This RCA DVD Player is the biggest piece of junk I have ever bought. I bought this over two years ago and the laser burned out last year. So I had it replaced with the warrenty. After about six months my DVD began to skip after it was on for more than an hour. It took me about two day's to watch one film, letting the thing cool down so it would not skip. I would not recommend an RCA DVD to anyone. I recently bought a Panasonic, and it works great. I want to give this player a 0, but my only options are 1 to 5, so it's a 1.

Having had DVD for quite some time, I was finally ready to add it in my bedroom since I have been renting so many discs from Netflix.com. I really did my homework and knew what I wanted. I then took 2 reference disks (Contact and Austin Powers) and headed out. I use Austin for color rendidtion and Contact for Anamorphic processing (this is highly imprtant in that a player with poor anamorphic processing can cause poor pictures on things like tweed coats and small lines- I found this out the hard way). My budget allowed for a max price of $299. I compared the following players: Sony 330, Panasonic 120, Philips 825,Samsung 739, Toshiba 2109 and the RCA 5220. I must say that I was blown away when the RCA was at least the equal af all the players except slightly behind the Sony on anamorphic processing (try the chapter in Contact where Jodie Foster goes to Hadden Industries to try to get money and check out her tweed jacket-I think it's chapter 8)on all the players except the Sony and RCA, her jacket seems alive with creepy crawling things. The worst was the Toshiba- go figure. Also, on the Austin Powers intro, the picture was great (as it was on all the players but the Samsung, which looked a little washed out). I couldn't check the sound, but I figured it would be good with the 24 bit audio DAC, so I bought it for $239 (fully $60 behind the Sony and Toshiba, etc and only $10 more than the Samsung). Well, I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and found out that in addition to the 5 free DVDs and 13 Blockbuster rentals from Best Buy, it came with a coupon for 5 free DVDs from Ken Cranes (you could choose from about 30 discs, so I got no dupes!) and 15 free rentals from Netflix.com!! Needless to say, I figure this is one killer deal, especially after using it for 10 days or so. It has great video and audio and I have seen no problems whatsoever. The only complaint would be that you do not get a coax digital connector, so your receiver better have toslink inputs or you'll have to listen to Pro-Logic. Based on the quality, cost and freebies, I have to give this my highest rating.

price, video quality, playback of "difficult" discs

user interface, refinement, remote

Great player for the money. Bought for $360CDN. While I have not A/B compared it with a huge number of players looking at every minute detail, I have been able to tell that wired up using the S-Video connection the video quality is great. No lip sync issues, no problems playing any disc so far - even when filthy and grimy (rentals). The only thing I have noticed is 0.25 second "glitches" when I assume the player is switching layers (between Ch 20-21 in
The Matrix for instance). I am pleased with the selection of features such as Audio Compression (a surprise, I didn't think this unit did that).

My main beefs with this player come in areas outside of regular video playback. I do not like the remote. This is a DVD player and the playback controls are positioned as if an afterthought as tiny square controls right at the bottom of the remote - who thought of this? I also find that the unit "drives" with a lack of sophistication, particularly when being used as an audio CD player.
For instance, if one wishes to scan backwards, it will actually play the music full level, 1x in reverse. If one
wishes to scan faster it will scan 2x, FULL VOLUME, in reverse. This is really
silly. Another problem I noted is that the front panel controls are virtually unresponsive in audio mode. If I wanted to insert an audio CD and skip to track 6 I have to wait about 3-4 seconds between each press of the "NEXT" button.
Fast scan forwards are similar, although in double scan it ends up playing 0.5 seconds of music skipping about 7 seconds in between. Not very good compared to regular CD players. There are a couple of other places where one notices that corners have been cut that
fail to come to mind at the moment. Yes, this unit does not typically display the current chapter on the front panel, but to be honest the default behaviour of other players to indicate elapsed time within a chapter instead of total elapsed has bugged me since I started using DVD players. Besides, I almost NEVER care what chapter I'm in and all I have to do is hit INFO to find out if I needed to know. I don't know what all the people out there that want to know what chapter they're in all the time use their DVD players for, but my principal use is rental (and occasional purchase) of movies and I wanted better playback quality, no rewinding, and the end to worrying about what condition the tape is in and whether some peanut butter someone got in there will destroy the heads on my VCR.

The units construction is typical
low-end. The case is metal, but the unit is smaller that the standard 17" wide and is quite light. Everything lines up though, and I didn't expect a rugged, heavy unit for this price.

All in all, despite my beefs, I am so far quite pleased with this unit because of the excellent price point and the fact that it does its principal job well - playing videos at 1x normal forward play. I purchased this unit with the intent to bide my time while DVD-Audio is refined and see how technology changes over the next 3 years or so. As an engineer and more-or-less perfectionist (I hope I haven't made too many typos :) I do not usually buy the "bottom of the line" at all and felt kind of strange walking into the store and asking for their cheapest player.

In this price range, I strongly recommend this player, however, and have no big beefs or second thoughts. One big bonus is that since I didn't spend $1000 or $2500 on this player I have lower expectations of it. If I find a deficiency - that's OK! I'll get a better one in a couple of years.

My rating is based on performance among its reasonable peers, not in the entire marketplace.

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Sony DVP-S7000

video,audio and ease of use

features

The video and audio of this product is the same as many of the highly priced ones. I was going to buy the sony 550d model or the toshiba 3109 model, because of all the hype i read on line. Yes they do have quite a few more features than this rca. The thing is that i went to quite a number of stores here in ny to visualy test the video output of each of these player and the audio also, they are the same. the features that the other possessed is not something that would be used often. Being a simple guy i only need the these two things audio and video.
I would recommend this player to any and everyone. Save your bucks for the near future in case there is quite a great leap in dvd technology.
The sound is crisp and the video razor sharp.

Bargain Price For Great Player

Needed To Buy Adapter

This model contains numerous features available on higher-priced models at a fraction of the cost. I have had no problems with this model playing any of my DVDs. It is a low-priced player that can fit in any budget.

Very affordable, no problem playing any DVD, DTS, DD, Optical and Coax outputs!

No other "extras"

I must say that I'm very glad I picked up this DVD player. I really wanted to get into the DVD game and this player made it all possible! What really impressed me was this set does not have any problems that the higher end DVD players exhibit! No lip-sync problems, played Matrix and all it's features flawlessly and I've yet to encounter any other problem.

There are several DVD players that do not have optical outputs! But, for the price of this player, it's amazing that this has optical and coax.

This is one solid player and I highly recommend it.

Price,Compatibility,Mail-In Offers, Solid Unit

A little noisy

This little unit just cant be beat for the buck!!
I paid $177.00 and with all of the Incentives RCA is offering "5 free DVD's ($100.00 value) & 13 free Blockbuster rentals ($50.00 Value)" I ended up paying about $27.00 for the player!
The Picture & Sound are both Great! The motor is a little noisy at times but really not enough to drive you nuts. I would highly recommend this player to anyone that dosen't want to shell out BIG $$$$ for a DVD player.

DTS, Price, Free discs and rentals, multi remote, flawless playback.

No chapter display, slow response from front panel, no multi disc memory, no component video

Great unit for the price 184.00, flawless performance. Overall great unit

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tosh 3109

Great Value! Excellent Picture! Go for it!

Way too large!

Best picture quality of the low end players that I've tried. Game me ZERO problems. Decided to sell it though because it's HUGE. Wouldn't fit well with my other components.

I'm just weird...it's a great player!

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Sony, Samsung, GE, Panasonic

Price, Features, Solid Unit, RCA Customer Service

No Chapter On Display, Remote

It does not matter what brand you buy, you still have some trouble with it. I didn't want to pay alot for something thats going to give me a headache. So I purchased the RCA RC5220P for $225.00. When I brought it home, it was ok for about a mouth then it hit disaster!!! All kinds of problems. Called RCA costomer service for an exchange. They send me another unit, more problems. Gave it one more try. Had no trouble at all. Very happy with my DVD player. Great picture & sounds fantastic. Would not go back to my HiFi VCR ever again. I guess you have to lucky when your purchase these palyers. So if plan to buy one! Good luck. And if your have any trouble, TAKE IT BACK!!!!!! Get another one.

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My first DVD player