Customer Reviews

LG HD DVD Player (LGDVB418) (LGDVB418)

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

I purchased this player last year and am extremely unhappy with it. The player constantly 'freezes' and when it 'unfreezes', it jumps to an entirely new section of the DVD. LG support is useless. I can see there are websites being offered by helpful(?)hackers writing firmware to fix this problem because they too give up on LG support. Of course there are disclaimers stating if you try to update, it can ruin your LG player. I'm getting to the point I may try it.

I had to get the unit repaired two times within 60 days of purchase and the DVD player still does not work. Do not buy it.

I purchased this DVD player on recommendation from a salesman. What they failed to tell me is that LG is a new company that doesn't have all the kinks worked out in their product. I brought it home and hooked it up via HDMI. Everything looked great...but then we noticed the audio was out of synch. It was like watching a bad Kung Fu movie that was dubbed...ON EVERY SINGLE DVD. I contacted LG and they had to send me an update CD (couldn't get it online). After running this update CD, it fixed the problem...but now my DVD player thinks that it is in Spain (NOT Region 1) and I can't play ANY Region 1 DVDs...my entire DVD collection is now rendered useless. I called LG and they were absolutely NO HELP. I finally did some online research and downloaded a hack that removed the encoding from the DVD which allows me to play Region 1 DVDs...but it reverts to the Spanish language track on 98% of DVDs. It is very annoying that we have to go to the language menu before playing EVERY SINGLE DVD. And, to make matters worse, the unit now freezes often and has to be unplugged and restarted up to 10 times in order to play a DVD.
This is a piece of junk that was never fully tested. You will waste time just getting it to work. Do yourself a favor and buy a Sony or Panasonic.

I originally connected this player to my HDTV through HDMI->DVI cable (since my TV doesn't have HDMI) and the video quality sucked. Colors were washed out no matter how much you adjust the settings on the TV, it still looked terrible. Using component video looks much better, but it doesn't support upconversion on discs that are copy protected (which most commercial DVDs are).

I stumbled onto this tip from some Intenret websites. Turn the player on but don't play the disc (just leave it at the opening screen). Press PAUSE, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9 in sequence on your remote. The screen should say "OK H" or "Default H". Press PAUSE twice to get rid of that message. If it doesn't work, try again.

This enables upconversion on all discs through the component video. I am now able to watch DVDs that I rent in 1080i through component video. HDMI/DVI connection still looks washed out, but the component looks great.

So now I'm a happy camper with this player!

Oh, I should also mention that the player has the ability to read long file names on DivX/MPEG discs, which is something my old Philips DVP462 couldn't do. That's a nice little bonus!

By the way, do the above code at your own risk. Many including myself have tried it and works great. I haven't heard of any negative effects of doing it, but who knows.

Yes, this is a piece of sh--. The company WILL NOT back it up. It will never work. Send it back, pay the freight, over and over, it WILL NOT WORK. I am going to make a video of me destroying this total POS and send it to LG. Makes me think LG just totally sucks. Cmon LG, ever heard of a recall? The thing is, I have their top of the line washer and dryer, refrigerator, etc. They all work. Not this POS however. It is the most useless brand new item I ever owned. I bought an OPPO. It has been flawless for a year....perfect. I wish I could think of a way to somehow cause LG to pay for something useless like I have. All I can think of is vandalizing something of theirs. I am smarter than that however. If you have one, take it to your nearest Salvation Army and claim it is worth hundreds or something...just get rid of it. I am not doing that because I want to beat it to death.

I've owned 2 of these and they are great if you have an older hdtv without either a dvi or hdmi input-just componet inputs-they can be hacked to upscale to 720P or 1080I through componet. They are great at playing xvid/divx, but here's the catch-sometimes you will get a momentary dropout in the video-it's not consistent. I think it has something to do with video level-both of the ones I own will do it-but again-not consistently. The DCDI Genesis chip only works on the 720P and 1080I resolutions-not 480I or 480P. On some displays the "macroblocking" problem is evident. But still the pluses far outweigh the minuses with this player.