Samsung DVD-HD960 Up-Converting DVD Player
Almost perfect dvd player. Has a few negatives.
Samsung's DVD-HD960 Up-Converting DVD Player is probably the best all round DVD player on the market. It has a perfect blend of performance, features and style that makes it a good buy. It even comes with an HDMI cord.    The picture quality is great as expected with HDMI output and up-converting up to 1080p (not up to 1080i like most other upconverting dvd players). I've tried playing regular DVDs from my collection on my regular DVD players and compared it to my new Samsung upconverting DVD player and the results are impressive. When I play back normal movie DVD's on the Samsung, the picture quality is modestly improved. You can tell the picture is a bit sharper and has more detail. However, the most notable difference in picture quality comes when the player upconverts DIVX files or Mpeg files. The difference is almost night and day. It can take low resolution videos and convert them to near DVD quality.     The style is awesome and matches my Samsung Plasma TV. The blue eye power button is quite attractive, but can be a little too bright when you watch DVDs in the complete dark. Its ability to play virtually any format from DVD, DIVX, MPEG, MP3 formats is another definite bonus (WMA files won't play however).      The things I dislike about the player is its load time and its inability to play certain files and DVD formats. It takes this machine way too long to load information once I pop in a disk. I could walk to the kitchen, grab a beer and run back before this thing is ready to play. I might be a little dramatic, but considering the load times of my other players this player comes in dead last. The players does not play WMA video files and VCDs. It also has trouble playing burned DVD-DL files on occasion, but all other DVD formats I've tried have worked perfectly.      The features that I would like to see in future models would be a 5 disk changer and faster load times.    Overall the upconversion is key and one of the best out there. It plays almost any file format and looks great.     Recommended buy if you aren't ready for Blue-ray or HD-DVD.