I've just been given a Philips DVD634 DVD player,with an internal layout that appears refreshingly simple for a piece of consumer electronics. Even better, the drive appears to be a regular IDE DVD-ROM drive. Looking on these groups and some other web sites, it turns out that this is a common arrangement, but there are claims that some manufacturers are moving over to proprietary connections. Is this rather sensible design going to disappear again? Or are these proprietary connections really IDE connections without added expense of a proper ribbon cable? When I buy players in future, I really want to make sure they are IDE based, if I can.
Incidentally, the player I've got almost always gives NO DISC with the only commercial DVD movie I own, but will quite happily play MP3s off a few DVD+Rs, suggesting it's not the DVD pickup. What might it be then?
Thanks,
Joe