Price Paid:  $250.00

Summary:
I bought this unit cheap!! I saw it in the shop and I noticed that it had a DD AND a DTS decoder inside. This was interesting because I did not have an AV Receiver at that time... so I used 2 stereo amps connected to the DVD directly. When the shopkeeper told me it was this cheap I couldn't believe it. (I got it this cheap because it had been used on a demo for 2 weeks)
I went home and read some reviews and I decided it was a real bargain!!
I've had it modified for all regions, so it's an better deal (cost me about $50).

This player reads EVERYTHING... CD's CDRW's, I even put it to the test. I recorded a vinyl on PC in 48Khz 16 bit(a non common format) and I burnt it on a cheap CDRW... and it played flawlessly.
I guess I could go further and try this with 48Khz 32bit floating point, but...

My current system:
Pioneer DV626D
B&W CDM7SE (front)
B&W LM1 (Rear)
Qudos Silver 25th Anniversay Speaker Cable
B&W ASW3000 (Sub)
Center & Surround Back are on their way!
Denon AV Receiver... can't remember the number :-(
Thomson 16/9 TV

Strengths:
Picture quality
Easy to use (remote also)
5.1 Decoder for DD & DTS
!!! DTS RULEZ !!!

Weaknesses:
The door is noisy...
I would like a dot matrix display... boohoo

Summary:
ni

Strengths:
everything!!

Summary:
Everything's been said - great player.

Just a comment on the problem with no video - bit of a revelation to me others had the same problem. Anyway, when I first tried to use the player, only sound came through. Seeing as the warranty was void anyway (I had it converted to multi-region), and being (probably falsely) confident of my technical skills, I opened up the player to find a small circuit board was disconnected from the main board. Assuming this was the video controller, I plugged it back in and voila, everything was hunky dory.

I always assumed it got disconnect via the trip it made in a suitcase from Hong Kong (where it was purchased), and I can only assume that the problems people here had were due to both harsh shipping and handling and insecure attachments.

Price Paid:  $235.00 from 6th Avenue Electronics

Summary:
I bought this unit in December of 2000 to replace my JVC 701BK. You can read all the negative reviews about the JVC from this site. Needless to say I would never purchase a JVC product again. I own a Pioneer CD player that is about 12 years old and it has worked without fail. I was happy to find this model brand new in the box. I have been very happy with this DVD player. It has not skipped once and the audio and video quality are superb. It plays everything and is not sensitive to dirty DVDs/CDs. I use this DVD almost every day so I can vouch for it's durabilty. Pioneer will probably be the only brand of DVD or CD player I own. As a matter of fact I just purchased a Pioneer HDTV.

Strengths:
Reliability, Picture Quality, Audio Quality, Features, Outputs

Weaknesses:
Slightly noisy at times

Similar Products Used:
JVC 701BK

Price Paid:  $500.00 from dvd shippers

Summary:
If you can find the unit on sale, it's a great buy, unless you are going HDTV and 16:9, in which case you'll probably want a progressive output player (until HDDVD comes along).

Strengths:
This unit has excellent resolution quality, plays everything (even CD-r's and CD-rw's that have not been finalized yet!!). YOu can't go wrong.

Weaknesses:
Not progressove output - standard NTSC component.