Panasonic DVD-S55S Digital Remastering Progressive-Scan DVD , Silver
Nice upgrade from my old Sony
My old, trusty Sony died just before Christmas with the dreaded C:13:00 error, so I went shopping for a replacement, and I found it in the Panasonic S55.<br />Great picture, great sound and a nice set of features. It does have S-Video, contrary to what someone else said, as well as component, and output for regular 2 speaker system and 5.1 plus optical digital audio. <br />It plays pretty much everything I've thrown at it so far, except a CDRW, which probably was simply created with the wrong format. It had no problems with a CDR with 100+ MP3s, a CDR with 400+ picture from my digital camera, nor any problems with home-made VCDs (my old Sony claimed it could, but didn't live up to that). <br />The picture slide-show works as advertised. One reviewer did have an issue with that, and the explanation is simple: His 5 MegaPixel camera takes pictures with a resolution of 2592x1944 pixels. Your TV only have 720x486 pixels. The DVD player then have to resize those big pictures to fit on your little screen. That's not something that a DVD player is optimized to do. Since you won't get the benefits of such high quality pictures on your TV, I would recommend you re-size them down to 800x600 before burning them on a disk, and your slideshow will be a lot smoother, and you won't be able to tell the difference in quality.<br />So, if you're looking for an affordable DVD player which will play all your stuff, look no furher.