Home > Consumer Reviews > Yamada DVD 5520 Multi-region DVD Player

Bought the Yamada DVD 5520 multi region player and am certainly not disappointed.
The unit looks expensive and has a solid feel to it, the remote well, its just a standardish remote with loads of rubber functions buttons.
The set up menu is comprehensive loads of variable settings,5.1 surround,dolby digital,graphic equaliser, NTSC converter to name a few.
Picture quality is very good as is the audio, CDs sound OK.
Plays every format I've put in it VCD,SVCD,MP3,JPEG etc.The only thing it does not play are other region discs, only region 2.
Got an e-mail from Amazon appologising that some units are'nt region free and a upgrade CD will be sent.
All in all well worth £40 without doubt!

The first thing you notice when opening the box is how slimline and 'expensive' looking it is. Fortunately, not only does it look good, it performs good aswell. This player will play just about any disc you put in it - and play it well. DVD playback is as good as I have seen from a much more costly player. Colours are vivid, flesh tones well defined and, whereas some cheaper players struggle with dark scenes, this player copes with them very well. Sound is excellent when plugged through your TV thanks to the Virtual Surround option and features many different equaliser options(hall, bathroom, arena etc) but is even better when pumped through your Dolby 5.1 or DTS setup. Shove in a CD or CD-R/CD-RW and you might as well sell your Hi-Fi. Sound is fab. Same goes for MP3 discs. They also sound excellent. Only downside for me with the MP3 discs is that there is a short delay from one track to another. Not normally a problem with most albums but can be a bit annoying when listening to 'mix' albums (Ministry of Sound etc). This, however is a small gripe considering how cheap this machine is. The other great performance of this player is when you put in a Photo CD. I burned a CD today of holiday pix taken on a digital camera, pictures from the internet, scanned pictures and other odds & sodds. This machine handled all of them brilliantly. It displays them to there maximum full screen potential without making them losing the resolution (as long as they are not too tiny) and you can choose different transition effects. VCD's and SVCD's play great although I haven't tried many but what I have got were fine. Overall this is a great machine for the money. A few 'purists' out there may scoff but in my personal opinion it is great value for money. Oh, I forgot to mention - IT'S MULTI REGION TOO - but you don't have to do any hacks or anything else. It just recognises what region it is and loads it up just as fast as Region 2. NB - the manual states that is a Region 2 machine only - ignore this!!

I've bought a couple of these players, mainly because the versatility and quality you get for the money is unbelievable! One unit played out of the box but the other had no output to the scart socket. Had I not already owned one of these, it would have been very difficult to fix without returning it to amazon. I see that more of these players are now getting a poor review due to difficulties in setting them up. If you're willing to accept the small chance you might recieve one that needs to be returned, it's a small gamble against the value and quality you're getting for your money.

Amazing piece of kit, I've now bought 8..... yes EIGHT of them. In answer to an earlier review, yes it does play CDG Karaoke discs. It displays the words much larger than a normal CDG Karaoke player, but it's not a problem. The only slight downer, is that you can't get rid of the Track No, and Time Elapsed display in CDG playback mode.
I haven't found a disc/format/content that it won't play! If I could get a jam sandwich in the drawer, I reckon it'd play that too!
Fantastic bit of kit, can't praise it highly enough.

A good DVD player for the price, but be aware that it does not work if connected to a VCR or TV/VCR combi. The small print in the manual states that the picture will be "distorted" if connected to a VCR or TV/VCR combi unit, due to "DVDs being protected by Macrovision". Rather than distortion I got no picture at all on a combi unit but it's fine on a normal TV. I tried another DVD player (a Toshiba SD330E) with the TV/VCR combi and that one works perfectly. The manufacturer confirmed that they have no solution to this problem.