Exclusive hands-on with budget Aldi Blu-ray player, is Tevion DVD1100 UK's best BD buy?

There's a growing choice for those looking for budget-buy Blu-ray  hardware - but do you get what you pay for when you snap up a bargain?
Supermarket chain Aldi is the latest vendor to offer cheapo HD disc spinners. The store, whose name is a contraction of 'Albrecht Discount', after the two German brothers who founded it - is best-known for a wide range of budget buys ranging from ale to yoghurt, but if you've been to an Aldi, you'll appreciate how the company's 'no-nonsense' attitude to store-design can yield savings that are passed onto customers.
As a regular cyclist, I frequently visit the store to buy clothing and accessories that - quite frankly - are unbeatable at the price. The company also regularly-stocks consumer-electronics products including sat-navs, DVD players, digital photo-frames and PCs…and now Blu-ray players?

Armed with a tip-off from none other than our esteemed Editor, an Aldi Blu-ray player was something I just had to investigate. Word was that said player is BD-Live compatible, supports hi-def audio, equipped with USB and can squirt 1080p/24p video to a compatible display. Sounds worthwhile for a penny less than £140, doesn't it? The major brands would have trouble matching that kind of value. With the whiff of a bargain in the air, then, I cycled down to the local store with minutes to spare before closing time.
Marching down the aisles, I could alas find no trace of any Blu-ray players although the store was flogging off end-of-line DVD players for less than the cost of a new disc to play on it.

Hmmm. Maybe they're out of stock - and yes, with Aldi's special buys you often have to move quickly. Let's ask the store manager: 'Do you still have any of those Blu-ray players!' I ask, fearing the worst. 'I'll fetch one', she knowingly responded before disappearing into the depths of a stockroom. That's right, this high-tech hardware is apparently too radical to put on general display! Seconds later, she re-emerged with box in hand. A swipe of a credit card and £139.99 later, and I was the proud owner of a Tevion DVD1100UKT - complete with 3-year parts and labour warranty. I subsequently discovered that a nearly-identical machine (the Curtis DVD1100UK) is also sold by Currys. Although it's cheaper, this particular player makes no BD-Live claims and lacks the USB port.


Where's the sound?
Hurriedly, I returned home and plumbed the Chinese-made player into my AV system. Among the wide variety of connectivity options are HDMI, component, optical/coaxial digital and ...err... composite video. The analogue audio is alas two-channel only; to get the best of this player HDMI is the logical choice, and so that's what I chose. Now to slip in a disc…

What seemed like an eternity later - this is not the fastest-loading player in the world - and... yes, I had pictures! But where's the sound? An Onkyo TX-NR906 - which admittedly sells for the same moolah as ten Tevions - yielded a 'no signal' display on its front panel. You should instead be told what audio format you're listening to.
Going through the player's various output options - which included several PCM variants, bitstream HD (TrueHD/DTS-HD) and 'legacy' bitstreams (i.e. DTS/Dolby Digital) - made absolutely no difference.

My Sony Bravia LCD TV yielded 2-channel PCM sound when connected directly to the player, and so there presumably wasn't a fault with the hardware. I then tried another AVR (Sony's big and beautiful high-end 5400ES) and...success at last! Ironically, if I immediately disconnected the Sony and plugged the HDMI cable back into the Onkyo sound was obtained. Clearly, then, there's some kind of HDMI handshaking issue - and one that needs urgent attention via a firmware update. I called the helpline listed in the manual, but the person at the other end was utterly clueless.

Beyond expectations
In performance terms, the picture and sound quality are virtually impossible to fault. With a Cineversum Paris full-HD projector fed at 1080p/24 - yes, more high-end gear! - a spin of Transformers rewarded me with great visuals  - a stupendous range of contrast, beautifully-rich colour rendition (the Tevion also supports the xvYCC extended colour space) and impeccable detail. It's just as good as some far more expensive players I've tried. The movie's accompanying Full-HD soundtrack oozes dynamics. Extracting it from the disc and sending it to the HDMI output proved well within the player's capabilities - no dropouts, no lip-sync errors, just 'in-yer-face' action bliss! And BD-Live?  Yes indeed, the Tevion does indeed support BD-Live - but only if a 1GB+ memory device is plugged into the USB port on the front panel. What a clever way of avoiding the expense of building memory into the player itself (Profile 2.0 spec - 1GB requirement)! Nowhere is this in the manual.
The player also supports BD-R and BD-RE playback - a boon for owners of AVC-HD camcorders - but the only other formats supported are CDs, DVDs, basic DivX/XviD (not HD), MP3, WMA and JPEG. The last three can also be loaded into the player via USB storage devices. 
Playback of standard-definition formats is fair, although the upscaling yields more 'stepping' artifacts with motion than I would have liked. However, detail (including film grain) comes across well. This 'cheap-as-chips' player may have performed beyond expectations, but you don't get something for nothing. The build quality is, hardly unexpectedly, rather 'plasticky'. Putting the power supply on the same circuit board as the rest of the circuitry strikes me as a stupid design, and the player runs very warm. Thankfully the front-panel switch removes mains-power altogether, as opposed to merely placing it in standby. In other words, it can be turned off when not in use, thereby extending its life.

Overall, a decent AV performance, with my caveat regarding customer support - so don't expect much! To see how this model stacks up in the HCC Labs, look out for an in-depth review in an upcoming issue of Home Cinema Choice.
To answer my original question: Yes, you do get what you pay for...

HCC verdict 3/5