Philips DVD727 Progressive-Scan DVD Player
A diamond in the coal mine as far as I'm concerned
I, too, just managed to snag one of these from Amazon for $69 plus tax ($76 total; I live in Seattle so I get dinged for sales tax) after they had been out of stock for a short while.  I read all of the user reviews here and concluded the naysayers were just part of the unfortunate 5-10% of consumer electronics buyers who suffer a defective item.  (QA does need improvement, but statistics show most defective items were damaged in shipping.)  All other reviews were very positive so I took the plunge.<br />Best $76 I've spent in a loooong time.<br />One of my favorite films ever is \\"The 36th Chamber of Shaolin,\\" which is a 1978 Hong Kong kung fu flick that is available to U.S. buyers only as an import (unless you want a crappy quality, dubbed version from an unauthorized U.S. distributor).  I absolutely *had* to have the fully-restored-from-the-master, uncut, region 3 release in the original Mandarin and Cantonese.  Picked it up from HKFlix.com, crossed my fingers and ordered the Philips DVD727 from Amazon and waited.<br />The DVD arrived Wednesday and the player arrived from Amazon yesterday (Friday), five days before Amazon's estimated arrival date.  Everything was in brand new condition.  I excitedly unpacked everything and connected the player to my recently purchased Toshiba 30\\" widescreen HD-ready TV, turned on the Philips DVD727, applied the region-free hack, popped in the disc, and Hallelujah!...  kung fu goodness!  =)<br />I tested another disc or two as well and the picture quality provided by this player is fantastic, in my opinion, and I'm currently using the composite video output, connected to the front of my TV until I can get my old player out of the cramped enclosure and use the component video connectors.  So I expect the picture will only get even better.  I also like the sleek design, and the fast forward and reverse searches are the best I've seen on any DVD player so far, although I don't review players for a living so maybe I'm just easily impressed.  There are five different search speeds, and there is no annoying pause when going from play mode to search; it responds immediately.<br />Another nice touch: you can adjust the volume output of the player itself.  For those of us who don't have (nor care to have) surround sound setups, one of the most frustrating things about DVDs is that the dialogue is centered and therefore often reproduced at a lower level than the rest of the sound (especially compared to explosions and soundtracks) when presented in plain old stereo.  My girlfriend and I constantly play with the TV volume when using other players, boosting it during quiet passages with dialogue and dropping it in other places to avoid going deaf.  It's been hard to find a comfortable setting that can accommodate both, but the Philips DVD727 allows you to boost the audio output volume as it leaves the player.  As a result, we've been able to leave the volume a bit lower on the TV, save our sanity, and still hear all the dialogue.<br />Some people have expressed displeasure with the remote, whether in function or appearance.  I disagree, and actually like the remote quite a lot.  I have found it a bit easy to accidentally hit the previous/next chapter buttons when I meant to hit reverse or fast forward search, but I chalk that up to my still being used to my old player's remote, and that will pass with time.<br />The only drawback I've found, if you can call it that, is that the zoom out feature could provide more options.  It would be super nice to finely control zoom out to account for overscan, and reclaim the parts of the original picture that you normally don't get to see.  (See [...] for an explanation of this phenomenon.)  But this is a very minor criticism; most players don't have this capability.  In fact, most players don't offer a zoom out option at all.<br />This one's a keeper.