What is smart about a smart DVD player?

Per micky:

You're on the right track with the big doubts.

I bought a high-end LG for somebody a few months back.

Sounds impressive at first: WiFi, web browser, reads every format you can think of...and so-on.

Then one gets to the remote.... sheesh!... it's just begging for a keyboard what with the web browser... but it doesn't even have a dedicated skip button... and it's operation is totally unlike any other DVD player's remote. Gotta wonder what the people who sent something like that to market were thinking of.

It's not just the Beaver. Tonight I watching one my highest quality recordings, and I couldn't understand one sentence his mother said. (So I'm going back to low quality because high fills up my harddrive too fast.)

I couldn't learn to much from the web, so I went to Best Buys. I hate to waste their time, because it will, I know, be months before I buy anything, and I might buy from the web anyhow. I wasn't going to use any time of the clerks but I couldn't even find the smart dvds. That took her 10 seconds to point me, and a total of 3 or 4 minutes from 2 other guys.

The first guy said even a smart DVD won't do what i want (go to any place on the web) and he uttered the word Roku, but when we got to that aisle he didn't actually look at the Roku. It seemed to be a choice between the Sony Internet Player with Google TV and the Vizio Costar.

One used the term full screen browser. What I want is a full browser, I don't much care if it's full screen. But it seems,- although I don't guuarantee it -- that one can go to any webpage, if you can get the remote to work for you. Places like NBC.com won't work but that is because of NBC's rule, not the device's limitation.

So I'm trying to decide which I would prefer. There are 500+ reviews on Amazon for each of them , and I might just read them all. Different people want different things,

The second guy said, Oh no. There are DVD recorders with web brosers, but the only one he pointed to was.... get this, and expensive LG, 200 marked down to 110 called clearance. That's probably the one you bought, or close to it. The remote isn't there, but there is a picture of it on the plastic imitation device, and it has hardly any buttons, far fewer than the Costar. Plus I already have a DVD writer connected to the tv now, so it's back to the Internet Players.

I'm going to try to find the manuals online and read them. For me that is always the best way short of buying one to know if something I want.

One review seemed to say that Hulu wont' work with Costar. Even reading the owne4rs manyal won't give me a list of every site that won't work. Right now hulu is not high on my list. Actually I'm overwhelmed with tv to watch now, mostly from MeTV. And I haven't even tried to find out if I can take the output of these new things and put them through my own dvd recorder with hard drive. Do you know? That's pretty important because I keep getting sleepy and would like to record what I haven't yet watched.

Anyhow, Just wanted to report a what little I learned. Despite the one mistake the one clerk seems to have made, maybe it wasn't a mistake. Maybe even though LG claims to do internet browsing, he knows it doesn't do it well, becaues of the remote? Even if not, there's a lot for those guys to learn and they seemed to know quite a bit. I think 2005 was the last time I'll understand everything I need to know.

Google doesn't let you browse?

I had WebTV 14 years ago, it had a keyboard, but was still not the same experience as surfin' with your face in the monitor.

Per micky:

The one that I bought was an "LG-BP 730" and I would say that the remote is the problem. Try entering a URL sometime using a point-and-click on-screen keyboard... it's maddening, especially when you have a low-end Vizio TV whose remote includes a slide-out Blackberry-style keyboard... so you *know* it can be done.

OTOH, looking back, I just read that the manual seems to imply that the BP 730 accepts a USB keyboard/mouse. Having read that, now I need to go down to where this thing lives and see if it will work with a USB wireless like one of my Microsoft Multimedia keyboard/mouse combos.

Other than the goofy remote, this thing *is* nice - especially the breadth of formats that it can handle.

I don't understand. I think some of these devices have google chrome (but I havennt' checked on the LG DVD recorder, because I think it's the one (Pete didn't like) but if the remote has as few buttons as this one, the LG, did, it seems like it will be require picking out one letter at a time, and with no mouse or mouse substitute. That would let me goi to a webpage but "browse" the way I use it means to wander though the web, reading articles and watching video when I see something I like. Come to think of it, maybe none of these things smaller than a TV do that.

Sure. I can see that.

BTW, the Vizio remote had many more buttons than the LG and iirc the Sony, including a touchpad, and what they called a keyboard. It had all 10 numbers but no letters. It might work like texting, which i don't like, but it's been my experience the more buttons the better.

I'm wondering, if I wait another year or two, there will be fancier remotes included with the Sony internet Player or the Vizio. One of the Amazon raters of Vizio said it was pretty bad out of the box, but after several upgrades, that I think it did automatically over time, it was worth 5 starts. Now all those upgrades might happen as soon as one turns it on.

Per micky:

My problem with Vizio has been parts availability.

The mobo on my XVT323SV failed in such a way that I can still get OTA, but none of the HDMI ports are available. Looked and looked for a replacement - even ordered one - but it turns out that everybody is out of stock and I'm guessing no more are being made.

Somewhere I read that part of Vizio's methodology for their low prices is using components that fail to meet the specs of other brands.

Truth or Fiction?... either way, the next TV I get will not be Vizio. Maybe Best Buy's house brand...

I'm trying to see if that's the one I saw. I learned 4 years ago that if you dont' choose a store, their webpage shows what's in the warehouse and gives no indication of what is supposed to be in a store, but if you do chooose a store, I think it gives no indication what else is in the warehouse. I hope there is a way to renounce your chosen store without picking a new one.

Well I screwed that up. I searched for smart dvd , and the first hit of 190 was the movie Get Smart on DVD.

Let's try smart dvd recorder internet. It couldn't find anything, and it didn't remind me what I had searched on. That's a violation of rookie programming standards to not replay search terms, whether the item is found or not. And they've had years to get this right. They do replay the search terms when they find something.

LG smart DVD player 7 hits, 4 under 70 dollars, one 80, one 130, one

But this is not the store I was in. I see check store, but they call it an experimental search. Funny, this was available 4 years ago. and now it's experimental?

Changing to LG smart DVD recorder gives nothing, although it doesn't say if it's still looking in the zip code where the store was, or not. I think it might be easier to go back there. What a crummy webpage.

And I couldn't log into Amazon for 28 hours over the weekend. Others report the same problem

I think it's competing with Obamacare.

And try HD or Lowes. HD is still bad after 15 years of being bad. I haven't tried Lowes.

Radio Shack and Harbor Freight are good, but be careful how you spell freight or you'll find an imposter. Same with BestBuyS.com

Come to think of it, my brother's TV, maybe an LG?, had point and click and it was impossible to use. I pointed, I clicked, but I always missed the target.

Good luck. Please let me know.

I only play DVDs when someone gives them to me, or from Redbox, and I presume the latter is standard format, whatever that is. Plus I have another DVD player in the DVDR I got to to tune into and record digital over the air. So your "especially" isn't an incentive for me.

Hey, just yesterday on Amazon, I needed a 2016 battery, a coin battery, and one of them, whose picture was of two in a bublbe pack, the raters said they came with no packaging, and were apparently used.

Some gave it 1 star, but it also got 5 stars including iirc from those who said they didn't last long but were only a dollar apiece.

Thanks. I'll definitely bear this in mind.

I could sit here and explain why buying components that don't meet spec is A Very Bad Idea, no matter how much money you think you're saving. I would refer you instead to a biography of a famous industrial engineer whose name I can't remember. Would someone fill me in?

I've owned a 32" Vizio for five or six years, and it's perking away fine. It even has a 178-degree viewing angle.

My Internet ready blu-ray player has a USB port for a keyboard.

I bought it for $80 a few years ago, at Christmas time at K-mart. here it is on the walmart site:

I haven't tried a wireless keyboard on it, yet. It is on a shelf next to my computer desk, so a plug in keyboard works for my needs.