Worked great - initially

Approx 12-16 months after purchase, started pixelating.
Virtually all movies now have problems.

About 16 months after purchase, noticed some problems with movies - always assumed it was the disks (since I didn't believe this "quality" machine could be messing up.) As of two weekends ago, 3 out of 4 DVD's rented had problems (one wouldn't even finish - had to exchange for a tape copy.) I finally searched online, and found numerous other owners with same issues. Just went out and purchased another DVD player (Toshiba SD-1600) for about 1/3 the price and the A310 has just become my most expensive paperweight in the house. Have always had great success with Panasonic in the past, but it's doubtful I'll purchase a Panasonic product again unless I can figure out a way to get some $ back for this lemon.

I do not know where all of these complaints are coming from. I have had this unit since the first day it was availiable (very late 97) and I love it. I have not had one problem with this DVD player. I have never experienced the pixelization or freeze ups that everyone else is talking about. It plays movies like The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan (DTS), and Gladiator perfectly. In fact better than my Toshiba sd2200. I generally watch about 10-12 movies a month without a hitch. Sorry all u guys are having problems, but mine is a keeper.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba sd2200

My first DVD player. Seemed to have excellent video and audio, certainly when compared to VHS.

The same things everyone else is noticing.

Like many other unfortunate owners, I have had to add words like "pixelation" and "lock-up" to my vocabulary when trying to watch a movie. I have had this player for about three years, and it has seen fairly light use (about 2 movies a month). However, starting about two months ago, I experienced these problems, and in the last week, while trying to watch "Nashville" and "Gladiator," my wife and I had to stop watching after about an hour, after frequent pixelation and audio drop-out, when the machine finally locked up. My wife insisted on going to Blockbuster to rent the tape of Gladiator so we could finish the movie! Needless to say, I will replace this with something other than a Panasonic!!

Similar Products Used:

None yet.

No problems after repair, paid by ME.

Should not have broke down the first time after only 1 year

I submitted my review over a year ago same crappy
response from Panasonic. Just bought a Digital Camera
Nikon and a Digital Camcorder JVC.

** HEY PANASONIC I DIDN'T EVEN LOOK AT ANY 0F YOUR
PRODUCTS THEY WILL *NEVER* BE AN OPTION FOR ME YOU
LOOSE THIS TIME ***

Readers please help I was contacted by a lawyer
back east who asked me for info regarding my problems
with Panasonic he stated he was filing a class action
lawsuit against them. I've not heard back from him.
Has anyone else heard of this lawsuit going through?
Thanks

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba and Highly recommended

worked for 18 months

died an ugly death; won't read discs -- period.

The Panasonic A310 was my first DVD player and I purchased it early on in the DVD "revolution" based, primarily, on my success with a Panasonic LD player (that's still working fine after 6 years.)

The facts: During 18 months of VERY HEAVY usage the machine performed quite well. It only refused to read one disc out of maybe 250 I fed it, that one being the Criterion Edition of Kurosawa's "High and Low". A few times it jumped chapters out of order when I was using the remote. Other than that, it was a work-horse. The picture quality on my 32" Sony XBR using the s-video input was good to great depending on the disc transfer quality. Ditto for audio.

The unit died after 18 months of servce the other evening. During play of a disc it simply stopped reading and displayed a "no disc" message on the front panel. It now refuses to index any disc whatsoever.

I got the machine at close to wholesale cost through a deal at my company so I'm basically taken the attitude that the machine cost me $25 per month to "rent". Based on the feedback I'm seeing on this site, and the likely repair cost, it's not worth fixing, unless it cost $100 or less to do so.

Several friends in my workplace have the A310 and have had some of the same major problems I've seen bemoaned in other posts on this site, so I would NEVER recommend the unit to a new buyer. I put up this post as an FYI to anyone who already has the unit. It would seem that if you have a working A310 you can expect about a two year life span before it becomes a boat anchor.

Good luck, fellow pixel fans!

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SONY 650

Have to change my evaluation from 4 stars to 1. After 8 months, I've run into the same problem everyone else met. Discs skip, pixelate or freeze after playing for awhile. It's really disappointing to get to the climatic scene and not be able to finish watching the movie. I wasn't certain about buying a Panasonic because I've had run-ins with their VCRs. In this case, you don't even get what you pay for. From this point forward, I could never recommend a Panasonic product.

Component Video Output.

DTS optical-out does not work; does not play CDR, does not play MP3 CDs, does not SVCD. Was expensive.

I bought this in '98 because it was the first player I saw that had component video out, and I enjoyed the A300. I have not had any problems with it, and it has survived some marathon 24hr DVD playback sessions when some friends decided to sleepover during several long wkends and go through my collection of 400 DVDs.

The only unhappy thing I felt was that, when I bought a DTS receiver recently, the optical output did not work. (the same DVD [eagles-hell freezes over] played DTS flawlessly from the cheeeeap APEX player.

For some reason, I never had any serious problems with it other than that. It was so long ago, and DVD players are so much cheaper now so my observations are moot. However, I never had the glitches or failures that people here saw. Don't really know why.

The MP3 CD, CDR, and SVCD playback on the APEX player was flawless. In contrast the (
The Menu system and 2x smooth FF with audio is incredibly useful to skip boring sections though.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic A300, Apex AD600A

Not too expensive for me to justify smashing with a hammer!

Made me feel like a clown
reliable enough for me to sell. Skips, freezes, pixelates, audio
drop-outs.

Shoot, guys, this piece of junk doesn't work!

This afternoon, without knowing this site, I decided not to fix my broken Panasonic A310 because it could be worthless a try anyway. Then I read these reviews, and found out I wasn't the only one. Same stuff: payed $399 at Sound City in Dec98, worked OK for year and a half then got pixelation, hook ups, lock-ups, now full stop. Dead. Caputz. Finito.

The shame is I returned several movies to Netflix as defective, really telling them to at least clean their disks, but it wasn't their fault at all. I WAS THE CLOWN BECAUSE OF PANASONIC!
Of course the service people were so unfriendly over the phone that it really influenced my decision to hammer this thing down. PANASONIC NEVER MORE! I'll go buy my Elite DV-05 right now.

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Glorious Pioneer 740 laser disc player

Cosmetics...Best looking of all DVD players...even today. Picture quality. Sound Quality.

Joystick on remote.

I bought this player in November of 1998. Played Hundreds of hours of DVD's on this player without any problems. I find the picture quality to be excellent. I don't think there is another player out there that can surpass it. The sound quality on DVD's and CD's is also excellent. I must be one of the lucky ones. I also like the way the unit looks. I find the present panasonic models and models from toshiba and others to have no style at all. When I buy another DVD player to replace this unit, I wish that I can take the electronics out of that one and put it into the Panasonic 310 unit. It looks that good.

When it did manage to play ok, it was an unremarkable $500 DVD player...

What can I say that hasn't been said? Piece of JUNK!!!!!!!

Like most other people here, I had good experiences with other Panasonic products so I thought I was getting the best dvd player out there (A310). Of course what I got was screwed by Panasonic. Send this thing in to be repaired, which cost over $100 (it was still under parts warranty at least) and it seemed to work ok for a while, then went back to exhibiting the same problems. But recently it really flaked out. I took it to a local repair shop ($250 for Panasonic to 'fix' it again? No thanks...) who said it was a laser problem and they couldn't do anything. I was contemplating leaving it there to rust when I came upon this review site looking for a new DVD player. Thank you all for going to the trouble to pave the way for getting some satifisfaction from Panasonic for this fiasco.... If I can get a new player from them as you all have done, maybe I'll consider panasonic again in the future.