Good Progressive output when it works Feature loaded Allows for firmware updates

Complex menu system Poor Quality Control and build quality Feels like a toy (not enough weight to dampen vibrations could be a problem) No manual eject

What a pile of crap. I had the Panasonic for less than 2 weeks before it went into oblivion for ever. The unit is incredibly light for the price, usually audio components at $500+ have at least some heft to them. The Panasonic is lighter than the replacement Toshiba that cost 1/3 as much. The unit was most likely bad from the factory, it was really quirky at the beginning (can''t remember exactly as it was 4 months ago). After about a week and a half, the unit pretty much completely froze. The power came on, the LCD was on, but none of the buttons did anything. Pressing a button would usually change the text on the display, but not perform any action. I contacted support, nothing, so I ended up sending the unit back. One positive (although for me negative) is that the housing for the DVD is very secure, I took apart the unit and could not get the DVD out without some major surgery. I ended up leaving the DVD in (no manual eject hole, you''d figure for the price it wouldn''t be asking too much) and sending the unit back. No problems with my Toshiba progressive player.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba SD-3750

Sound quality is amazing! Progressive video is amazing! Looks gorgeous! Remote is great! No chroma problem! Non-anamorphic zoom mode! CD remasting!

Blue progressive LED apparently cannot be dimmed and is a little bit bright.

This player has replaced my Toshiba SD6200 as my progressive DVD player. There was no problems with my SD6200 -- it worked very well the year I had it. It was just time to upgrade.

And boy what an upgrade this is! WOW!

Audio quality is totally five star! This is a real winner and those of you who use this to play your CDs with will find that this thing slaughters transports costing thousands more. The new "remastering" circuit is amazing! The DVD-Audio performance is spectacular as well! The audio quality of this player has not ceased to amaze me yet.

Video quality is four and a half stars. I take half a point off due to the fact that there is, indeed, a slight shift of the image to the left. This can be remedied by following some simple instructions found in some of the enthusiast forums around the net. Other than this minor issue, video quality is great!

Features:

This thing packs 'em in. The non-anamorphic scaling issue was a hot button that everybody seemed to ignore. Panasonic is first up with this feature and they've launched a real winner! Basically what is does is this: If you have a 16:9 television, it will vertically scale your non-anamorphic DVDs to fit your entire 16:9 screen in the correct original aspect ratio. Yes, you have aspect control IN the DVD player now done digitally. And it looks MARVELOUS! Much better than the shoddy aspect controls your HDTV might have.

MP3 playback. Yep, it has it. It's totally undocumented. In fact, it's not mentioned in ANY Panasonic literature or in the manual whatsoever. As far as Panasonic is concerned, it doesn't exist. But the RP91 has played back my MP3s very well.

Video only mode. You can disable video circuitry to enhance audio quality when using the player's internal DACs. Nice touch!

Video controls. You can customize video settings for up to 200 different DVDs. Yep... you can take those colorized classics you have and put 'em in black & white again -- and the player will remember this setting for the next time you play the movie.

Pretty face. The player looks very smart and very high end. A welcome change to the typical plastic faces we see in players this same price. Yes, it's real brushed aluminum on the front! And it's in a very tasteful champagne color -- not gaudy at all.

In all, this is the current perfect DVD player to own. It looks great, performance to match, and does everything. You would not be disappointed with this player!

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba SD6200

Inexpensive, Excelent Audio Quality, Beautiful

None

I have just got this excelent DVD Audio/Video player. I can not belive how Panasonic put so many features in Player that cost so little ($440). It has everything (except SACD) DVD Audio/Video, CDR , CDRW, VCD, DVD-RAM (new recordable format) Mp3 (Yes , it plays Mp3 encoded CDR's , but do not display song name and there are no fancy mp3 file functions, like playlist etc...). It also has Bass Management for DVD Audio (Well , it reads in the manual) (A feature first generations DVD Audio Players lack). You can select Speaker sizes and also Sub Yes/no (I do not know if you select no sub, it redirect bass info to the mais speakers) delay times and levels.
First impressions (one week use):
1. CD Quality - Excelent, probably better than my MSB link II DAC.
2. MP3 - Very good , but only for compilations or party mix.
3. DVD Video - Very good Pregressive sacan images, but note that it lacks 3:2 pull down.
4. DVD/Audio - I have few titles , ELP, Deep purple, Doors and Beethoven 1&2 Synphonies. I tried the Beethoven disc and I do not have Sub, so I do not know if it re-direct the bass information to my main speakers. It would be a nice feature. i can no evaluate the sound based on these few titles.

My System:
Denon AVR 2800 Receiver (as a pre)
Acurus A250 Amp
Paradigm Studio 100 V1 Speaker
Paradigm Studio Center V2
tanoy mercury 1 surround
MB link II Dac
AQ and Monster Cables

Similar Products Used:

None

price; progressive scan performance; DVD-Audio; remastering simulation of CDs

unit is on the light side, physically; no SACD capability

At least on a display that is small to moderate in size, this progressive-scan player represents an enormous leap over regular DVD players on an eiter an analog tv or a digital tv with is own iine doubler. Though it's too early to tell what a superior DVD-A player should sound like, this one sounds pretty good to me. At this price point, you get a player without much physical weight (place it on something stable) and without the ability to play SACDs, but you do get DVD-A, decent CD sound from the analog and digital outputs, as well as some useful audio/video features to keep you happy until it's time to spring for something else.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DVL-909 et al.

Incredible picture quality on Progressive output, no chroma bug, plays, DVDRAM, DVDAudio, CD-R/W, MP3 files all in one player. Has individual video memory settings for up to 200 DVD's, great remote, great build quality, good looks, good value!

Documentation, my first unit had dirt under the lcd lense and had to be replaced. Confusing audio documentation. I wish there were a DVD changer version of this player. The unit is a little slow to initialize software material at startup.

I did a lot of research before I bought this unit. Quite frankly I don't think anything compares for the price.
The video quality of this unit is first rate and the audio is just as good or better.

I just bought my first DVD-A disc - set it up with analog outputs to get the 96khz sampling rate through my Denon 3300 amp and I was amazed. It was like listening to 3D music.

This unit plays standard CD's and upconverts them to 88KHZ sampling frequencies as well. It also plays MP3 files without a hitch. It's great to put about 200 songs on a single CD for a party and never have to worry about changing cd's!

I love the flexibility this player offers. If you don't like the color/contrast/brightness/tint/etc. of a particular DVD - you can change it in the unit - the unit then remembers these settings the next time you play the DVD - very smart!

The unit looks good - has very good build quality for a player in this price range, and has a very easy to use remote control.

Progressive DVD output is nothing short of spectacular. I'm using it with a Mits 55857 RPTV and am blown away everytime I see a well produced DVD.

As a bonus it even does it's own conversion of Dolby Digital and DTS signal sources.

As you can tell I love this unit - I could go on and on about it but it would be redundant.

I'm very fussy about my equipment and I don't have any comoplaints about this unit. I have not seen any of the picture shift issues or pink tint issues as were stated by other reviewers.

The documentation is pretty bad - but there are a lot of HomeTheater forums out there that will give you the information that you need.

I highly recommend this player.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic A120 and C220 interlaced players

Audio Quality, Immaculate picture quality. Plays MP3s great, w/ fast loading and searching to high number tracks.

Brought out the defects in my TV. Made it a priority to get a new HDTV ASAP.

The real thing that stands out for me is the fact that the picture on this player is so outstanding, even using composite video (bettercable.com), It uncovered a defect in my monitor. Its an old pig of a 32" Mangetbox. I have a set of dark bands down the left side of the screen. Almost unbearable while watching this player. The sound is also just amazing to me. With the optical output just strung up to a multi-media surround by Midiland. It is just peachy. The player allowed me to set the speakers to small as the small decoder with the multi-media system would not. The building has begun with a cornerstone without reproach.

Similar Products Used:

none

picture quality, features, user controls, 12bit 54mhz video processing, 2:3pulldown,reads cdr/cdrw/mp3/dvd ram video memory setting per dvd disk

excess noise figures are high at 24bit resolution

Looks/build/feature: From the front, looks like an expensive piece with aluminum front plate, solid transport buttons, and artsy display. It has goldplated connectors, a video off mode, front prog scan button. Open the lid and the solid engineering value falls flat. Build on a smallish chassis, the circuitry is all jammed together on one PCB. No use of copper shielding. Full featured with flexible selection of prog scan, monitor types, aspect ratio,and video output. Has huge video adjustments that can be saved per dvd disk up to 200. Has a remaster button that suppose to upconvert all 44.1/48khz sampling rates to 88khz. Has three mode video noise reduction. Does not have strobe or zoom. Could use more audio adjustment flexibility. Nice remote.

Video: Top notch interlaced. Only minute geometric movements that was barely, and I mean barely noticable. Great clarity, detail, color saturation. Component Video look extraordinary sharp and detailed. Unfortunately the progressive scan ouput was not working, only got a red tinted image.

Audio: When compared to my reference Theta CD transport, I noticed a lighter bass authority. It also lacked the nth degree of transparency, but in all other areas it was just as good. This would serve very fine as a CD player that would satisfy all but the absolute audiophile nit-picker. In DVD Audio, Sound and Vision noted that the 24 bit excess noise was a little high. This would translate ultimate resolution at around 18bits, 1/2to 1 bit lower than the state of the art players. I suspect that the crammed chassis resulted in the excess noise. I would have liked to see a full sized chassis.

Conclusion: Being heavily discounted and with notable competitors coming out offering similar performance for less dollars (jvc xvd 75, panasonic rp61) this may be an opportune time to buy this unit. Market prices have fallen to the $400 range. Rock solid video performance, unfailable prog scan image (when it worked), great looks, great user controlled flexibility, 12 bit video processing, and the Panasonic reputation make this unit a must buy. No doubt you get a lost of features for the money. If only they could fix the excess noise....the very reason I want to buy a DVD-Audio player is to play high bit resolution music. It loses a star for this reason. It also loses a star since rival players can be bought for less.

Similar Products Used:

jvc xvd 723

Superb audio and progressive scan video.

Manual.

Superb audio and video with flexible outputs, remote and features. The user's manual is not very well written and build quality is good for the cost of the player. The unit works well with a Mitsubishi WT 46907 widescreen progressive scan HD monitor. There are no visible glitches or interface problems. This is a good value for the dollar. Most of the competion costs much more for similar features and performance.

Similar Products Used:

Various Pioneer, Magnavox, and Onkyo players.

Exceptional performance with Pani TV's

May have lower performance with other manufacturers TV's

Just a note to add. Having been around countless message boards and other websites it seems, IMHO anyway, that the RP-91 is exceptional when used with other Panasonic TV sets (www.hometheaterspot.com is a good example of this situation). Obviously it was designed, built and tested using Pani equipment, hence the reason it sings with Pani TVs. When used with others (such as Mitsu and Tosh's) it doesn't seem to give as good a result as people were expecting. I own a 56" 16:9 Pani HDTV, as far as I'm concerned, my results are astounding. If your TV is made by someone other than Pani, you should try out the player before buying it. Check out the DVD player shootout for a more technical review and performance findings on this player and many others.

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_8_3/dvd-benchmark-progressive-shootout-2-8-2001.html

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer Elite DV-05, Toshiba SD-3109

DVD-audio,MP3 decode,Progressive Scan

none

I am kind of lying here. Haven't yet bought this player but after 2 weeks of internet browsing I have narrowed it down to this one. One small questions for others on the list.

I read reviews about the player being able to decode MP3s, but surprisngly panasonic does not advertise that on their web site while they do for other players like the CV51 for example.


http://www.prodcat.panasonic.com/shop/templates/noimage_template.asp?ModelId=10407&show_all=true&product_exists=True&active=1


What gives ?