Re:DRM yadda yadda... (Score 1)

My DVD player just burned out so I replaced it with a DVD recorder. While it is technically true that the new DVD recorder plays audio CDs, it is not an acceptable substitute for a CD player.

After listening to three tracks I found myself dusting off my old CD player and hooking it up to the receiver.

Why?

• There is a long wait between pressing 'play' and hearing music. I guess it takes the machine that long to figure out what format it's looking at and act accordingly. It can play DVD, DVD+-R, DVD+-RW, CD+-R, CD+-RW, and data CDs with MP3 etc. Rah Rah. It takes a small eternity for it to figure out that it's looking at a 1X CLV CDDA and act accordingly.
• It does not actually act accordingly. It inserts momentary pauses between tracks! This is fine for CDs which are just collections of discrete tracks, but I've got real albums. Beethoven, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd are not supposed to hickup between tracks.
• My first CD player would skip tracks almost instantly. My current (NAD) CD player is a bit slower, but it still responds fast enough for me to click 'forward' three times instead of adding three to the current track number and typing it in. Not so on this DVD machine. It takes forever to change tracks, and seems to keep remote codes in a FIFO so it's easy to overshoot when you're trying to skip ahead a couple of tracks. Anti-skip buffering is all well and good, but four seconds between action and reaction?