June 14, 2003
A Pleasant Surprise!
For those of you who don't know, our son, Alexei, now just over two years of age, was brought up thinking that anything flat and round is a coaster. This would include CDs and DVDs, plates, and of course actual coasters. He was also raised to think that coasters are fun things to play with. This would include spinning them on coffee tables (making a fun, wobbly sound as it slowly comes to a stop) and throwing them on to a non-carpeted surfaces (thus providing a loud sound in addition to the aforementioned wobbly sound).Not long ago, Alexei managed to figure out how to eject the DVDs from the DVD player. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we now have several scratched DVDs, mostly the ones we leave him to watch while we are trying to get some housework done. His favorite, Monsters Inc., has become so scratched that our DVD player would freeze up. So, I decided that I would try to use some of this high priced technology we have in our house to remedy the situation. I was informed of a piece of software for the Mac called Forty-Two. It is a DVD ripper and encoder that can turn your DVDs into Video CDs, among other things. I did a test and made a Video CD out of our newly acquired Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets DVD and burned it on to a CD-R. I tried it on our DVD player but it couldn't read CD-R media and gave me a "No Disc" error. We have encountered this problem before and I was a getting a little annoyed with having a DVD player that can't play anything other that store-bought DVDs and CDs. So I took the plunge and bought a new DVD player.
I haven't made a decision that good in a long time. I could not be happier. I strayed from my standard Sony brand loyalty and purchased a 
JVC XV-N44S model from Sears. Here is a description of the player from the JVC website:
This new JVC XV-N44SL introduces a new slim and stylish design for a "all-in-one" player that people are looking for. Not only does it play DVD & CD; it also plays the new CD-R/RW recordable CD formats,DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW SVCD, VCD, JPEG and MP3 formats. Don't let the slim design fool you, the XV-N44SL is packed with many exciting features such as Express Play Start, New high-resolution GUI (Graphical User Interface), 3-D Phonic sound, variable and slow search,6-Step zoom play, digest and strobe play, angle list and resume function. Optical and Coaxial digital audio outputs with Dolby Digital & DTS pass-through are provided for easy connection to any system.
I tested all the important features and they all work. MP3 CDs, JPEG CDs, Video CDs, all play fine. I still need to try SVCD but I am assuming that it will work too.
The real beauty of the situation, the one thing that made it all worthwhile, is that the heavily scratched Monsters Inc. DVD now plays without skipping, so I don't have to replace it, saving us $25.59. I haven't tried all the other "scratched" DVDs but if the all work as well, I will be one happy camper. At $25 per disc, this machine will have already paid for itself.