Panasonic DVD-RV31K DVD Player, Black
This is a good, not great DVD player.
I bought this player after owning a Panasonic A-120 model which I really liked.  I got the RV31K because it will play CDRs, CDRWs and discs encoded with MP3 files which the A-120 would not.<br />I have rated this player only 3 stars for a couple reasons. First of all, even tho it will play MP3-encoded discs, I have found that it will not play all the tracks on some discs.  I'm not sure why except that I heard that if the MP3 file isn't encoded at a 128K bit rate it won't play it.  Not sure if this is true but I do know I have a disc with over 100 tracks and the RV31K only recognized 25 of them.<br />The second reason I only rate the RV31K with 3 stars is that the build quality is very flimsy.  The player is extremely light and doesn't have that solid &quot;feel&quot; to it.  It doesn't have the nice large round insulator feet that I have come to expect on all consumer electronics items.  It has 2 &quot;fake&quot; insulator feet on the front and none at all on the back.<br />The drive itself is also relatively noisy when loading and unloading discs compared to the A-120 and other players I've looked at. A kind of high-pitched whine emanates from the player when loading/unloading discs.  The A-120 was completely quiet.<br />To its credit the player has several nice features and Panasonic improved the size and layout of the buttons on the remote compared to the tiny buttons that were on the A-120's remote.<br />And I've not had any problems with the player thus far other than the MP3 problem, having owned it for about 5 months.  I just wish Panasonic had not cut back on the build quality as much as they did.  It feels more like a &quot;budget&quot; player, e.g. Apex than one from one of the biggest and I think, best consumer electronics companies in the world.<br />But I'll probably hang onto it till affordable DVD recorders become available in the next couple years.