Manufacturer	Numark
Website	Numark DVD01 PROFESSIONAL DUAL DVD VIDEO PLAYER
Price	£499
Rating	Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome Your rating: None Average: 1 (1 vote)

This unit is a compact rackmount capable DUAL DVD Player. It is constructed in the same format of the dual cd players available that have the seperate control unit form the actual player.
Its a multi format player that accepts DVD, DVD-R, DVD+R, VCD and SVCD and normal audio CD's (although whats the point in that).

Other features

+-30% Pitch Bend
Cue Point Setting (one only)
On Board Video Switcher (clunk clunk)
Can use an external mixer if you want to.
Non Seamless Looping (whats the point?)
Full DVD Menu Navigation
Optional OSD
Interactive Setup for 16:9 4:3 PAL/NTSC etc etc

So whats it like?

Its easy to use. Easy to navigate the DVD menus using the control buttons.

The onboard switcher as I mentioned is a clunky style switch. There is a button that allows you to switch to black if you require but when you switch to the other side regardless you get a horrible bounce of the image as everything re-syncs. An external mixer is a must.

The player does not instantly start unless you cue up to the start point you want using the step fwd button then pressing play. But where is the step back button if you overshoot? Where is the jog dial for easy cueing? There is a FF and REW button that allows you to navigate the track X2, X4, X8 & X16 speed.

Numark seem to have rushed the unit and not thought about playability. eg

Slow cueing. You can set a cue point and during play if you press Cue then it jumps back to that start point ready for you to press play again. But it takes a fair amount of time to skip to the point and then start playing again.

No single play. Unlike other CD player from Numark, this unit does not allow you to play a single track then pause which means that the unit will play from your cue point to the end of the DVD. This is not good if you are using lots of small tracks as samples. If you play your sample and forget to pause then its keeps moving thru the remaining tracks.

Slow track navigation. Skipping tracks on the fly is also a shoddy implementation. You cant just press the next track button multiple times to cue up the reqd track. You must press the button and wait for the track to load then and only then can you press the next track button to move to the next track. Moving 6 tracks fwd can take 12 secs!! One track at a time. Boring

Looping is very non seamless. There is a reasonable gap between the loop. No good for a performance but OK I guess for an installation.

So it seems this unit is currently suited for playing long clips rather than short clips like samples. Its not really up to scratch for a performance situation where you want track17 and you want it now. It just doesn't work well enough for that style of VJing.

It would work well for playing long clips like a background layer or something along those lines where it just plays and plays until you mix to something else.

The unit seems great in theory but in practical terms, some features are lacking or not well thought out for performance situations.

Where speed is not of the essence then its a great little package and you get two DVD players and less features for much less than the price of the single player DVJ X1.