Panasonic DVD-S55 DVD Player

I hate the fact that I spent such a long time researching a perfect sub-$300 DVD player and, once decided, was unable to get one. I am speaking of none other than Panasonic RP-82. They were discontinued last year and quickly disappeared from the store shelves. Panasonic RP-91 is the last surviving dinosaur of that breed, but unfortunately that's exactly what it looks like, too: it will simply not fit in my entertainment center height-wise. It is also a bit on the expensive side: with MSRP of $699, it can be ordered on line for between $300 and $400.

So, instead I settled for the updated -- and cheapened -- version of Panasonic RP-82, which, according to the sources, is Panasonic S55.

I asked many experts whether the famed Sage/Faroudja deinterlacing chip would make it into the new line of Panasonic progressive scan DVD players. At these prices ($99 MSRP for S35, $129 for S55), I should have known the answer. A widely respected Epinions expert speculated earlier that "Panasonic is unlikely to compromise picture quality." Wrong! It's all about the price now. 9 out of 10 consumers would not know or care what deinteralcing chip the player is based on, or, for that matter, what deinterlacing is. At best, the sales person at CircuitCity will tell them that "progressive scan makes the picture sharper", and since virtually every new player has it now, why don't you buy this value-priced Toshiba for $89?

I have mixed feelings about the new toy that I had spent such a long time choosing and, once chosen, had to wait for it to become available.

It is very slim (the picture you see on the Epinions page is stretched vertically to almost twice the real proportions) and short depth-wise. Anything this small and light feels somewhat cheap to me, but that's me.

It shows JPEG's from a burned CD-ROM, but is unable to display about 30% of them on the CD's I tried. Why? Cheap blanks? Wrong burn format? Faulty firmware? I will try to look for a firmware upgrade, I guess. For those JPEG's that it does display, it takes quite a while: about 6 half-second jerks to display a full 1600x1200 picture, for a total of about three seconds per picture. Then you may have another five seconds while it tries and fails to display the next picture, then next, and so on. Less than a pleasurable experience. It takes about eight seconds to build a preview of nine thumbnails in browsing mode.

Once displayed, the pictures look beautiful, much better than from the laptop hooked to the TV through an S-video input.

Panasonic S55 plays MP3's, but so do all others. If a disk is in good shape and does not have too many subfolders, it takes a reasonable amount of time before it starts playing. A 93-song mix with a single subfolder loads up and starts in about 15 seconds. Once playing, the sound is excellent, and the double-remastering feature seems to improve it further. The output signal is very strong, I have to lower the volume on the amplifier down to half of normal. The list of MP3's is displayed in a reasonable manner, there is even a search function, cumbersome with the Nintendo-style scrolling through the characters. If you a stop a 200-song MP3 disk in a random place and turn the player off, next time it starts from song 1. Weak! My portable SonicBlue Rio MP3 player suffered from the same limitation until I upgraded firmware. Let's see if Panasonic can do the same for me.

While JPEG and MP3 playback are nice pluses, that's not how I chose the player. I could not wait to see what the whole hoopla with progressive scan was all about. After all, a friend of mine bought a progressive scan player, too, and after we hooked it up to the component inputs of his new TV, I could not see any difference.

The same was happening here at first. I had never been completely sure whether the (more expensive) component video cables (color-coded red/blue/green) were essential, or whether the regular A/V RCA cables (yellow/red/white) would do the job. My friend used the regular A/V cables, the picture is there, but I wondered whether the lack of visible improvement in the picture was due to the lower grade cables being used. If you ask sales guys at a store, they will insist that you need the $20 ($40 if it's Monster) red/blue/green cable. They went as far as telling me that with an A/V cable I would not even get the picture up. That's simply not true.

I am using one of my many spare A/V cables for now, but as I said I did not see a difference at first. Fortunately, my TV reports the type of signal it receives, and I noticed that it still said "480i", as in "interlaced". That's how I knew that deinterlacing did not kick in. I found, not without some difficulty, the place in the player's set-up where you turn deinterlacing on (along with several other nice settings, such as black levels and source material type), and voila - the picture got distorted momentarily, and when it came back, it was everything they promised. And what they promised was "extremely sharp and virtually artifact-free." Of course, I was testing my player using the outstanding "Fight Club" DVD, which has no artifacts to speak about. I still need to repeat the test with a not-so-well transferred movie, but for now I am impressed.

To be on the safe side, I ordered the "true" component cables for about $12. When they arrive, I will replace the makeshift cables and watch for further improvement. I doubt there will be any.

Just as CD, MP3 and JPEG, DVD playback also starts considerably slower than my benchmark Sony DVP550.

I noticed annoying flickering of the white text on black (opening credits) when I played another title, "Baraka". I compared it to my Sony, before I removed the latter and took it upstairs. Panasonic definitely flickers more. It was very irritating to me, because I was skeptical by then already. Still, in reality, how much time do you spend watching opening credits? But I thought it was an indication of the overall picture quality. In deinterlaced mode it got better, approaching the quality of the non-progressive scan picture I got from Sony. The lesson for the picky and the DVD aficionado here is that you should only consider S55 if you know you will be using it in progressive scan mode with deinterlacing turned on. Your TV (all HD and HD-ready TV's, as well as most high-end and newer non-HD TV's) has to have the component inputs marked red/green/blue. Otherwise, if you will be hooking it up through the S-video or A/V inputs, you are shooting yourself in the foot: choose a Sony or another trusted non-progressive scan player instead (but make sure they did not get cheapened as well; my DVP550 is almost 4 years old).

The remote control is adequate. It will take getting used to.

The player has both an AC3 and a DTS decoders and produces the 5.1 ch sound output, same as Sony DVP550. It's the main reason I chose it over the otherwise identical S35 model. It's not a popular feature and is not worth $30 to most. I happen to have an Aiwa surround-sound mini-system with 5.1 ch inputs. As a result, I don't need and don't own a Dolby Digital receiver and rely instead on the player to process the sound signal. This also eliminates the need for a $30 coaxial or optical sound cable. I use two RCA A/V cables to connect six pairs of outputs instead. It looks awful from the back, but that's not where I watch my DVD's from.

Untested is the VCD capability. Sony played my home-made VCD's without as much as a peep.

On the whole, I am satisfied, but underwhelmed with my purchase. It's like my new boss told me: I expect you to exceed my expectations. Panasonic DVD-S55 certainly does not.

It could make an excellent starter or second DVD player for a family, with MP3 and JPEG playback providing additional entertainment value. You may want to chose the S35 model, widely available form the brick-and-mortar stores. That way, you will have an easy out if you can't handle the slow read speed. The $112 price I paid was from Amazon, free shipping included.