Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD-S221 DVD Player

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Despite what another reviewer says, I have experienced no trouble with either playback quality or range and angle of remote control. DVDs need to be kept clean, or data loss will cause image quality degradation.

This pretty much plays everything you'd expect a DVD player to: CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3, VCD, DVD, etc. It has a 1 year parts and labor warranty, which Samsung extends by 3 months if you register promptly. Considering that it is sometimes sold for [a large amount of money], I consider it an excellent value.

I love this DVD player-no complaints! My TV doesn't have a "S" video cable input, so I used the RCA video cable that was provided with the DVD player-great picture! After plugging in the video RCA cable, I ran the 2 audio RCA cables from the DVD player to my amplifier/reciever-the stereo sound this DVD player provides sounds great on an analog stereo! It's better than being in a movie theatre, though, because you can press the "I. REPLAY" button and have the movie replay the last 10 seconds just viewed (great for a football game with a bad call-you can replay the play and zoom in or change viewing angles to decide for yourself if the referee made a good call).

This DVD player also has the subtitle option for those DVDs that have subtitles on them. The player is also capable of playing any language on the DVD. I like to play movies in other languages with English subtitles active-then I can learn other languages while being entertained!

This DVD player does have digital options if your TV is digital or you have a digital receiver. It is has an "S Video" output as well as digital out (optical and coaxial for DTS sound), however you need to have these cables because Samsung only provides RCA cables.

This is a great DVD player that's pretty inexpensive. I would (and have) definitely recommend it to a friend!

I bought this DVD player to lighten the load off my PS2. I can happily say that it was very very worth it. I bought it for [money] and I got a good quality player. Has a very nice playback, and I bought component cables wich made it look great.

It also plays CDS, VCDS and MP3S

I recommend this to everyone who wants an affordible player

I have a high end... DVD player that I use for serious watching (read: best quality), so my review takes into account what a dvd player should do at the very best. But, when you spend [money] on something like a dvd player, you shouldn't expect the absolute best. For the money, it works fine for me and really is valuable if you don't mind some glitches. I have found that there are some skipping issues with MP3 playback, and the remote isn't going to be you're best friend (finding a programmable one that scans for dvd players would be better), and some brand new dvds skipped (but that has also happened on my [high end] model--albiet less frequently). The reason why I can't complain too much about this dvd player is its wide range of media support. My high end model only plays true vcds and dvds, but this baby here can play dvd, vcd & mp3 format that is burned onto cd-r, cd-rw dvd-r media. That feature alone is worth the price and is invaluable for someone like me who burns vcds, mp3s and the like all the time.

Another reviewer mentioned the horizontally "squeezed" look of the picture. Indeed, when first taken out of the box, the DVD player is set to display on a 16x9 set -- not what most of us have these days! All one has to do to "fix" this is to go to the settings menu and set your TV type according to what you have (I used 4x3, letterbox and the picture looks just fine).

The remote control is better laid out than many that ship with similarly-priced DVD players. A/V quality is pretty standard. There are component, RCA, S-video, and both coax and optical digital audio outputs.

I lowered the point score of my review for the following reasons:

1) The remote control sensitivity is below average. It works, but it's not nearly as sensitive as most of my other equipment;

2) There's only one set of RCA A/V outputs. Granted, it has a full complement of outputs (see above), but an additional set of RCA A/V outputs would have been helpful in my particular configuration.

We like a crisp picture, own a Tivo and a VCR but otherwise aren't big into electronics. We picked this one up based on a positive consumer reports review and love it. Great picture, the wide screen DVD's seemed to play great to us. We also appreciate that it will play cd r/rw's and the like. That feature was not available on many of the other models we looked at.

The Samsung S221 produces a superior picture for a budget-priced DVD player: gradiants are smooth with no banding or "stairstepping." However, the remote control and user-interface are frustrating, even for an experienced DVD user. For instance, to change the audio track (e.g., from English to English w/ commentary), you must first press the "audio" button and then press up and down or left and right to choose a different track. The same is true for subtitles. And strangely, with one DVD, the unit I had mistook my television for a widescreen TV, filling my tv screen with a distorted, elongated image that occurs when you compress a widescreen image onto a standard tv set, as opposed to displaying the movie in letterbox format. To correct this, I had to repeatedly enter the player's on-screen menu to specify my television's proportions (frustratingly, it didn't always remember this specification). Furthermore, the "screen-fit" function, which some people prefer for filling their standard tv screens with the picture, as opposed to watching the movie in "letterbox" format, failed to function with several dvds. While the picture on the S221 was very, very good, because the controls were so poorly designed and unreliable, I opted to return this player and keep a Hitachi (the DVP325U) that produced an inferior picture, but which had much simpler, reliable controls.

Sure there are better players but I have seen many much more expensive Sony DVD players that get blown away by this model. It features amazing quality (even though it is not progressive) and an amazing range of disk compatability. Mine will read my DVD+R/RW, CD-R/RW, VCD, and SVCD disks without any problems.

Other than that - a previous reviewer claimed that you need a p-scan model for a digital TV. He was wrong. This works fine on my HDTV and as the TV has its own p-scan engine (as most HDTVs do) there is no reason to get a p-scan DVD - at least in terms of the image quality I am getting.

I bought this to get away from the pixelly PS2 DVD Player. This purchase was worth it, for the price. The video quality, even with S-Video was slightly pixelated in the background, which distracts me from watching movies. The remote sensor on the player is weak at best, as you have to nearly point straight at the DVD Player to get a response, and you can't be more than about 5 feet away for it to actually work. Also when playing a CD, it cuts out 5-10 seconds from the beginning and end of every song. This DVD Player is good for the casual movie-watcher. Movie-gurus should look elsewhere.

I purchsed this product about 2 1/2 years ago. We barely used it, and when I say barely, I mean it maybe once or twice a month. However, recently, the DVD has had more use with people comming over etc. While the DVD was working, I was satisfied with it, since I'm not a DVD conosour, I didn't notice all these technical defencies others have listed.

Yet, I have a gripe with any product I spend a decent amount of money on that stops working in a short period of time. Evidnetly the driver-read header for the DVD is the problem, since it still runs SVCDs. I looked the problem up in sites like "Video-Help" and it seems others who have purchased this product have had the same problem (either the VCD or DVD read-head crapping out after 1 - 2 years).

I imagine if we had used this product more frequently (that is to say maybe once a week instead once a month), we would have had the product break earlier. Either way, I can't recommend this item to anyone who wants a reaosnably long-term investement item.