Sony DAV-DZ100 Theater System

If you want to primarily play movies and have loud, clear excellent sound effects at an extremely affordable price, then this system is truly great.

If you want to play music and movies on this system, then this player and speaker system is still pretty good.

I have been using this sound system and DVD player for almost a year now and it seems very reliable. Sound effects are loud and perfectly clear. Directional audio is also excellent. Setup is relatively easy and volume control is easy as well. I consider the relatively cheap price to be a huge plus. The sound quality and volume I got from playing the movies "Open Range" "2001" and "The Matrix" with this DVD player's sound system was remarkable given the price. There is excellent treble and bass with a bare minimal amount of distortion to the movie sound effects even at high volume levels. Picture quality is also good. This machine rarely skips, doesn't need to be cleaned very much at all, has a remote control with redicuously long AAA battery life, and can even play somewhat scratched up CD's and DVD's without many problems. It has functioned well in a dusty cat-hair infested environment as well. My cat also has a good time occasionally sitting on top of the player and subwoofer also, meaning that its somewhat sturdy.

And now the slight downside: This player tends to play audio discs slightly quietly and songs which have a lot of complex, simotaneous instrumentation can sound slightly muddled or muddy. Smashing pumpkins, and some of the more intense NIN music can cause some minor audio distortions as well (distortions which are not meant to be in the music). Quiet music CD's tend to sound even more quiet, like the begginning of Ravel's Bolero. Musical Bass doesn't seem to sound quite deep enough either. This is strange considering that in-movie music is truly excellent. This player is also capable of playing finalized music CD-R's. The sound is nice for clear classical, violen, bass fiddle, and opera type music, but grunge and heavy metal tend to give this speaker system minor distortion and clarity problems. HDCD's do pretty well. Very few controls are on the player itself, so if you lose the remote control, good luck to you. Maybe you could find a replacement from sony...I don't know.

Overall, This player is excellent for the price, truly excellent for movies, and still pretty good for music. Its nice that there is a DVD speaker system and player that is this good and is priced so reasonably. The player has nice long speaker wires, a good remote control (but no zoom-in function) good audio options, is fairly reliable and the speakers are more or less made of some sort of wood. (though they don't look it. My minor gripes are that sometimes telling it to skip chapters at times when the movie makers want you to see their logos results in a stupid message that says "Operation not allowed" Also the player's disc tray truly takes its sweet time reading discs and sliding in and out of the machine. The on-machine display is tiny also and has no clock. Overall, these last few things are really quite minor gripes when compared to the machine's movie-playing strengths.

Excellent. Rating 4 out of 5, with 5 being the best and 0 being the worst.