Upscale DVDs in style with this slinky spinner

XDE wizardry makes this budget DVD deck an essential purchase

oppo has kitted out its flagship DV-983H with enough firepower to blow its impressive stablemate (the DV-980H) clean out of the water. At over £300 it's certainly not cheap, but when you look at the packed spec sheet, that inflated price starts to become more understandable.

DVD players are getting cheaper by the day and you can now find big name brands stacked on supermarket shelves alongside more obscure names, often with little noticeable difference in price. But even at bargain basement prices it’s better to go for a trusted name, and in the budget DVD player realm they don’t come more trustworthy than Toshiba.

I remember t’day when to pay for an average DVD player, you had to work down t’pit for a month with nowt but bread an’ dripping to eat. And when you finally scraped together t’cash, it were a twenty-mile trek across t’moors to find an open Dixons. Eeh, t’dark days of 1997.

You can tell the Sony DVP-FX850 is a different proposition to the LG and Philips simply by picking it up.

Our recent poll revealed that many of you (39 per cent) are content to watch movies and listen to music on 2.1 systems – two front speakers reinforced at the bottom-end with a subwoofer. Such a system can never get close to the full aural envelope that a quality 5.1 rig can achieve, but it’s clear that in the real world, some kind of compromise has to be struck between quality and quantity.

At £65, Samsung’s entrant is clearly in a different price bracket to the other models here. But, taking value into account and the fact that Sammy is selling this as a stripped-down player with the emphasis on its 1080p abilities, it could still do well.

Fan-boy brand Oppo appears to have studied the Cambridge Audio Zen-like approach to electronics design and decided to do the exact opposite, cramming this skinny machine with every conceivable feature you could want.

This is a step-up DVD deck for Denon, a company that already has an enviable reputation for high video processing, so this should be the player to watch.

The name won’t be particularly familiar to regular readers, but Oppo’s DV-981HD universal disc player packs quite a punch.

This £70 deck certainly has the measure of the budget market, but faces a tougher task against rivals in the sub-£100 HD-upscaling arena.Visually, it puts them all to shame with a beautiful black finish and gently sloping fascia

The Pioneer DV-LX50 is the company's latest high-end DVD spinner, which typically comes equipped with everything bar the kitchen sink. And although it can't deliver proper high-definition pictures, you'll be hard pressed to find an HD deck that can play as many media formats as the Pioneer DV-LX50.

Arcam has finally bitten the bullet by introducing an upgraded DVD player which is as near to being universal as the company has designed. First and foremost the Arcam DV137 is a DVD player

Instantly setting out its stall, the DMR-EX75 offers upscaling via an HDMI output, up to 720p or 1080i resolution and then fills out one of the most impressive CVs we've seen. As well as the HDMI output, this deck has comprehensive socketry

Samsung's HD860 impressed when we reviewed it last year, with its budget-priced upscaling and multimedia playback. There were one or two minor issues, but the player packed in a great picture and sound for the price.

You'll find the ubiquitous socket on the back panel of this low price DVD deck from Philips, and those of you with HD Ready displays take note -the DVP5960 will up convert standard definition DVDs to 720p or 1080i to more closely match your screen

Denon continues to wage its war against blue laser discs with a sublime DVD player that's powerful enough to make you think twice about upgrading to hi-def. The DVD-2930 offers 720p, 1080i and 1080p upscaling at a superbly competitive price

Nowadays, budget DVD players are two a penny. Even some of the bigger brand names like LG and Toshiba are offering players at less then a price of a DVD boxset. So, the arrival of a newcomer like the Xoro HSD 8410 probably won't create much of a ripple

This new 'universal' disc player from classic 'budget specialist' NAD is a serious solution to a serious set of requirements, and consequently it costs proper, serious money

If you're not yet ready to stump up for a proper hi-def disc player then the next best thing is a DVD deck with 1080p upscaling. Just a year ago this feature was only found on high-end players, but the £80 DVP5980 proves that this is no longer the case

The Alba DVD382STB makes a bid to reduce the number of boxes cluttering up your TV cabinet by combining DVD playback capabilities and a Freeview tuner for access to free-to-air digital TV channels in one affordable unit.