MCC TurboPix DVD TD200

The low-end DVD player market in the country is drenched in several options, most of which are Chinese OEM products branded with unknown names. There are some known brands in the fray, like Videocon, Sansui and Mitashi, but even their products are no different in quality from the other options. MCC Group, which is primarily into imaging and consumer electronics such as memory cards and distribution of JVC camcorders, has now entered the arena with two low-cost DVD players. Let's take a look at one of them, the TurboPix DVD TD200.

The player is almost smart looking, with the matte black/silver combination on the front, but that's only true till it's turned off. The moment you power it up, a hideous blue LED glows from around the disc tray and the navigation controls and screams "CHEAP". There is also a standard green LED info display on the front, which would have looked good on its own, but doesn't match with the blue LED, spoiling the look further. Even when the player is turned off via the remote and the green display is off, the blue glows on...

The USP of the TurboPix DVD TD200 is it's support for direct USB connection and a memory card reader. The USB port is right on the front of the unit, behind a cover, and can take in anything from portable hard drives to flash drives to any other device that's complies to the USB Mass Storage profile. If you have music, movies and pictures stored on the USB devices, you can directly view them on the player. The cover was very flimsy and it kept falling off.

Interestingly, we tried a couple of 1GB MP3 players that didn't work with it, like the Samsung YP-U2, although it worked fine when I connected my digital camera to it. Connecting a 40GB portable laptop hard drive didn't work either, as it requires a lot more power.

The memory card reader takes in three types of popular cards: SD, MMC and Sony Memory Sticks. This let's you directly take out cards from your digital camera or phone and view them in the player on TV. miniSD cards and RS-MMC cards can also be used with their adapters.