Pros: Great for the price and upscales to 1080i
Cons: A little bulky
The bottom line: I love this DVD Player. I love the picture and sound quality and we think it has been the best player that we have ever bought.
We needed to buy a new DVD player at one time and bought a DVD Recorder. Well our DVD Recorder didn’t play back movies very well and so, yet again we were in the market for another DVD Player. We were looking for one at Best Buy and saw this Sony 5-Disc DVD Player. We didn’t really need a 5-Disc DVD Player, but it was the best deal and upscales movies to 1080i, so we bought it.

Features From Circuit City Website

5-disc capacity: Switch from movie to music or movie to movie with this convenient 5-disc DVD changer. HDMI interface: The HDMI connection allows you to connect multiple components with only one wire. The HMDI connection converts video to 720p or 1080i for a picture. (Must be connected to HMDI-compatible screen to get HD picture) Progressive-scan playback: Enjoy smooth, crisp progressive-scan images with HD-compatible TVs. Sony's Precision Cinema Progressive technology helps to ensure a great picture. Precision Drive 3 : Keeps DVDs looking and sounding their best. Dolby Digital and DTS : Get the full impact of your movies and music with Dolby Digital, PCM and DTS decoding. With independent channels of audio assigned to a respective 5.1 surround speaker, in a proper home theater system, you'll find yourself surrounded by audio. Digital audio outputs: Get crisp, realistic digital audio through your home theater system with the digital optical and digital coaxial outputs. Multi-format playback: The DVD player is compatible with DVD, CD, DVD-RW (Video Mode/VR Mode)/-R/DVD RW/ R, CD-R, CD-RW, JPEGs and MP3 formats. Convenience features: Multi-disc resume (up to 40 discs), TV virtual surround sound, custom picture mode, title/chapter viewer, MP3 display, multibrand remote control and more.

Description

The DVD Player is black and is actually pretty bulky. The height is about 3 inches, width is about 17 inches, and the depth is about 16 inches. It fits on our entertainment stand okay but it is still a little awkward. The front of the DVD Player is a shiny black. There is an On/Standby button, HDMI (High-Definition Indicator) that lights up blue when there is an HDMI cable is connected correctly. There are Disc 1-5 buttons, Play, Stop, Previous/Next, Open/Close, Disc Skip, Progressive button that lights up when the player outputs progressive signals, Remote Sensor, Exchange button, Disc Tray, and the Front Panel Display. The display lights up the current disc number, the disc type, the disc numbers, playing status, playing time of the DVD or disc. When playing a music CD, it will display the track.

The rear panel of the DVD Player connections are as follows: HDMI Out, Digital Out (Optical), Digital Out (Coaxial), Line Out (Audio), Line Out (Video), S Video Out, Component Video Out. The only cords/cables that are included with this DVD Player is an Audio/Video cord. That is the yellow, red and white connector cord. You also get a remote control and 2 AA batteries for the remote. To be able to upscale your DVDs is to have an HDMI cable which you will have to buy yourself. This is the only way to get the real use out of this DVD Player. Just to make myself sound clear, this DVD Player does not play HDVDs. It only upscales regular DVDs to high definition at 720p and 1080i with the HDMI Cable. I do not remember how we hooked up our DVD Player because we have so many things hooked up to our TV and it has been so long since we bought this one. There are many different ways to hook it up so you shouldn’t have any problems.

The remote is a grey remote with green on/off button and a green Standby button. Some of the buttons are black while the others are off white that glow in the dark. The other button controls on the remote are the Number buttons, Clear, Top Menu, Arrow buttons, Return, Replay/Step and Advance/Step, Prev/Next, Scan/Slow, Zoom, Slow Play/Fast Play, Audio, Subtitle, Volume buttons, TV/Video, Picture Navigation, Time/Text, Menu, Enter, Display, Play, Stop, Pause, Disc Skip, and Angle button.

Performance/Opinion

The set up is really easy. It lists everything very clearly on the screen so you can set up the time and date, choose language, aspect ratio, Dolby Digital, etc. There is also a Control Menu that is also very easy to follow. This is where you will find the Setup option. You can also choose your Disc, Title, Chapter, Track, Original/Play List, Time/Text, Program, Shuffle, Repeat, Custom Picture Mode, Sharpness, and many more options like Parental Control, Album, and Mode (MP3, JPEG). Playing a DVD or disc is very easy. All it takes is pushing the Open button and loading your DVDs using the Disc buttons on the front of the DVD Player to move the carousel. You do not have to use the remote for this. Pushing the buttons makes the tray move to be able to place the next DVD. I like how I can make a play list if I am listing to CDs. I can actually choose the music that I want to hear! It is simple to do because you will have a menu screen.

Another thing that I like about this DVD Player is that it stores the point of where you stopped watching a movie. It will store up to 6 discs and will resume at the point that it was stopped even if you remove the disc! If a 7th disc is stored, it will replace the first one that was stored. It claims as stated in the feature that it will store up to 40 discs but does not. I always thought this was weird how we could actually remove our DVD and still start where we left off. It is kind of nice because we rented a movie one time, and after we got so far into it, we had to end up taking it out and clean it off. To our surprise, we were right where we left off! There is also a way to lock the disc tray so that little ones can open the disc tray by pushing the button. This comes in very handy because our son likes to push buttons a lot! The virtual surround sound is nice too and works really well with our surround sound system that we have.

We have only viewed JPEGs off disc once just to see how it works. It was easy. There will be a menu and you can choose which picture that you want to see. You can magnify them, rotate them and zoom in on them. You may have been wondering what the Clear button was for on the remote. This is what that is for. Pressing Clear will get things back to normal. You can also see your JPEGs in a slide show and you can also have music while viewing a slide show. On your menu, when you make an album with your JPEGs, you can also put MP3s in the same album. I thought that was really neat when we tried that.

I love watching our movies with this DVD Player. We had to buy our HDMI Cable as mentioned before. When you buy one of these do not buy those expensive ones at Best Buy or Radio Shack. One guy was trying to get us to spend $80 on one and the only kind they carried in the store. We actually bought one at Wal-Mart for less than $20. I have seen them elsewhere for about $10. Of course your TV also needs to have an HDMI connection as well. Our movies look great. They have a crisp picture and the sound with the HDMI is also so much better! We have had this DVD Player for a little over a year now and we have never had any problems with it at all. It may be a little bulky but it is durable and we love it. It may only upscale DVDs to 720p or 1080i but it is a lot cheaper than buying a HDVD Player. I definitely recommend it!

Price/Availability

If you want to buy this DVD Player, I don’t think Best Buy carries it anymore. I did check with Circuit City and you can buy it there for about $100. You can also find it at amazon.com as well.