Price Paid:  $200.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
Back in 2000, I told my parents that I wanted a DVD player for Christmas. Back in 1997, I looked at DVD players since I was ready to buy a VCR and a new CD player (the portable died). I considered spending $650-800 on a DVD player, But I ended up just buying a Proscan PSVR65 VCR ($350) and was given a Sony CDP-CE505 CD player a couple months later. So I came out ahead in that deal. My parents wisely enough let me go to the store and pick out the player. I had been into the MP3 scene since 1996, and had bought a CD burner in January 2000. So the idea of being able to play MP3s back on a DVD player was important. At the time, there were only three brands of players that offered MP3 playback; Aiwa, Apex and Sampo. I knew about the Apex AD-600A player, but could not find one at Circuit City before they were "fixed". I really thought that Apex would be gone within a year (I was wrong) and Sampo players were just not sold in the DC area. So by default, I ended up with the Aiwa. In the two years I have had the player, it has worked great. My bedroom is always dusty, and I have only had one problem with a disc being read. Specifically, it was not the entire disc, but the extras section of Disc 1 of Monsters Inc. I took the disc down to my parents Panasonic DVD-RP56 Progressive Scan player, and that set of chapters opened up just fine. I own 45 DVDs, borrowed about 20 more, and rented about another 20 more discs, except for Monsters Inc., all worked completely flawless. On my parents old 20" JVC TV, using the composite video, there were some problems with the picture being really dark. However, I think it may have been the tube going bad on the TV. On my JVC 27550 TV, the picture is great via the S-Video connection. I have yet to hook it up to a "free" TV I was given, a 1989 model Sears 19" TV. I also have not hooked it up to my parents Panasonic HDTV Monitor (just because they have a progressive scan DVD player). Compared to VHS (Proscan PSVR865, Sony SLV-595HF, Toshiba VHS) and a older Toshiba Betamax, the picture quality is great, which is to be expected. The colors come out correctly, except on that old JVC 20" TV. There are no lip-sync problems either, which some older DVD players have problems with. I recently discovered that my DVD player can be hacked to play other regions of DVD. I am trying to obtain a copy of Eyes Wide Shut from another region, just to test if it really works. I have yet to play a VCD yet. I may burn one on my computer sometime just to see if that feature works. CD Audio playback works well, allthough, why would I do that with a 5 disc CD changer hooked directly to my Sony STR-D915 receiver, why bother? Speaking of that, I have never directly hooked the player to the receiver. It is hooked to the TV, then the audio is routed to the amp that way. I am looking to buy a new receiver within the next year. At that point, I will get to test the component video outputs and the digital audio outputs. I really don't like the remote control. When I opened the box for the player, there were no batteries included. Also, the remote feels cheep and has a terrible layout. I just use a universal one now, for this reason. Or I use the front panel, which includes menu controls. However the dual function Track Forward/Fast Forward and Track Reverse/Fast Reverse buttons on the front are hard to master. I like the display panel, which is also used on some Zenith DVD players. The multi color DVD spinning looks cool. Overall, I think this DVD player is solid. No regrets for asking my parents for this one

Strengths:
Multi Region Hack, Coax and Optical audio outputs, Component video out, the first "name brand" DVD player with MP3 playback capability, front panel menu capability, cool front display, almost all DVDs play correctly, picture quality is great on my 27" TV.

Weaknesses:
Terrible design for remote control. No batteries included for remote when new, problem playing Monsters Inc Disc 1 extras, touchy FF/TF and FR/TR buttons on front panel.

Similar Products Used:
Panasonic DVD player DVD-RP56 Sony CD Player CDP-CE505 Proscan VCR PSVR65 Sony SLV-595HF VCR Toshiba VHS and Betamax VCRs

Price Paid:  $250.00

Summary:
Great product - pity that at least my model is not DVD+RW compatible :-(...

Strengths:
Nice looking, good quality of DVD playback, easy region hacking, lots of features, reasonable price.

Weaknesses:
Primitive remote design. Big disappointment recently when it refused to play DVD+RW recorded on Philips recorder (despite listed as fully compatible with this standard on dvdplusrw.org page). I will have to sell it thus, going for +RW compatible model. Pity as I like this one a lot...

Price Paid:  $800.00 from Plug-Ins

Summary:
I love my music much more than video, so this was bought as a cheap DVD player to connect to an expensive hifi. Marantz CD63SE CD (more of this later...) Creative NOMAD Jukebox (This later, too) Yamaha DSP-E580 Arcam alpha 9 amp Arcam alpha 9P power amp Mission 752f fronts Mission 75c centres Rogers db101 rears Assorted expensive interconnects - no global strategy there. Goodmans 28" TV I chose this DVD over other models for a number of reasons: 1. The 24b/96K DAC was an attractive specification 2. Ability to play MP3s 3. Number of outputs (Audio, Audio 2, Video, S-Video, Component video, coax digital, optical digital) 4. Multizone capability 5. Build quality in this price category (I really hate flimsy tray fascias, and this has a nice rigid one) The picture is very good The sound from DVDs is very good The sound from CDs is very good. Infact, I cannot hear the difference between this and my Marantz CD63SE. The only disadvantages the Aiwa has are in it's load-times (slow) and inability to access tracks directly (next/previous only) The sound from MP3s is AWFUL or does not play I have tried different brands of CD-R, and different burning speeds. Slower burning speeds cures the playability issues, but they still sound lousy. Overprocessed, a bit echoey, no presence, muffled and slurred. Totally diabolical. My Creative NOMAD jukebox is a quarter the size, has a hugely inferior DAC, and still sounds 100x better than this. Needless to say, I do not use it for MP3 playback. I do not recommend that anyone buys this unit for MP3 playback. It is, however, an excellent DVD player. If you want a great sounding CD player, too, then this fits the bill, but the slow load times and finding the right track makes playing single tracks a real chore.

Strengths:
Great picture Great sound Really great CD playback Outputs

Weaknesses:
Slow load times No direct track access for CDs Terrible MP3 playback

Similar Products Used:
Sony DVD player Marantz CD63SE CD player Creative Nomad Jukebox

Price Paid:  $220.00 from circuit city

Summary:
it is the coolest piece of machine in the world. If you dont own it you are a tool and have not experienced a quality moment. i say moment because that is what this machine gives you. it is immortal. i shall use it till the day i die. no other can replace its beauty. the remote scheme is good. everyone else is stupid and needs to get a brail remote cause they suck.

Strengths:
pure quality.

Weaknesses:
are you kidding?

Similar Products Used:
atari

Price Paid:  $0.00 from ebay

Summary:
After searching the internet for a DVD player that doesn't have any trouble with the layer change, I settled on the 370. This was the only payable player that I could find that was specifically mentioned as having no layer change troubles. In my opinion there is no excuse for such problems (important keyword for DVD manufacturers: "Buffer") and it annoys me even if there is the slightest glitch. However after making a bid in ebay I found all the negative comments here and thought I had made a mistake. In the end everything turned out quite the opposite of what I expected: Long loading times is often mentioned here. With my player the times are comparable with a CD-ROM drive in a computer and everyone accepts that. Previously I used the horrible Creative Labs dx6 and its loading times were at least three times as long. The MP3 sound quality is perfectly OK, at least with the one CD I tried out (128Mbits encoding). There was no starting in the middle of songs, no echo, etc. The MP3 navigation is adequate but not brilliant. It could use the MP3 tags to display the proper song titles and in the right order but do any other players do that? And who honestly cares about FF and REW in the middle of a song. I want to hear music and not play around with it. The loading time for MP3 is a little longer but when you get to hear 12 or so hours of music, 10 more seconds of waiting doesn't hurt. With the CD playback I did notice that it does miss the first second of the first song on the CD. However I think I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't read that here. Some people mentioned that the tray was loud which tends to make a cheap impression. The tray on mine was very quiet unlike the DVD-ROM drive in my creative labs player. That sounds like someone switched on a cake mixer. I even looked inside it since someone mentioned that the PCB was badly made. I was actually impressed by the quality, there was certainly nothing wrong there. The picture quality is OK but not as good in some scenes as my creative labs kit. Last but certainly not least, it completely botched up the layer change on 2 out of 3 DVDs so far. It hung for about half a minute and then suddenly started playing a completely different chapter! I went back to the same spot several times and found that it didn't always do this but there was still the typical layer change glitch.

Strengths:
Well made Looks nice

Weaknesses:
Layer change sucks

Similar Products Used:
Creative Labs DX6