Sony DVP-NS55P/S Single Disc DVD Player, Silver
Plays All Disks - Excellent Value
I have had an extremely poor track record in producing DVDs that play consistently well over a wide range of DVD players owned by me, friends and family.  Whether I make the DVDs on a personal video recorder (PVR) off the air, or on a computer using two differnet brand DVD writers, the results have always been spotty.  I have tried many different brands of media, different recording speeds and both DVD-R and DVD+R disks. The DVDs usually play fine on the PVR and on the computer drives, but not on consumer DVD players.  I assume this is because most consumer DVD players are geared more for commercial DVDs and are not engineered to be as capable of reading home-made DVDs. <br /> <br />The Sony DVPNS55P/S stands out from the crowd in a big way!  It plays virtually all commercial and home-made DVDs that I have tried on it.  I liked it so much, I bought a second one for my girlfriend who complained about how incompetent I was at burning DVDs.  This one works works as well as my first one, and she is very pleased with it.  Now, I plan to buy a third one for my father. <br /> <br />Apart from playing any type of DVD, the one feature I like the most is the track position memory that remembers where you left off playing the most recent six DVDs and allows you to resume from that last point.  This is a HUGE plus for my 88 year old father who has troubles with the small buttons on all remotes and wants the DVD player to work like a VCR player.  This feature will allow him to simply turn the unit on and off without having to search for the last play point. <br /> <br />Another amazing feature is the fast foward mode that uses a DSP algorithm to deliver sound at the same pitch (frequency) but faster pace.  I don't use this much, but it is impressive. <br /> <br />The only downside was mentioned earlier - when zooming, the magnifying lens symbol stays on the display and cannot be disabled.  I've gotten used to that as a minor inconvenience that is more than made up for by the solid performance and outstanding features.