Playstation as DVD player (1 Viewer)

[Greg Hux]

What are the limitations of the PS2 as a DVD player? Sony have reduced their price and are throwing in a few extras including the remote, so I'm considering it. I had a bad experience with a Samsung player so I'd like some reassurance that its not prone to 'freezes'. I believe its output is interlaced.

 

[Masood Ali]

You would be 10-100X happier with a cheap player like a Daewoo DVD-5700 for $99. The playback is alright, but I'd never use it as a DVD player unless I had no other option.

 

[Greg Hux]

I'm in Australia. I've never seen a Daewoo DVD player but have seen some other cheap players for $200 (AUS). To give you an idea of pricing here - a Sony PS2 is $AUS499 (recently reduced from $650), name brand but cheap DVD around $AUS300. Sure, your dollar's worth around 2 of ours, but the local 'perception' of a dollar remains about the same (I could use what I call the 'Big Mac' index if you would like me to explain that further!).

 

[Peter Loan]

It's a well known fact that the PS2 sucks as a DVD player. The picture quality is poor and it has problems playing a lot of discs.

 

[Yohan Pamudji]

I used to use mine, but it always had lipsynching problems with DTS titles. Stay away from the PS2 as a DVD player unless you have no choice.

 

[JeffreyH]

I never had trouble playing discs on my PS2 and I used it reguarly for a year. So not every PS2 has that problem.

I did use it for a year and just grew tried of it. It's loud (the fan) and sucks up a lot of dust. It's also very slow loading and slow at skipping between menus and chapters. I didn't know how bad the blacks on the player were until I got a stand alone player.

So no, don't use it for JUST a dvd player.

 

[Greg Hux]

Three strikes...

Guess I'll start looking at dedicated units again.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Someone I know saw a jitter measurement on it (Stereophile, more than likely). Very bad at like 10,000 ps. < 200 is outstanding, 500 is OK, and 1000 is barely acceptable.

 

[Brad Eisenhauer]

I'll echo what those above said about their problems with the PS2 DVD playback. I keep my PS2 at my fiancee's apartment so we can watch movies there too, otherwise I wouldn't use it for DVD at all. The picture is not as good as my old Creative Encore player, the slow loading and menus are frustrating when all I want is to watch the darn movie, but far more frustrating is that it seems to have trouble reading the second layer on a lot of discs. About half-way through a lot of movies, it will start dropping bits, skipping and finally it gives the dreaded "Unable to read disc" message. I assume it's a second layer problem, I'd have to do some checking into exactly where the layer change is on some of them to be sure.

Going out this week to look for a semi-decent-yet-still-low-end standalone player for her apartment.

 

[paul watkins]

mine just looks dark when i play dvds.not very good picture at all

 

[Arthur W]

I can kind of echo what has been said above. The PS2, while a great game system, is just not a good DVD player. We have had numerous problems with the image freezing for a split second in the middle of a movie. We have also had some problems with lip sync not matching up on certain titles. It is slow to operate, and navigating through the menues gets be be a big pain. so any way. . .
PS2 AS A DVD PLAYER:
PS2 AS A GAME SYSTEM:
just my 2 cents

 

[Ryan L B]

plus it is so hard to hook up to the surround system that we just gave up. Is there a way to hook video games up to the Sony "Home Theater in a Box".