Sony DVPNS725P Progressive-Scan DVD/CD Player
Plays great ... for a while.
I've owned and used this Sony DVP-NS725P DVD player for almost 18 months now.  I bought it in spite of several negative comments about the general degradation in reliability of Sony products but figured the problems were probably isolated.  Dumb conclusion on my part. <br /> <br />The DVP-NS725P worked fine and played great right up until the moment it didn't play at all.  We had just finished watching a DVD movie a few days ago, and when we pushed the menu button on the remote the player just locked up.  No power surge, no local lightning, no bad disk, and no bad batteries in the remote.  We managed to get the DVD out of the player and then unplugged it to try to force a reset, but now when we try to turn it on all it does is display \\"WEL\\" (the first three letters of the WELCOME message) before shutting itself off.  It doesn't matter which buttons or combinations thereof we use on either the remote or the player. <br /> <br />The fault is apparently is some sort of software glitch in ROM or flash memory, but if you check around for other reviews on this and other Sony models you'll read about enough similar experiences that it must be some sort of systemic problem with Sony players.  For those of you that have recently bought one of these and can't understand what the rest of us are complaining about, your time will come.