We all must have as essentials a TELEVISION and a DVD PLAYER /RECORDER
My Television currently is a TOSHIBA 37 Inch Screen Not Widescreen Bought in 2000.
My DVD Player is a SONY.
My DVD Recorder is a LG with a 200GB Hard Disc. 
My television is a Philips, 32’’ widescreen (I still own a 26’’ non widescreen Panasonic and a Sony Triniton, respectively a Philips videorecorder and a old Panasonic DVD recorder - still plays well, but doesn’t record properly anymore - are connected to them)
My surround receiver is a Philips
My DVD recorder is a Sony, with 160 GB hard disc
My DVD player is a Panasonic
I bought an Onkyo stereo receiver with three-way Mission boxes last week; It’s still to be delivered; I’m going to connect my cd-player (a Kenwood) as well as my DVD recorder and player to it (it has seven analogue connections); not only cd’s, but also DVD’s sometimes sound better when amplified by an analogue receiver (especially DVDs with fake surrounds, my Once upon a time in the West sounded better in analogue mode on my surround receiver).
A new toy for me…
Having ‘enjoyed’ 
a train trip down to visit the folks on Saturday - complete with screaming ankle-biters (not mine I add) and incessant stupid ringtones polluting the atmosphere, and then realising that my mother wanted to watch some talentless celebrities I’ve never heard of doing a ‘sport’ I couldn’t care less about in the form of Strictly Dancing on Ice on the Sunday eve., I nipped into town to the local Argos (the only electrical shop open) and bought myself a portable dvd player to deflect myself from such woes. Needs must!
With not a lot of hardware to choose from and not much research undertaken, but being desperate, I opted for a 9" lcd Philips PD9030 for the best part of 120 smackers :o
The good points (beside the obvious) - it has a 5 hour battery life (yeah yeah) and a simple region1 hack - so I can plug it into my tele for the legion of region1s I ain’t seen yet!
Another selling point was that my dad has a number of spags that I sent him, with burnt or optional Greek subs (those New Star ones and others), as he was learning Greek - and I kindly thought these might help him (and more selfishly that I might resort to these in an emergency). 
Anyway - I watched the New Star Blindman during Twats on Ice and a Greek subbed version of Texas Addio on the train back today, and although I could smell the enemy in the carriage I was pretty much in spaghetti-land with my other senses… so all worth it I reckon.
what the fuck
What the fucking fuck? 
I bought a dvd player and went the long way round saying it…
Anyway the simple hack worked and it’s multi-region now - and jolly good it is too.
[Edit - I just plugged this li’l thing into the tele and a lot better this is than my ‘proper’ sony dvd player - this intelligently fills the screen with the picture whereas the other shrinks the image in other distorted ways. I put Say Your Prayers and Dig Your Grave on t’other and it compressed it badly at the sides so I tried my new baby and it stretched it to fit screen - maybe not mathematically accurate - but far more pleasing to watch.
And another thing - the pixelly thing may not be as beautifully bright as a laptop - but whereas someone was struggling to watch a film on the train in daylight with all the glare on a shiny screen - this is matt and I was better off. Like comparing reading a book on a Kindle as opposed to a laptop maybe.
A bit white and a bit plasticy in looks, but I recommend this bit of technology - and I’m pleased :)]
i was just expressing my amazement on the big time gap between comments ???
Blimey Tomas - I hadn’t realised that there was a 6 year gap! :o … and not the most popular thread I see.
But - having lashed out on this toy too it felt cathartic to tell.
And I do like to revive old threads sometimes