Panasonic Dvd-s25 DVD Player

The best purchases leave you feeling as if you found the deal of a lifetime. This is one of those items. I'm not much of a one for technical expertise, but I can tell you this player has made an entire family happy.

This player works wonderfully well and was a godsend after our first DVD player experience, which was frankly awful. Our first player made loud, strange noises and ground to a halt in the middle of every DVD we owned until I finally took it back (I have never, before or since, returned anything to a store in my life before our first DVD player. NEVER.)

This beautiful Panasonic thing in a lovely Star Trek silver makes me happy, it truly does. I found it at Christmastime by using Epinions, and loved it so much, I joined Epinions just so I could tell you how much I love it.

After returning the first player we owned, I waited over a year before buying another. But honestly, the first player, which had worked well the first day (and never again after that) gave us a small taste for the DVD experience that made going back to VHS-only viewing unpalatable.

Let's face it: rewinding or fast forwarding on VHS has nothing on scene selection on DVD. If you've owned a DVD player for any length of time, you may not even remember the days when someone else was upset because you rewound a video they were in the middle of; or having kids whine if they couldn't get the movie they wanted on VHS in the video store because "everyone watches DVD's now, mom" complete with rolled eyes and a sigh of hardship that let me know we were definitely the last of our kid's friends to get (and keep) a DVD player.

It was these types of experiences that drove me to find another DVD player at Christmastime. Also, my mother was hinting that she was ready to join the new millennium and wouldn't mind trying a DVD player. AND, If I could find a good one, she'd also go half on getting another for my grandparents.

It must have been divine intervention that led me to Epinions in November 2003. At that time, I knew two things only: My price range was about $100 per player and whatever player I got it would have to be fool-proof. I mean, whatever my decision was, half my family was going to be stuck with it and if it didn't work it would be ALL MY FAULT.

I did have to do a couple of Google searches to look up some terms I was unfamiliar with like "progressive-scan" and "S-Video" but in the end this player was my choice and I (and the rest of the family) have not been disappointed.

When you turn it on, it displays the word H-E-L-L-O, one letter at a time. It's a small thing but never fails to give me a grin after five months of use. When you turn it off, the display fades slowly away as if sad that we no longer want to play with it anymore. And in between it gives solid use, beautiful pictures on any DVD we want to view (no weird freezing), and a sound quality that makes our five-year-old television rock! Our TV never sounded like this and still doesn't whenever we turn the DVD player off.

What's more my mother, my 11-year-old, and BOTH of my 90+-year-old grandparents use it with ease. Reading that last bit I realize it must sound like a line, but nevertheless it's true. The print on the remote is small for older eyes, but we're used to putting large print stickers on stuff for them anyway. All we figured they would use is on/off, play, stop, forward, and back.

Well if that sounds like a line, imagine my surprise a month later when granddad is using features like scan, subtitles, scene selection, menu, and ZOOM.

So yes, we love the player. All of us. Five months later all three players work like they did day one. And best of all, it's all my fault.