DD & DTS bult-in decoders, Image quality, Remote controler (I got thin fingers) and many more...

Not really audiophile

A very great DVD player, with a vrey good overall quality.
It displays a flawless image (far better as Sony's), sharp and precise pictures, and offers fine display settings (Projector, tv or lcd switch).

For its price, clearly the best, with a nice look, and very nice features (dinamic compression, decoders, speakers set-up ...). I have to say that at it's price, I haven't found any better picture quality, with or without built-in decoders.

Just a little regret: the sound is not as good as Sony's (especially 7700's), but since I use an Onkyo reciever (TX-DS 575, excellent !), it's not a problem anymore...


(used with Sony tv, Onkyo 575 receiver and Magnat speakers-set)

Similar Products Used:

Tested Sony 725 and 7700 and Pioneer 626D

The sense of quality. Nice design and finish. Remote with joystick.

A little slow start.

A absolute safe buy.

GUI menu , Design (player and remote), Very good picture. Excellent player!

Average as CD-player.
A bit expensive. ... but really nothing special.

A very capable player with much "goodies", with sharp picture and good sound.

Some expensive, but worth it.
Average as CD-player only, but good enough for most people.

Pretty player with a pretty, easy remote too.

Not codefree from factory. )-:

Fast, quiet and with DD and DTS decoders onboard you can't go wrong.

"Welcome to DVD World" need I say more.

Great player if your looking for a player look at this one.

Check out my home page;
http://www.mypages.co.nz/~timbo/

Excellent picture and sound, nice minimalist looks and not silver!

Remote buttons/design, CD drawer a litle fierce and no scarts (norm in this part of the world).

Review is for A-160
My TV has never looked or sounded so good! Bought this (after loads of research) on price at the end of the day - nearest rival for my dollars was US$150 more (it was heavily discontinued & are clearing). Wonderful picture quality - no noticeable pixilation, no wobbly image edges, deep colours solid etc. Unit sounds superb, in particular the bass end with the TV's sub woofer switched in. CD player too revivals the quality of my faithful 7 year old Tosiba player. Minor negatives, nastish remote (everything too small), welcome to...etc and lack of connection options.
A really good all round performer, though not that well reviewed in press (don't take any notice). So, if you are after a no frills device, it is a steal at this price so be quick!

Excellent Picture, Spot-on sound quality. DTS really enhances the listening pleasure (Just try Saving Private Ryan DTS and you'll see)

As above - SCART control on power-up so when you're watching a TV programme and want to listen to a CD it controls your TV.

Overall probably the best performing DVD on the market.

Similar Products Used:

Pana A160, Pioneer 525.

Built in DD, DTS decoder, Jog dial, picture quality, component video out, looks cool, build quality.

Lack of CDR, CDRW support!!, remote controll, firmware not upgradeable

After using a PC based DVD solution for over a year I decided that the time is right to purchase a stand alone player.
After looking around in Hi-Fi stores the Panasonic A-360 grabbed my attention, it has a metalic finnish and has plenty of features to keep you busy, build quality is good (made in Japan) except for the 3mm gap between the front bezel and the top cover. There is a jog dial on the main unit which makes navigation of DVD movies and CDs easy. This feature is sadly missing from the remote which is not so impressive but I'll get to that later. Other buttons on the player are: power on, eject, play, stop, pause, chapter skip and useless spatialiser effects buttons.
Conectivity:
Since the player features a decoder there is a 5.1 output via RCA jacks on the back of the unit with an additional separete 2 channel output for stereo only. Headphone socket is at the front of the unit. One coaxial and one optical conector takes care of digital audio if you choose to link the unit to a reciver with built in AC3/DTS decoder. Video out consists of 2* composite 1* SVideo and also component output which is a nice suprise.
Moving onto the multi function remote: Basic array of buttons with a "smallish" navigation button in the middle. The buttons are quite well placed but the navigation button is a bit hard to use as it does not a have a positive feel. I found it frustrating to use in the DVD menus but I'm a bit harsh here, I've seen plenty of worse remotes. There is a cover plate hiding numeric keys and some other rarely used features. The remote is also missing the jog dial which would have made more sense placed on the remote then on the main unit.
Uppon turning on the unit for the first time I was greeted by a "Wellcome to the DVD World" message which I thought would only appear once (demo mode), however every time the unit is powered down (power saving) and powered up again the message is diplayed, gets quite anoying.
There are a number of usefull features for people stuck with older amplifiers. These include speaker setup with test tone function and also a dynamic sound compression. The latter is very useful for listening to movies late at night at low volume levels. Other less usefull features are the "Spatialiser" settings if you only have 2 speakers hooked up to your stereo.
Picture quality is very good, on par if not better than the Hollywood+ decoder I use in the PC. There are no noticable artifacts on screen even on close inspection. I have tried several titles in the unit including "The Rock" which is known to be a top quality transfer and "The Matrix" which has compatibility issues with some players. They all performed flawlessly. The unit was also very quite in operation which is a good thing during low volume sequences.
I haven't had a chance to test the on-board decoders yet as I'm using a SONY STR DB930 amplifier which has builty in DD/DTS decoders so I can not really comment on these.
Another disapointment was the lack of CDR/CDRW playback, so your own VCD creations or Audio CDs will not play in the unit at all. This is a major weekness in the A360 and had I known beforehand, I would not have purchased the unit. I expected this feature for A$950 and Panasonics top of the line DVD player (in Australia).

I tried really hard to give this unit 5 stars but because of the lack of CDR support and other minor annoyances it ended up 4 stars only.
It is really best suited for people that own older amplifiers without built in decoders but with a 5.1 input(not much use if you already own a late model receiver). If you already own a good receiver with built in AC3/DTS decoder then I would advise you to look at other DVD players.

Very sharp picture, troublefree handling, flawless operation

It's rather basic but an ideal first dvd-player for the first time buyers

Panasonic A-160

Almost two weeks ago, I have bought a Panasonic A-160 and until now I am very enthusiastic about it. This truly is a great DVD-player for the first time buyer. Admittedly, it doesn't have much of the options and possibilities of the more expensive players out there but honestly, how often do you really use all those gimmicks?
For the money this is an excellent player with a sharp and well-detailed picture, simple and flawless operation and a great sound. It's my first DVD-player so I don't know how this unit fares when compared with models from other brands but I do know that whoever buys this Panasonic will never have to shame him- or herself towards others.
I have looked for sync-problems or a digitized pictures with
DVD's which are widely to put high demands on the player in question (The Matrix!) but I was not able to spot those problems even once.
So to sum all things up: this may not be the most equiped DVD-player in the world but if you are looking for a simple to operate DVD-player which does all the basic and most fundamental things right (captivating sound and a sharp picture), then I can heartily recommend this unit to all of you.

Rainer

High quality sound(Home theater), excellent picture, great dts dekoder! supports almost every norm i can think of!

cannot read cd-r, average cd-audio

I can recommend this player to every movie-enthusiast out there, it can easily compete with the best players on the market!

Way to go Panasonic!

Similar Products Used:

Denon dvd3000 + Sony7700

Many quality features.

"Welcome to DVD world". Doesn't play CD-R! No bit rates display.

I'm VERY happy with this player. It has all of the features I want at a very competitive price. My player has been modified so that it's multi-region and it has played every disc that I've put in it, even the so called "problem discs".

The picture it delivers is very good, at least as good as anything else I've seen. The internal decoding works beautifully, I can detect no differences between my receiver and the player when listening to Dolby Digital disc. I've not been able to compare the DTS decoding but it sounds great to me! It also decodes MPEG!

It was easy to setup with very clear menus although, the speaker delay settings could be better. They work fine but aren't as clear as the ones on my receiver.

The remote is well thought out and fits into my hand in a natural way. It's certainly better than the Sony and Yamaha remotes that I've used in the past.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 7700, Yamaha (can't remember model) and Pioneer 626