Great image and audio quality, DTS out

loud transport, no dual pickup for CDs

I recently had all my A/V equipment stolen, which included a Sony DVP-S300 which I liked very much. I replaced it with an S330, which in my opinion is slightly inferior. The S300 had dual pickups for playing CDs, but didnt have DTS out (although I currently dont own any DTS material). However, you can easily hear the disc spinning with the S330, whereas the S300 was whisper quiet. It is slightly distracting when you first start it up, but is only audible during very quiet scenes during a movie.

The audio and video quality are superb. I tried doing an S-Video connection to the TV, but since all of my video sources are switched in the receiver and not all have S-Video, I decided to go with the RCA. I know this supposedly degrades quality, but to tell the truth I find it indistinguishable. My 32" TV has a digital comb filter and the image quality is better than my old S300 on a 32" TV without a digital comb filter. Im using a TOSLink cable for audio, which is also crystal clear.

I would give this player a 5 for features, but the audible disc transport drops it down to a 4.

BTW: I have watched upwards of 20 movies or so, but havent yet encountered any lipsynch problems...

Similar Products Used:

DVP-S300

Picture quality, ease of setup, good remote

lip sync, terrible service by Sony Canada

This is a decent entry level DVD player. It has fine picture quality, good ergonomics and is easy to set up and use. However, the major drawback, with older models at least, is the lip sync problem. If you have firmware version 1.95 I suspect that sooner or later you will see the problem. It didn't do it all the time on my machine and if you stop and restart or pause it corrects itself.

The problem is covered by the warranty of course. However, if you live in Canada you should be aware of the problems I have had trying to get my machine repaired. I took the machine in to the local authorized dealer on January 14th. I week later I found out that Sony sent the wrong part. I contacted Sony's customer service department and left a message because no one was available. A week later, no one had called so I tried again.

After holding for almost half an hour I got through to a customer rep. I gave him the back ground and he said he would look into it and contact the authorized repair shop. A week later, the shop said no one had contacted them. They then told me that the part was backordered to February 17th. I contacted Sony again and left another message. No body called. I left a further message and still no call.

I am now entering my 5th week of having no DVD and have no idea when I will get it back. Sony Canada doesn't seem to care. This lip sync problem was known to them months before I bought the machine. There is nothing on the web site about it nor did they bother to contact me after I sent in the warranty card to alert me of the possible problem.

Consumers in the U.S. seem to get much better service on this problem. If you live in Canada and are contemplating purchasing this machine, make sure it has updated firmware.

Because of the service, this machine only gets one star (and that is likely more than it deserves!)

Similar Products Used:

None

Great picture and sound, nice on-screen menus

No component output

I recently decided to upgrade my Pioneer DV-505 (purchased in October '98) to a machine with DTS output. I had no problems with the 505, so I decided to stick with Pioneer and get the newer DV-525. The Pioneer's transport was so loud that I could often hear the disc spinning during a movie. I took it back and traded up to the Sony DVP-S330, and am completely satisfied. Great picture and sound, DTS capability, the best OSD I have used, and a completely quiet transport. The only negative is the lack of component outputs, but my TV doesn't support that anyway.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DV-525

Audio/Video Quality for the $$$

Various Lip-Synch Problems

I had purchased an open box 330 from Best Buy and picked it up for $219 and it was only missing the manual. After a few movies the lip-synch problm occured. I was curious if I would be able to take it back and exchnage it for a new one since I paid so little for it and it was a used open box item. Well Best Buy took it back with no questions and gave me a brand new one. I also called Sony about the manual and since I registered my product online, they sent me one free. My new one has a firmware version 2.4. Not too sure about the old one though. SO in recap I got a brand new 330 with manual now for $219 andthis new one works like a dream. 2 major thumbs up, Sony just needs to fix this issue even if it includes taking them all back and allowing the consumer to do even exchanges wherever they made the intial purchase but we know this will never happen.

price

ergonomics are weird and take some getting used to

I am very happy with this unit.
I demoed most of the Sony and Toshiba line and found this to be the best unit for the price.

The low end toshiba was noisy.

After bing a mostly stereo person i was blown away by 5.1

Similar Products Used:

toshiba

Price, easy to set up and use. Excellient sound and video quality.

None

I was looing only for a CD player, so was pleasantly surprized that a combination DVD-CD player was available.

Similar Products Used:

None

Remote, crystal clear picture, menus, diagnostics, price, 5 free movie promo, 10 free rental promo

None so far..

I decided to get a new DVD player that could output DTS to my newly purchased STR-DA50ES receiver. I've read EVERYONE'S comments on here before I shopped around. Decided to purchase from Crutchfield due to the option of paying over 4 months as well as the friendly customer service staff.

Artifacts that were present with the 300 are no longer there, the picture is MUCH sharper (on my 20" TV - will eventually upgrade to the Zenith Inteq at Circuit City), the colors are much more natural, and thus far I haven't seen any lip synch problems which have been reported (firmware rev. 2.01). The Curtchfield rep informed me that the firmware upgrade was necessary for some of the previous players in regards to watching the Matrix, but almost every manufacturer has had to give firmware upgrades (Pioneer, GE, Toshiba, RCA) so that's no big deal to me. If I do catch it and it occurs, I'll send it into Sony for the upgrade but if it's currently not broken, don't fix it.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic DVD-A300

I have read most of the reviews here and it seems I am the only one having problems with this unit loading discs. I rarely see the lip-sync problem but there are some dvd's it just refuses to load. I get a "no disc" message or a "13.00"
code message (dirty disc) even on brand new and clean discs.
Some discs will finally load after many tries (5 to 20 times)and some will not load at all. This is very aggrevating especially when most retail stores will only replace the disc with the same title after it has been opened. I even bought a dvd lense cleaner thinking I would at least help this problem, but the cleaning disc would not load!!!. The firmware revision on my unit 1.85. It may just need an adjustment, but with all the horror stories I heard about Sony service it will be my last resort. If anyone else out there has experienced this same problem please post your review here.

CONFIRMED BY SONY - Lip-Synch problem with DVP-S330

I received as a present (Dec 1999) a Sony DVP-S330 and noticed sometimes the words were not in synch with the video. At first I thought bad dubbing, but after exploring newsgroups, I saw similar complaints. I called Sony customer service, and they said there IS a problem with DVP-S330 and asked me to take it to a repair center. I considered taking it back, you can get nervous when you see a problem Christmas day, but I am going to keep it and have it repaired because I like Sony.

Excellent picture quality, Sounds effects(with a Dolby
digital receiver)

Lots of choices on the remote, lacks fast fast forwarding.

I liked Sony S330 very much. Very good and soft picture quality. Even better than the satellite dish picture quality: soft and crsipy and crystal clear. Sound quality
from a optical cable to Dolby digital receiver is awesome.

If you have all the components made from Sony, Nothing can
beat a sony!


Comparing with Panasonic A120 which is poor in my opinion:
------------------------------------------------------------
I got the panasonic DVD A120 for a good deal from Mercata
and was enthuasistic and eager to watch movies on that.
But I was quite disappointed after watching MATRIX movie
on the DVD player. I have a sony 32 inch color TV and Sony
Dolby digital receiver. The picture quality is so bad that
it gives some entirely different colors. Panasonic A-120 is poor in picture coloring, what i see is it is not able to
produce different shades of colors(color depth). Also I
noticed that the picture ismoving fast probably to synchronize with audio and it is giving a poor look of the
movie. Having watched MATRIX on Sony S330 DVD where the picture effect where amazingly good, I aret this panasonic DVD A120 as a poor choice. I used a AV cable instead of
S-video cable on both the players. Sony rates 1000 times better than panasonic for this similar DVD players. The picture lacked clarity and it is far inferior to my
satellite dish digital picture from Direct TV.

Even I noticed some differences in dolby digital sound effects with panasonic. I see some of the sounds are not
properly reproduced by the speakers. A while back I
watched MATRIX on Sony S330, the sound effects were awesome.

I am not sure if the one I purchased was bad or most of the
panasnic A120 have the same behaviour. Anyway, I am going to return the panasonic back and going to buy Sony S330 which really impressed me!

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic A120