I was wandering if anyone knew how to make a vcd player out of a audio player. I know you have to have a mpeg1 board, but I don't know where to get one, how much they cost, or how to hook them up. If anyone has some info please e-mail me. If you know a better way to make or buy a cheap vcd player please e-mail to. Thank you for your help.

Ryan S.

-- Ryan S. (lords_warrior@yahoo.com), July 10, 2001

Answers

Well, if you live in the U.S. you can buy good, cheap DVD players that can handle VCD, SVCD and sometimes even MP3. I recommend getting something that can handle CD-R and CD-RW media. www.vcdhelp.com has a player compatibility list that might be of some use to you. I have the Apex AD-703 and I love it, but I will warn you that Apex has quality control problems and many of their players have problems. My brother had to return 2 bad ones and finally gave up and got a Sony (Sony doesn't support most CD-R discs though). Pioneer also has good support for CD-R and CD-RW. Sampo is another highly respected brand with good support for CD-R and CD-RW and some of the newer Sampo models support miniDVD (DVD format on CD-R or CD-RW discs), which is something very few players currently support. Since you could get a good cheap DVD player for $160 or so, it might be a lot easier to just do that than to try to build your own. You would not only have to support MPEG-1 video, you would have to find something that could send video out to your TV, you might even have to replace the CD-ROM drive itself. I could see it costing you more to make a VCD player than to just buy a cheap DVD player.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), July 11, 2001.