DVD Player Review

ELECTRONICS REVIEW (DVD-54-D) by Michael Kitz
Item:
Yamaha DV-C6771: DVD CD SACD Player Changer

★★★★☆
          PROS
•          Attractive
•          Easy to set up
•          Easy to use
•          Great picture quality
•          Region free
•          Reliable performance
CONS
•          No upconvert or hdmi
•          Few On-board Controls
BEST USES
•          Everyday DVD/CD use

First Impressions
         Whereas most DVD players are getting more complicated and high-tech to compete with the future that is inevitably Blu-ray, this particular model is refreshing in its simplicity of use and affordability ($49.95 average).  It is a first rate DVD player that does not try to be anything else.
Aesthetics
Its looks are basically what one would expect a DVD player to look like; it is about four and a half inches high, a foot front-to-back and a foot and a half side-to-side.  It is solid enough to support a gaming system, VCR, stereo and anything less than twenty pounds in weight, yet light enough to ride on top of any of these.  It seems to be a well built player and has nothing about it that is the least bit flimsy or clunky. It also does not get very hot, even after leaving it running for over 16 hours. It comes in black and matte silver.
Performance
To start with, the picture quality is excellent when it comes to playing DVDs. It has a noticeably better picture than my Sony (which up until now I believed was the best non-HD DVD player for residential use). This alone makes it worth buying. It is fairly quiet while changing discs and while opening or closing the main door. It is also reasonably fast at loading the discs, which can get annoying with some players as you kneel there listening to all the wheels and levers buzzing and whirling until the drawer finally opens to allow the disk to be placed or replaced. This player opens in less than three seconds every time (less than one second if it is empty and not in the process of playing a DVD at the time the eject button is pressed).
         The GUI interface could have been done better. It only shows the first 10 or so characters in the title name of what is on the disc, so it can be hard to see what you are about to play if the things on the disc have similar beginning names. A little less of the pretty wallpaper and more of what's on my discs would be a good thing.
Capabilities
This player was made in 2005 so it does have some limitations on what it will play outside of DVDs. It WILL play: DIVX ver. 5& under. It will not play videos encoded with QPEL (Quarter Pixel), XVID. It successfully reads most MPG and MPEG.4, MP3s5, JPGs6, WMA7, Raw VOB files. Regarding the latter (Raw VOB), the picture quality is not very good and after the first 30 seconds or so the player will not respond to FF, RW, search, or any other command but stop. It will play the whole file though. It plays everything on both CD and DVD. It will also play discs with many mixed formats on the same disc, even if they are in the same directory. It plays NTSC and PAL formats on any TV. The PAL conversion comes out very well. It will NOT play: Older AVIs, OGM, WMV4, RM5, OGG6, Multi-session open discs, and MP48.
I could not determine if it is flashable or not. It doesn't say in the manual and there's no mention of it on the Yamaha site. It's made in China so that usually means it likely would have flash memory. It does come region free, but it is Macrovision enabled so if you need to run it through a switch box you will have some problems with that.
The one thing that I am constantly upset about concerning DVD and Blu-ray players is their lack of functionability when the remote gets lost.  When are manufacturers going to realize that sometimes a remote, being a remote, gets misplaced or shoved far into recesses of the couch, and there should be a decent onboard controls for navigating a DVD or CD, or at least some kind of remote locator like the feature on most cordless home phones.  (The difficulty of navigating a DVD player whose remote is missing is compounded by the laziness of some DVD front page designers who do not allow the “select” caption to descend down the menu after a button has been viewed or considering that cost-effective universal remotes have to use numbers instead of the direction pad so THEY SHOULD NEVER GO OVER 9 CHOICES ON ANY PAGE.  Having designed DVD access pages I know how easy these things are to accomplish and in many cases EASIER to create in this more user-friendly manner.)
Overall
Overall it was worth buying, although I had hoped it would play the older AVIs and MP4s. I only gave it 4 stars because it does have some limits and its designers have not heeded my on-board control demand and so have kindled my wrath in that regard.  It is certainly one of the sturdier, simple, and well-designed models in its price range.