Excellent downconversion to 4:3 television.

Haven't found any weaknesses yet.

The Sony DVD player has an excellent picture for my standard 4:3 television. I have played about 11 so far discs with no lip sync problems (that have been reported by some). Has Dolby Digital (AC-3) decoder and DTS out.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba

Great video, features, remote control

The dreaded lip-sync problem (on some players)

Great machine. Ran into lip-sync problem on a few titles (Ronin, Something About Mary, Blade Runner) and after months of waiting (on Sony's part; how clueless are most of your Customer-Service Reps?) finally got the machine fixed two weeks ago. Sony picked up the player on their dime on a Wednesday and I got it returned the following Tuesday. Everything seems to be working well now. I like Sony's workmanship and the player seems to be intuitively designed. The picture is tremendous and I love the jog-shuttle feature on the remote, though it's up to personal discretion whether it's worth the extra bucks over the 530.

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Pioneer LD Player

Nice design, Great Remote, Loads of features

Lip sync and audion dropouts

Excellent machine with the exception of the rare lypsync issue and ocassional audio dropout. I would purchase it again.

Incredible picture, especially realistic color saturation, DTS audio, user-friendly remote control

No major drawbacks

This is my first DVD player and I am very pleased with it. I have not experienced any lip synch problems after three months; I believe that these issues were likely due to software compatibility because I've only heard of them happening on certain titles.

The picture is amazing, and the player offers numerous methods to tweak it according to your tastes and/or the movie itself. The faintest of pixillation can occur in dim, low-contrast scenes in movies where the mastering isn't up to par. This is real nitpicking -- anyone out to just enjoy great looking home theatre will be impressed.

The sound is also up to par given the onboard DTS and multiple digital outputs. Run with the coax output and pop in a DTS title -- I couldn't believe the audio during "Saving Private Ryan" with this setup.

I can understand how people would be very upset about the lip synch problem, but it hasn't happened to me, so I can't take anything away from this unit. Plus, for those of you who have griped that it's too pricey for what you get, do your research. You can find this model in the $350 over the Net (onecall.com comes to mind); only lazy types who just drive out to some chain store at the mall are going to pay $500.

This unit is a top notch player around which to build a moderate/high-end home theatre system.

Clear video and crisp audio

None for the price

I originally bought the unit in June, I believe, and I did experience some lip synch problems on certain discs (Star Trek Insurrection was one, I believe). In any case, I contacted Sony from a number someone left here at audioreview.com and got on their notification list. They called me and said they had a fix and would send out Fed-Ex to pick up the unit. They said it would be ten business days turnaround. After about a month, I recieved a brand new unit, and I have had no problems whatsoever. I understand they had problems with a backordered part, so my guess is that some execs decided the best thing to do would be to send out a new unit and deal with the old one later.

I cannot attest to exactly what the issue was, whether there really is a firmware or chipset replacement which fixes the problem. I have heard too many takes on the issue. I am just happy the machine is now playing with the sound and video quality I was expecting. I was unhappy with Sony for releasing the product with this defect, but now that the unit is working beautifully, I do have to give it a high rating, as I think it is a superior product to the Toshiba models.

Downconversion is best i have seen. Best picture period i have seen on the 4 or 5 i compared. Great cd audio quality as well.

remote is a bit of a pain.

Second best thing i have ever bought (first being the sony db930 receiver:) awesome picture. flawless downconversion and with the sony free fix/replacement for the audio sync problem a near perfect machine. ignore the dimwits here that were too lazy or too stupid to get the free fix and settled for inferior dvd players.... their loss don't make it yours.....

make sure you get a good deal tho. circuit city etc will charge you 499 or so, get a bunch of offers thru buyersedge.com then take it to one call and get it for 379-389.

and GOOD NEWS GOOD NEWS for onwers of this machine. i bit the bullet and bought it even tho i knew it did not support cdrs :( only certain cdrw's... BUT NEWSFLASH!! this is a load of old cobblers..... RUN don't WALK to your nearest COMPusa and grab a few packs of their 29 dollar 50 pack of compusa cdr's...... THEY work FLAWLESSLY 60 cents a pop too.
amazing..... i have burnt like 15 this week and all played straight thru no probs at all..... (one caveat is i burned at 4x, not sure this is a factor but might be, why 4x? i am in between burners at the moment and thats all this one will do reliably.)but anyways go grab the 60 cent cdrs and be amazed.....

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samsung 709 very briefly and dxr2 pcdvd

Picture Quality, Custimization Options, Sound (see below)

Sound (lip sync problem), jog control on remote, slow to eject discs

I would rate this product very highly if it werent fpr the inherent lip sync problems. I am planning to take mine in for service to get it upgraded, but I still find this to be very inconvenient, and annoying.

Unfortunately, it is the latest in a string of problems I have had with Sony products, dating back to my first Walkman. I am curious to learn how Sony developed a reputation for quality when nearly every product I have had of theirs has failed prematurely or had serious defects.

In any regards, this DVD is a good unit, if their quality control had been up to spec. If there would have been other products out there with better specs, I probably would have got them though, rather than the Sony.

This is an excellent machine after its upgraded chipset.

That it needed an upgraded chipset.

I think all of you people bought really old machines, that were perhaps sitting in the store for years. I posted the fix for the lipsink and drawer problems last year. Sony knew that the machine didn't work, and they were offerering the repairs for free!! They did not recall the machine but would fix it with the 2000 chipset. For all of you still complaining about your machines....too bad. If you would read the reviews, you would have had your machine fixed and working great. Since the repairs, I have nothing but praise for this machine that will beat any under a grand.

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Toshiba and it doesn't come close to the quality of the Sony.

Everything

No HDCD (No big deal)

This is one amazing dvd player that's gonna replaced soon by the 570 but the price isn't budging in the stores. Everyone seems to be complaining about the CD player section, but this isn't a CD player obviously the main focus is DVD. If cd was so important go get a cd player. Sony's dvd player is the best in useablity the best picture under $600 and only to be outdone by the Pioneer elite players and other non-mainstream players. And the people that are complaining about the lip-synching are obviously idiots beucase they could just upgrade the firmware and the guys with new players are obviously parroting from what they've heard and probably don't even know what lip-synching is. So quit complainging and enjoy the damn player.

Similar Products Used:

Lower level Sonys, Toshiba, Pioneer, Proceed, Ayre, Mitsubishi

First of all I must say the player has worked flawlessly. Viewed about 20 discs on it and never once saw the Lip-sync problem. I'm gonna go home and check my firmware version, but I think I'm clear. I have not tried using Audio-CDs in it (i didn't buy a DVD player for that!) but the Audio from discs is really good. Picture quality is excellent IMHO. The remote is a little larger than I would like, but it's well laid out and is pretty intuitive.

Just two, and one is REAL nitpicky. Whenever I use the shuttle to go back, it always jumps to slow motion x1 FORWARD. So i have to keep twisting back so that it goes through pause and then finally it will start going backwards. It's usually a good 3/4 revolution of the wheel before it plays in reverse. Pretty annoying if you ask me, but I can live with it. The second complaint is in the disc naming. After you select every letter, it highlights the "A" normally this wouldn't bother me, but even though it's highlighted it's not selected. So you have to step to the B and then back to the A before you can actually enter an A, otherwise you put in a space. I know it's stupid but there's really nothing else I can complain about.

I was very pleased with my purchase and as stated above haven't had any kind of serious complaints with it.

I got this for $347 shipped online through a 10% off deal before christmas. It was a great buy and at that price a great value.

If you can find this player for under $400 I'd definately choose it over the 330... the couple extra features are probably worth it.