Death of a DVD Player

Don't you hate it when you decide to watch a movie and the DVD player doesn't work? I had one die on me in the States, but it went slowly. At first it wouldn't play all of my DVDs, then when it was loading the ones that would play I would have to tilt the DVD player back at an angle. It got to the point where I would put my ear up next to the DVD player and depending upon the sound it was making I would increase or decrease how much I was tilting it. When it finally died it wasn't much of a shocker. I had seen it coming. I admit that I didn't want to throw it out and we ended up keeping it until we moved. I finally was able to part with it then (I did check one more time to make sure that it hadn't recovered) because moving it with us to China just seemed a bit excessive. I guess part of it was that I felt so wasteful. It probably could have been repaired and had many years of use. Why would I pay more to fix one than to get a new one though?

Our lovely DVD player here had a sudden death. We went to watch something and it refused to read any DVD or CD. The previous night we had been watching something and hadn't had a problem. Our only difficulties with the DVD player had been (1) not being able to read the Chinese characters on the remote control and (2) whenever the power went out it went back to the default language setting of Chinese. Perhaps we will never know if ZNX is a bad brand or if it was just bad luck. We had gone really cheap, so perhaps we got what we paid for.

Our new DVD player is an AMOI, one of China's best brands as the saleslady pointed out. We got the second most expensive model in stock and shelled out $62 for it. Of course when we turn in our receipt for VAT refund we will get 17% of that back. We also got a special bonus gift of two karaoke microphones and four DVDs. Looks like three of the four are going to be in English, but the fourth might be only Chinese. After she had made the sale is when we learned about our exciting bonus gifts AND when she showed us how to use the remote. This remote is also in Chinese so she hooked up our DVD player to a TV and showed us what the different buttons did. One of our favorite features is that you can change the lighting color on the DVD player. That's right, a feature you always wanted and possibly needed, but hadn't thought about. You can now have the DVD player match your decor by pushing a button on the remote. How do people even come up with features like this? Does it make this particular model more appealing? Do people try to decide which DVD player they want and then realize that hands down this is the best one, I mean you can change the color! Too bad it is hard to capture that with the camera. I tried earlier in the day and too much sun was coming in the window and then later it was dark and if I used the flash it took out the light color. Here are two no flash pictures to show you blue and red. You probably can imagine green, white, yellow, purple, etc.

I hadn't realized before that many DVDs purchased in the US have many different language and subtitles available even though they are not listed. With our new DVD player we can get several of each (spoken and subtited). I suppose it is because our player works on regions 1-6. I was having fun listening to the movie in Chinese with Portugese subtitles or in French with Korean subtitles. Doesn't take much to amuse me. Plus, I got to change the color display as I watched. Wow!

On a loosely related note (it involves an incident on the way back from buying the DVD player)... We were waiting to cross the street at a busy intersection. There was a bus stopped there that is one of the buses that looks like it should be in a junkyard or taking the riders straight to Hell. The kind of bus with more rust than not, door that doesn't close all the way, and of course the old lady with the megaphone shouting out to those who will listen as to why they should choose to ride this bus. Well, the bus was not moving and the honks were getting louder and more numerous. A couple of people got off the bus and started to push it. They were having little success, so they got back on and recruited some of the bigger looking guys to help them push the bus and try to get it going again. Their timing was great. They want to cross an intersection while other cars are making left turns across it, blocking their way. So the bus driver is trying to steer around the cars (which are also swerving and breaking) as they make their way forward. Too bad the light changed and we got to cross. I would have liked to have seen how that ended. I was so mad at myself for not having my camera to take a picture of these people pushing the bus. It was an amusing sight. Oh well, Rob's work Christmas party was this weekend too. I have some pictures to put up of that. I suppose that will have to make do.