DV3131

Teac’s DV3131 is the first of the company’s latest release DVD players. It's available for a budget price while still offering all the necessary functionality for playing DVDs.

The DV3131 is a smaller-than-average 360mm in length, and has a silver body with a black fascia. It has plain looks, with only a few buttons on the front, but that doesn’t detract from the unit’s functionality.

The main thing that sets the DV3131 apart from the crowd is its front USB port. This allows it to play back MP4 video, as well as various audio and image file formats. In addition it will happily handle the range of standard audio formats that come on DVD — DTS and Dolby Digital — through a variety of connectors.

There are no digital video outputs — what would you expect for $79? — but you do get component, S-Video and composite video output. Coaxial and optical digital outputs are included for audio as well a 5.1 analog RCA setup.

Picture quality is average: It’s pretty much all you can expect from a bargain-basement, DVD-only unit. There’s no up-scaling to 1080p or anything to suit next-generation televisions, so you’ll need to rely on your television’s in-built scaling and live with the resulting mediocre image quality.

The user interface is easy to navigate, but that’s about it. It’s not particularly nice to look at, but it gets the job done.

At the core of it, there’s not much to talk about with a simple DVD player. It starts up quickly, plays DVDs and a small variety of compressed audio, video and picture files via USB, and doesn’t do much else. For the price it’s a good swag of functionality.