Finding my Stationin life. Review on Sony Playstation 2

When I moved to Germany 7 years ago, I was really thrown in at the deep end as I didnt speak one word of the Language.

For a while there I couldn't go to the cinema or watch a video, so you can imagine my excitement when I first heard about DVDs.

We originally started by renting a DVD player, along with the DVD we wanted to watch, from our local video shop. But this wasn't always available and was getting to be quite expensive.

I had heard of Playstation so often before, mainly through my kids begging me to buy it as the graphics were so good. So when I saw there was a Plastation 2, which also played DVDs, I knew I had to have it.

I paid 800DM (275GBP) for mine. Included in the package was the console itself plus one control pad. It was expensive considering all the extra you felt obliged to buy to improve its efficiency. As you are supposed to stand this on its side, there is a stand to buy as well as extra control pad and memory cards. These are not cheap so I opted just to get an extra control pad and one memory card.

The console itself is roughly half the size of a 'normal' video recorder so doesnt take up much space and being all black is really quite elegant to look at. There is an on/off switch at the back of the console as well as the power cable and cables to be inserted into the telly. The three coloured cables for the telly can be inserted into an adapter that fits into the slot at the back of the telly or directly inserted into the input holes on more modern tellys. There are two slots for control pads as well as two slots for memory cards at the front of the console. You also find a reset button at the front along with a button to open and close the drawer where the dvds, games and Cds go.

Once you have put your game, dvd or music cd in your drawer and close it, you are automatically taken to a screen where you will see a swirly line of blue balls. Underneath this you will see an enter and close button, clearly showing you which button to press on your controle pad to activate them. Normally the console will jump over this and take you directly to your film, game or music cd set up, but you have to go in here if you are wanting to use your memory card as more than one game can be stored on this and you need to select the game you want. How many games can be stored depends on their size, but I will not pretend to understand what for size etc, and will only say that you will be informed when you memeory card is full.

From the control panel you are now able to select the functions on games,dvds or cds. This is all very straight forward but do check your instructions as there is usually an easy way to get to where you want to. For example if you want to add or remove subtitles during a playing film, you can either select the entire functions panel and spend ages choosing you options, or you just just press down and then up on your left joy stick. So do take the time to read about these special features.

The PS2 is not perfect however and there are a few things that I must warn you about before you decide to purchase one.

Sometimes the console refuses to 'read' a DVD when you put it in. This means that where it should automatically jump straight to a films set up, it infact remains at the point I mentioned where you will see enter and close. Sometimes when you are lucky and press on enter you will find a picture of a disc and can just click on this and are taken to the film set up menu. But, like we quite often find, sometimes when you click on enter you see NO DATA FOUND displayed. You now have to go through restarting the console or like us then spend half an hour messing about trying anything and everything to get the console to read your dvd. We try to stand or lay the console flat. We try to blow stray flecks of dust away from inside the drawer. We also clean our dvds. Sometimes one of these helps but it takes time and is so annoying.

I have spoken to a few other people about this problem and they all agree they have experienced it and like us not just with old dvds but also brand new never been used before dvds. Again I am no expert on the mechanics of dvd players but do feel that maybe this console is slightly sensitive to dust, scratches and movement of the console while in use.

When you finally get your film running, you sometimes notice that there is an obvious time difference between the action of someones mouth and the words they are supposed to be saying. This out of sync speech occurs quite often but you learn to live with it and it does catch up with itself eventually.

An added bonus for PS2 is the wide range of games available. As I mentioned before you can play all the games that were made for PS1 as well as a whole new range just for PS2. But you cannot play PS2 games on PS1 consoles.

The price of the games vary and it helps to look around shops and in the internet for special offers and second hand games.

The one downside with the games is that the control pad sometimes doesnt respond to your commands. By that I mean that sometimes it gets quite awkward as well as painful to play certain games because you just cant use the controls quick enough or sometimes the games are just too demanding on the player and they cant cope with what is required to control some moves as there is too much too do on the pad. I should imagine the experts out there have no problem with this, but as someone who doesnt play the games too often, I would rather enjoy playing the game and not spend half an hour learning how to do that.

We havent used the Music CD function very often, but it too is very straight forward once you place your cd in the drawer. You are taken to a screen where you will see as many square buttons as songs you have on your CD. You can either just press play and listen to all the songs straight through or select the number of the song you want to hear. The one downside to this function is that the squares remain on the screen as the song plays and no matter how much you resist it your eyes are always drawn back to the screen and you end up staring at the silly square buttons. You see how long a song is and it counts backwards till the song is over, but thats about the only exciting thing to look at. You may also experience your CD not being read and I strongly suggest just using good quality cds here.

All in all it is very easy to operate, which suits me fine. We have had ours for two years now and besides the mentioned problems I cant say I am disappointed. The quality is good by my standards as I never expected big screen quality.

You can now pick this console up for much less than I paid for it. I have seen it for 200 euro(125GBP) and that was with two dvds included. Look around as there really are some good offers out there.

I think the PS2 was made for playing high quality games but with the added bonus of being able to play dvds. But not the other way round. So if you want a high quality dvd player this really is not for you. But if like us you will share your time equally between games and dvds then I suggest you invest in a PS2. It was a welcomed addition into our home.