Panasonic DVD-RV32S DVD Player, Silver
Great value for the functionality you get.
I've been looking for a long time for player that would be versatile, cheap and come from respectable manufacturer.<BR>Finally my search was over.<BR>This new player from Panasonic has a very clean and easy to navigate menus, good features for DVD playback. A lot of functions have been coded into dedicated buttons on remote so you don't have to invoke menu if all you want to do, let's say is to review the last several seconds of a scene that interested you.<BR>The functionality that really won me over was playback of MP3 and WMA files coming from brand new hardware decoding chip. You can say that a lot of modern day DVD Players can play MP3 files. But what about usability? Most of these players won't let you navigate files in tree-like structure and those that do usually crop file names to the first 8 characters, leaving you to guess what could '001. Fl~.mp3' mean. This player displayes up to 41 characters of the file name and presents it in a very nice  interface where you can easily navigate between folders and choose the track that you really want. It's such a pleasure to use that I forgot when was the last time I fired up my PC to listen to some track. If you own the receiver, then Optical Digital output will make sure that these sounds will get to your ears unaletred. As for the DVD picture quality, it is great on my 36'' TV with provided component video Outs.<BR>As any other player it is not perfect. Some of the things that you may want but are not in this player:<BR>- no progressive support;<BR>- no mp3 playlist support;<BR>- only Region 1 decoding and only NTSC (too bad if you own DVD movies from Europe or Asia)<BR>But for the price this unit is selling I can afford to buy it now and then replace it in a couple of years with much more modern player without breaking the bank.