Home > Consumer Reviews > GE DGE100N DVD Player

Purchased product at [store]. I am using this unit with an eight year old 31" dirct view TV made by Mitsubishi (4:3, no high def).

Exterior appearance of the DVD player is very clean. Remote control lacks backlight, but is well laid out and comfortable to hold. Good video quality, especially at [money] price point.

Very impressive reading of MP3 and JPEG files on homemade CD-R's. This machine was able to read discs that several Toshiba, Philips anad Panasonic units were unable to read. However, the user interface for non-DVD features is disappointing:

-- Unit only displays the first 11 characters of MP3 and JPEG files. Since most of my files names have 40 characters or more -- they include the artist and song title -- this restriction made it difficult for me to navigate my files.

-- Unit does not support 'random play' or 'play lists'. This makes the unit inflexible during parties or for background music.

-- When you want to play, say, song 24, you must press 0-2-4 on the remote. If you press 2-4, the unit plays song 2, then jumps to song 4. This operation frustrated me.

This unit can also display JPEG files. I found this feature exciting; it let me see pictures taken with my digital camera on my TV (after I burned them to a CD, of course). High resolution files loaded quickly, but they flickered a bit on my screen. I don't know if this was due to the DVD player or my TV or my interconnects (S-Video).

Like MP3 files, JPEG file names are restricted to 11 characters. This was less of an issue for me, though. Generally I view images as a slide show without jumping from picture to picture.

My opinion: if you only want to watch movies and have a non-HD setup, this machine offers great value and good performance. If you demand flexible audio controls or have a large collection of homemade MP3 discs, this user interface on this unit is limiting.

I purchased this DVD player a week ago and find watching movies a very frustrating endeavor. This machine refuses to play some DVDs; abruptly stops an hour or so into the movie; and locks up randomly. When it does play a DVD, the picture quality is very good as is the sound. I attempted to contact customer support but was foiled by the inability to speak to a live person. They refer you to the RCA.com website which is also useless. If you wish to talk to someone, they refer you to a non-tollfree number. Having had many GE products in my five decades, I guess I expected a better product and at least customer support for one's questions. Now I am looking for a better quality DVD player and one which also offers customer support.

It looks like there is a common bug on the chip in this machine. I bought a DGE100NA at Circuit City so I could play a VCD a friend sent me - and because the Apex DVD player I had could not read the VCD, even though it was supposed to be able to. The GE was able to play the VCD.

This DVD player does NOT resume properly from Pause. But I've found a work-around. When you are ready to resume, press the Pause button and immediately press Stop. Then press play and the movie will USUALLY start from the place where you paused. If you try to resume by just pressing Pause, the unit locks up, and as the others have said, the ONLY way to get it to re-start is to pull the power plug - even the Power On/Off button is frozen.

The fact that it sometimes also randomly starts movies in the middle is another annoyance. This unit will PLAY a DVD, but it is sadly lacking when it comes to reliable functionality.

Bought this machine for [X] and expected minimum features and performance. I was pleasantly surprised. I read the instructions, hooked it up, and was playing a movie within thirty minutes after opening the box. Nice machine!

I don't know if this player is still being sold but if so, steer clear of it. When it works, mine works reasonably well but it rarely works. Most of the time it gives me a "no disc" message when it has just spooled up a DVD that works in every other player I have.

More interesting is GE's response to this. They don't acknowledge that it even exists. Could it be some kind of illegal copy, I ask? No response. I think they know there's something wrong with it.

The only good thing about it was the price, but on a per-play basis, I probably should have bought a different player. What also bothers me is what this says about GE. Would this be true of all their other products? I wonder.