Good Features & Value for money

Does not play CD-R

Good player, sleek & good looks with easy buttons to use.Great Picture & sound quality and a host of connections to hook up almost any type of TV or AMP

Excellent picture quality. Sharpness, contrast and resolution hard to fault. Excellent colour reproduction, blacks really look black.

Excellent sound with 24 bit 96Khz DAC, Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 built in. Gives excellent playback whether through home cinema or expensive hi-fi equipment. Has a front mounted headphone socket with its own volume control. Music playback through this listening with good quality headphones (Sennheiser HD565) is excellent both with CDs and DVDs and I consider myself a bit of an audiophile. You can even switch off the display.

Dynamic sound compression mode for night time viewing, reduces variability in loudness while playing DVDs at night.

Has all the socketry that you need. Easy to set up.

The remote is very comprehensive and easy to use.

Relatively cheap - I got it for £349.95 after haggling. Came with offer of three free DVDs of my choice.

Only very slight:

Would have looked nicer in the silver/champagne gold finish of some of the other Sony models (alhthough these are more expensive) to match my WEGA TV.

No variable output for musical playback (via remote control), no remote control of headphone socket volume.

No backlight on remote.

No SCART lead included in the package, so you have to buy your own.

You have to send away a form with your receipt to get the free DVDs and they can take up to 28 days to arrive. Mine took 14 days.

It would have been nice if Sony bundled at least one DVD in the box so you would have something to watch when you took it home.

An excellent DVD player, handles both films and music well. Comes with 3 free DVDs and you should be able to get discount off the £399 official price.

Similar Products Used:

Alternatives from the Sony range, this was the best value in my opinion, more expensive models didn't have a noticeably better picture.
Also similar models from Panasonic, Pionneer and Toshiba up to £700.

Excellent Picture and Sound Quality.

AC3 Analogue Sub Output very low in gain. You need to wind up the sub amp quite a fair way to hear the sub output which is not a problem. Also the operation of the player could be a bit snappier.

The Sony 525 like its bigger brother the 725 has excellent Picture quality & Sound all the colours seem smooth and well saturated. Although one DVD has a questionable artifact, in one scene in Jerry Macquire Ch6 53s into the chapter, that flaring or ghosting over the head of Rod from the window in which he was standing in front of, was observed, whether this was due to the player or from the transfer to DVD is unknown I will need to try this disk in another player. I like the player with its graphical menus and easy setup although I would like a feature that would remember DVD's that have been taken out of the player so that when they are reinserted they would continue to play where they left off, this only happens if the DVD is left in the player as to when taken out, it forgets everthing. The player has 2 composite 2 SVHS and one component
output, 6 channel anologue out for DD,2 channel PCM outputs, 1 coaxial and 1 optical output for external DD and DTS decoders.
The 525 is a rather basic player with not many frills except the inbuilt DD decoder. It has not exibited any Audio sync problems even with the player almost running continuous since Christmas day with plenty of skipping around through chapters. I would recomend this player to anyone. I give it 4.5 stars

Great picture, for the price is the best DVD i've seen so far

No CD'Rs!! I've got about 2000 of them...

I am absolutelly happy with this DVD player as is still the best DVD player around for less than £400. The image is sharp and the system combines very well with the rest of the Sony system.

Similar Products Used:

I've got a Samsung DVD top of the range...Not up to it at all...

Great picture, for the price is the best DVD i've seen so far

No CD'Rs!! I've got about 2000 of them...

I am absolutelly happy with this DVD player as is still the best DVD player around for less than £400. The image is sharp and the system combines very well with the rest of the Sony system.

Similar Products Used:

I've got a Samsung DVD top of the range...Not up to it at all...

Wide range of options and inputs, user friendly, it sounds slightly richer in bass compared to the NAD 510

none yet!

My review is still continuing, however from my initial experience I, find it to be excellent value for money.
The sound quality is balanced and pleasant to listen to over long periods of time.
The Remote is sensibly designed and user friendly. It also has many features like ves, which down mixes the sound channels to your specific configuration, and it works well.
Its Dynamic range also surprised me with out having too sharp treble.

As with any system each component is only as good as the weakest link, so ensure your system is evenly balanced

Price is a killer - and the features - Every thing one could want and more

Could use an extra audio l/r out port

Great machine- My first DVD and i am very pleased. I own a JVC RX 889 receiver (for which I have not found a review yet) and a Thomson 28" wide screen TV and Jamo surround sound speakers (no review here either).

The remote is very user freindly - even better than the bigger brother the 725.

Similar Products Used:

Phillips and JVC

I bought this player after a lot of research. There are a lot of good players here in Australia but a lot of them are just wayyy overpriced compared to the US. It came down to either getting the Pioneer 414 or the Sony. Both seemed very good but if I bought the Pioneer I would also had to have spend more on a decoder/receiver. If you are after a good player player and plan on using it with a separate decoder get the Pioneer 414 or the new Toshiba 2109 which is only $799 plus 3 free DVD's! Anyway back to the Sony...
The first thing I noticed with the S525D was how fast and easy to use it was. Access via the menus was quick and intuitive with the remote control. The array of options is great giving you control over a lot of audio and video functions.

Scanning and searching through discs was fast.

One option that was pretty cool is the Dynamic range control.
The dynamic range controller is pretty good at night when set to TV...this compresses the dynamic range so you don't wake up the neighbours when the loud scene crop up. There was another option called Wide Range. At first I dismissed this as a gimmick till I tried it out...wow...it is really a cool feature. Sounds just seem to completely surround you...its as if I could reach out and touch the sounds if that makes any sense....all this while keeping audio separation.

The Sony DVP-S525D has a built in MPEG and DD decoder which is excellent! I hooked up the 5.1 outputs of the player into my Aiwa KVR8 MIDI system was presently suprised at the quality, clarity, bass and separation of the DD and Mpeg audio. The 525 allows a range of options to fine tune the player with your current speaker setup.

Picture quality is outstanding with brilliant definition, color reproduction and aliasing was very very rare with the discs I tried.

Well I better stop here...in short I think this player is one of the best I've seen. The reviews I've seen for this model and bigger brother the S725D have been excellent and the only difference is that the 725 has isolated noise circuitry, R-core transformer, anti-resonant frame and some additional options. all I can say is that I definately didn't have noise problems with this model and didn't need the extras of the 725.

Picture & cinema sound quality

Noisy transport, Average CD playback

Picture quality, as with most DVD players, is very good. Have not come accross problems with digital artefacts except from damaged disks. Lip sync has not been an issue but because of problems with a previous Sony player I am very cautious about skipping round discs!

The one major problem I have is the noise from the transport. There is a constant whistle from the player when a disc is playing. I am waiting for a replacement unit to come and may upgrade to the Sony 725.

The sound quality of CD music playback seems less than inspiring, this is partly for two reasons in my case, firstly the audio from the DVD players runs via my home cinema system and secondly I can't help compare it to my two box Micromega which is from a completely different price range! Try before you buy if this a priority to you.

The inability to play CD-R Video discs is a pain.

I would however strongly recommend this player for playback of DVD movies.

Good Image Control and General setup. Ease of Use.

Downsampling of Music signal to 44.1 Khz from Digital Output (Toslink, Coaxial).

This product is really good in terms of Quality/Price ratio. The control that You have in terms of initial setup and fine tuning of the system is definitely good with respect to the cost of this product. The Image Quality (tested on a 32", 16/9, 100 Hz TV set) is good and the same with sound .

Using it as a CD Player it can be compared to a 300 pound (500 $) integrated CD Player. It is good to be used as the "mechanical" tool of a 2 way system. I used it with a Musical Fidelity DAC converter (X24K) and the sound is really not bad. What I really did not like was the fact that the Sony 525D makes a downsampling of the musical signal from 96 Khz to 44.1 Khz (from 24 to 16 bit) when you "grab" it from the digital outputs (coaxial and Toslink) while it generates a 24/96 signal from the analogue output, but in this case the result is not exactly the best one.