Any thoughts on a Yamaha DVD-C920 ?? (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Senez]

Hi,
This model seems to do about everything. You can find the specs here. Any feedback on this player would be great !
I'm also looking at the Panasonic CP67 (no spec yet) or the CV52 (spec Link Removed).
One of the things I'm looking for is fast disc switching when doing random CD playback. DVD changers seem to be slow on that side...
Thanks for any info !
Patrick

 

[Len Simons]

I purchased the C920 last week, based on the fact that it does indeed do pretty much everything. (Or does it?)

I am very happy so far with the video performance and with the DTS/DD decoding. I haven't tried the Progressive output, as I don't have a capable TV yet, but the S-Video output is excellent on my Sony KV53V30.

The disc drawer opens and closes very slowly, and discs take a long time to load. When loading a single DVD, the time from pressing the Drawer Close button to actually having video on the screen is at least 5 times longer than on my former Sony single disc DVD player. Not so bad for movies, but a little annoying when playing CDs, where the delay is the same. Disc switching times are also slow.

It's the CD performance that has me very concerned. Yamaha says this unit will play CDs, CD-Rs, and most CD-RWs. I have tried CD-Rs from a number of different burners and a number of different media brands - NONE are recognized by the player. I also have a number of regular CDs which will not play, such as imports on the Virgin label, MFSL Ultradiscs, and some others. The only thing these discs seem to have in common is that they are not silver, they're various shades of gold in color.

I have written to Yamaha regarding this problem. If it cannot be resolved, I think I will have to return the player.

Len Simons

 

[Len Simons]

UPDATE

After 13 days the Yamaha DVD C920 crapped out entirely. It would not read ANY disc, CD or DVD.

I returned it to The Good Guys store where it was purchased. They took it back with no questions asked, and I replaced it with the Panasonic RP-91K. Not a changer, but the changer load/unload was so slow that I'd rather not deal with it.

Just for the hell of it, I took a couple of the pre-recorded CDs that would not play on the C920 to try out in the store. They played on every DVD machine I tried, except the Yamahas. I have no explanation for this, but it's enough to make me advise against purchasing a Yamaha DVD player.

Len Simons

 

[Brad Van Eerden]

I found the Yamaha CDC-585 (CD ONLY) changer to be about as fast as it gets when running in random mode. I tested mostly against DVD changers so maybe the contest wasn't fair.

For $150 bucks and decent sound (better, at least, than the Sony DVP-C670D I used before), it may not be a bad option for running a bunch of disks in random mode as "background" music.