved by converting the asf to another format such as mpeg or DivX.

Next I tested images. I was amazed how clear the jpegs were. The player automatically created a slideshow for images unless you tell it not to. The only thing that really bothered me was on one disc I had around 500 images and browsing the cd from top to bottom takes a long time. The file counter on the display is also only 2 digits so after 99 it starts back at 00.

One thing that impressed me was the zoom ability. You can zoom to various levels on an image and navigate around the zoomed image using the arrow buttons on the control. You can also flip and rotate the images. I also tried a kodak picture cd and instead of presenting you with the usual CD browsing menu it recognised the Kodak CD and presented me with thumbnails of all the images.

I should also probably mention you can zoom while playing movies.

Next I tested mp3's and regular music CD's. The music CD's played as you'd probably expect. You can skip, shuffle, repeat etc. I only found one problem with mp3's. You can't interact with the file browser at the same time as playing. I.e. you have to stop the current track to browse through your other files.

Other than the points above I can't find any flaws with the Medion MD40814 although I have yet to test surround sound etc.

All in all this is a very good value DivX Multiregion DVD player.