Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
I wouldn't buy an Onkyo product again. The DV-CP500 has been in the shop more than on line. It completely burnt up after 2.5 years of use.

Price Paid:  $300.00 from Circuit City or Best

Summary:
I bought this unit because I was pleased with my Onkyo receiver and CD changer that have worked great since 1996 with no problems whatsoever; however, this DVD player is a piece of junk. The unit worked fine for the first few months, but then the performance degraded. It started freezing in the middle of movies, then it just wouldn't play DVDs at all. The error message states "This disc is incompatible with this player. Please insert a compatible disc." As it turns out, every DVD is "incompatible with this player." Funny how these exact same DVDs work flawlessly on my Dell laptop. Onkyo should sell the DVCP500 as a "boat anchor" rather than a DVD player. And to add insult to injury, Onkyo customer service just plain sucks.

Strengths:
none

Weaknesses:
doesn't play DVDs

Price Paid:  $200.00 from Soundcity

Summary:
After 3 months audio would sometimes disappear. A week after the warrenty ran out it would not turn on at all! Onkyo said they would pay for parts not labor.

Strengths:
Great picture and sound when it worked.

Weaknesses:
Did not last.

Similar Products Used:
Panasonic ,Pioneer, JVC (another piece of crap)

Price Paid:  $80.00 from Cicuit City

Summary:
I purchased this unit as an "open box" item". It had it's original remote and manual so I jumped on it basing my decision on price and Onkyo's reputation for quality and dependabilty. So far, I've not had one problem with this unit except for once, the first day I had it, it locked up on a CD. I had to power it off and on and it came back to life. It turned out though that it was a very dirty disc and cleaning it solved the problem. Everything works fine, otherwise. MP3's, CD's, DVD Video, and DVD Audio discs (in Dolby Digital or DTS only). I am reassured that I do have a one year full warranty on the unit in case something goes wrong. The previous reviews are not very comforting though and I hope it's not a defective unit. As I said so far, it has worked like a champ and the audio and video quality it just fine.

Strengths:
CD play mode, great A/V performance, very quick to move through tracks, and not as slow as some at changing discs

Weaknesses:
Poor reviews, dependablilty issue, no zoom feature, cannot scan foward or reverse through MP3 tracks

Similar Products Used:
Philips(crap), Sony(good), Pioneer(good), RCA (crap).

Price Paid:  $299.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
Good features, didn't mind the remote, poor video performance, annoying behavior. Pretty much, that sums it up. I used this DVD player for quite some time before getting fed up with the slightly blurry video in progressive mode. Interlaced was fine, but grainy. When I went progressive, everything got a little fuzzy and shifted to the red end of the spectrum. After replacing the cables with Monster THX component cables, I decided I needed to figure out if it was the TV (RCA 53" HD) or the player. I brought down my cheaper ($250) Panasonic 5-disc unit from the bonus room and had a bake off. My wife is not as critical as I am, and she saw a huge difference. The Panasonic is clear, bright, and more color accurate (although it did shift a little red as well, but not as much). The Onkyo went back upstairs with the old equipment. It's fine for driving a 25" TV and a 10yr old audio system, but don't expect this pricy player to drive your good gear to it's potential. Other than the performance sucking, it's got decent features. I don't like the auto-play on startup (that is REALLY annoying to me). The remote is OK, but I used it to program a universal, so I didn't really use it much. The unit is a little loud changing disks. Has everything in terms of outputs. To play MP3s, the disks have to have a very specific directory and file naming structure, so I never used that feature.

Strengths:
Good audio, good features.

Weaknesses:
Poor progressive video performance (avoid it for this reason alone).

Similar Products Used:
Panasonic 5-disk progressive, Toshiba single, Fisher single.