Great picture. I'm using the S-Video output to a '93 Sony Trinitron, but sound is still good, better than VCR.

Remote: too many tiny buttons and no backlighting.

I love this player. It's played anything I've thrown at it, even scratched-up rentals.
The picture is great, and the sound is fine.
As others have noted, sometimes you can hear the disk spinning. I haven't noticed it enough to bother putting the player behind the glass in my wall unit, so it's not a big deal for me.
The remote can be a pain if you like to watch with the lights down, but overall, for this price, you can't beat the DV-333.
I think Pioneer has better quality control than Sony these days.

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None

FF & Rew are choppy
Remote has bad range, needs to be pointed directly at the machine

So far, so good.
I've been reading lots of the reviews on this site and the machine seems to breakdown after the one month mark. It's a good thing I have a three year warrentee. As for the picture getting bright and dark all the time, I haven't experience this. Do the people who experienced this have their machine hooked up to a VCR or something? It could be the copy protection on the DVD kicking in.

Not much, may be........picture(?)

sound, tray noise, remote control

This player only good for vcds, it plays almost anything you throw in, other than that I don't think it is a great dvd player, especially sound, Samsung is much better and louder than this, never use pioneer to play music, it sounds terrible.

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Samsung 711

Wish it were smaller.

I bought my son a cheap Asian DVD (Samsung 811) for $170 + tax last Christmas.

It had some problems.
(1) Occational pausing several times during the movie.
(2) Picture would change colors drastically!!! (All red and green) The audio seemed alright, but by this time I didn't trust it.

When we returned it (to Best Buy) the sales dude said lots of different models of the "Cheap Asian" stuff in general was coming back -- not just the brand we got.

I wound up going for a semi-domestic model (made in Japan, but started in America)
Pioneer model DVD-333

Has 24 bit D/A and DTS decoder, THX Dolby, you know, the standard stuff. We're really happy with it. Simple to use, plays CDs or DVDs (duh!)

I don't know if I would call this an Audiofile level DVD,
but then again with this price range you shouldn't expect it. I Never hooked it up to my 'Serious' system to check it out for that.

After all it, was for my son's bedroom.

List price is $299. I got mine (at Best Buy) for $179 + tax. I think the used market value would be from $150 to $175?

I went with the Pioneer because they were the Big name in
Laser Disks (the big ones 5 years ago).

The story from a laser/DVD shop owner is: Laser Disks came out about 15 years ago, then died out. Pioneer was the ONLY company to continue development of the product until DVDs came out. So they have the technical edge on the market.(Sony re-started their line, but were at least two generations removed.)

Normally I don't think too much of Pioneer, but in the case of digital video -- they're the ones to go with.

I'm ranking this high for value ($200 is cheap in my book)
and upper-mid for overall because I really don't know what "the good stuff" ($1000 DVDs) is.

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Samsung 811

Excellent sound; no skipping; plays CD-Rs; coax and optical digital connects; great price

Had to return unit due to faulty output

I returned this unit due to a problem it had, apparently with the digital out. Whenever the unit had to do a search, either to go from theatrical trailers to the main menu, or whatever, there was a loud "thump-snap" sound. I saw that at least one other reviewer had the same problem. This happened only on the digital (optical) connection. So, I had to return it. Too bad, since the unit did have outstanding sound, features, and price.

I replaced it with a Philips DVD711, chosen because it has essentially the same features for the same price, and I could purchase it closer to my house at Circuit City rather than BestBuy. I also wanted to buy the extended protection that C.City offers, in light of all the horror stories I've heard. So far, the Philips is great and doesn't have the problem mentioned above, which proves that the problem was with the Pioneer and not my receiver. However, I have had a few skips already on the Philips, whereas the Pioneer never skipped once.

My value rating below is based on a working unit (not the one I got), but my overall rating will have to be low because of the defect.

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Philips DVD711

sound, control options, dts, read cd and cdr

not at this time

This is my followup review on this dvd player. As on my previous review, this player had problem player new movies because it went BRIGHT and DIM through out the entire movie. After recieving so many helpful emails from the wonderful reviewers here, they were right that i did hook up my dvd player to the VCR. Now i have the dvd player connects to RF Modulater, the BRIGHT and DIM problem is gone. Though the bright and dim promblem is gone, at the begining of each movie it still have some minor clearity problems which last about 10 minutes. Such as horizontal lines running up and down. Other than that I am pretty satisfied with the picture quality now.

Thanks Guys

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The is my followup review

great sound & picture

tray noise

I received this player for Christmas and it works great. No picture problems at all. My only problem is the tray noise seems to be getting worse, or it may be tha I am just noticing it now. As far as skipping, only one movie has had a problem in one spot (Pitch Black - start of chapter 10), and many of the movies I watch are rentals.
Overall a godd value as long as you can turn up the sound to drown out the sound of the DVD spinning.

nothing

everything

WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a followup of my review of a few months ago. Now that the "honeymoon" period is over with this player I will tell you and listen well my friend, DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER! This player simply will not play a DVD properly unless it is completely new and just out of the box. Rentals you ask? Forget it. Froze up 17 times on two different copies of Shaft. Reading these reviews it seems you can get a good one ( mine lasted a month ) or a bad one. Mine is on it's way to the shop. It will soon be relegated to CD duty and I will purchase a real DVD player. DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER! I rate this lemon piece of junk 1 star only because there is no option to rate it less. DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER.

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none this is my first DVD player

sound, control options, dts, read cd as well

picture quality

i bought this dvd coz it has dts and also be able to read cd for that price it is unbeatable. I was so excited about this dvd play, I tested this dvd player with my 3 or 3.5 years old dvd rom. Surpising like its run great. Sound was very sharp and the picture quality was awesome. However, when i rented a the new movies such as the X-men and The Hollow Man, the picture quality went bad;It went really bright and then very dim through out the entire movie. I really don't know if it has anything to do with the dvd player or the DVD rom itself.
also i still could not figure it out why the digital opt is not working....
Over it is a big disappoitment....

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none

sound, control options, dts, read cd as well

picture quality

i bought this dvd coz it has dts and also be able to read cd for that price it is unbeatable. I was so excited about this dvd play, I tested this dvd player with my 3 or 3.5 years old dvd rom. Surpising like its run great. Sound was very sharp and the picture quality was awesome. However, when i rented a the new movies such as the X-men and The Hollow Man, the picture quality went bad;It went really bright and then very dim through out the entire movie. I really don't know if it has anything to do with the dvd player or the DVD rom itself.
also i still could figure it out why the digital opt is not working....
Over it is a big disappoitment....

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none