Review of Magnavox Compact DVD Player, Model DP100MW8

I needed a DVD Player, I had all of these DVD's and I was sick and tired of having to go upstairs in order to watch them. I wanted to be able to watch movies in the comfort of my own room, in my bed. I had been using my Playstation 2 as a DVD player, but when I learned that this can eventually burn the gaming console out, I wanted a cheap and easy alternative to burning out my $200 console.
I asked Santa for one, and he delivered a Magnovox Compact DVD player model number DP100MW8.
The player was a nice metallic silver colored box. It was small, light weight, and would easily fit on my TV unit with ease. The player came with a remote, batteries for the remote, and cables. The box itself had only 4 buttons on it, one for play, stop, open/close, and off/on. However using these buttons are only necessary if you loose the remote, or the batteries die.
After my boyfriend had the box all set up we were ready to plop in a DVD and begin watching. I placed in the drawer Beetlejuice, and immediately the movie loaded up with ease. I was surprised at how fast and easy it was to get this player up and running.
The Magnavox player worked like a charm for about a month. Thats when troubles started popping up. In the middle of watching a movie, at times the player would just stop working. It would read me a message that said, no DVD inserted, please insert DVD. I found this odd, seeing how the movie was in fact in the player. However in order to fix it all I had to do was turn the box off, then back on, and it would resume playing back where I was. Pretty neat eh!?
However a few months later as I began watching a movie the player stopped about 10 minutes into it, with the same message I knew all too well. I figured a quick power off/on would solve the problem. However this time the message, LOADING...LOADING... kept reading on the screen. After 5 minutes of the message I would get the no disc in drawer message. Now I was pissed.
I repeated the process with the same results, until I finally gave up. All in all I had spent nearly 20 minutes trying to get the player to recognize my movie with no results.
There was no rhyme of reason for this. My player had always gotten light use, and was never banged around or mistreated, there was no reason for the thing to dud out on me only 8 months after getting it.
I then hit the open button to retrieve the DVD but it would not budge. I began prying at the door and nearly fell backwards when it came off and landed to the floor. Great, how the hell was I supposed to get it out now? I began shoving the faceplate back into the slot, and with some pushing and shoving, it finally clicked back into place. I was then able to pry the door open and remove the DVD.
I then ripped the plugs from the TV and wall and began beating on the DVD player. I was pissed, and I have a short fuse. I smacked at the player for a bit, until I felt satisfied. Now what I had was an unwatched movie which was due back in 2 days, and a beaten broken DVD player.
There was no way in hell the store would take back the player looking like this, and most likely because I beat the machine the warranty that may have still been good would now be void. Great! Just great!
I knew I needed to buy a new player, because without one, I'd get moody. I knew though that I would buy a higher end model, and never again a piece of $30 garbage. Next time I will ask Santa for a better model.
There is a reason this player was $30.00. It's crap.
Where to find one:
You can spot this piece of crap Magnavox player for around $30.00 or less at your local Walmart. This is where Santa got mine. Tell Santa to get your player somewhere else, and tell Santa you don't want no $30.00 hunk of crap.