Great Entry Level DVD Player

First, I believe this model as of 2/2006 is discontinued, so you will probably only find it on eBay and the liquidators these days.

I got mine on eBay from a dealer who specializes in RMA's (customer returns) and who supposedly tests them fully before putting them up for auction, and who guarantees them. I was in somewhat of a hurry so I put in a snipe bid of $ 34 and got it for about that figure, plus $ 12 shipping, which is still better than the retail store price for what is still basically a new machine in the original packing.

The first thing one might ask is why would you pay (retail) $ 80 or even $ 45 (eBay) for a DVD player when you can get the $ 30 no-name special from Wal-Mart or Costco? In my case, there were two reasons. One, I wanted to play VCD's, a format popular in Asia which is unavailable on the cheap players. This player can handle VCD's (there is no issue of region, PAL/NTSC etc. in this case.) The other reason was that most of the low-end no-name import players are awful and don't have too many useful features. For example, this Sony will remember where you left off on a DVD and allow you to go back to that spot later, even if you turn off the machine or remove the disc. Not so with most others. Also, some well used DVD's that were constantly freezing up on a brand new DVD-VCR dual machine from Radio Shack played flawlessly on this Sony.

If you have a Sony TV, this remote will control the volume and power on it too, a handy feature.

One major thing about this and most other DVD players, is that there is no coaxial output to feed your TV through the antenna jack. In other words, unless you have a newer TV with RCA jacks for the video and audio, you will have to buy an accessory RF modulator to use this model players. I suspect that's why there are so many of them on the "refurbished" circuit -- customers buy them, take them home, and discover that their older TV doesn't have any component video jacks, so they can't use it, and back it goes.

I thought I would be clever and use this Sony machine on my ancient RCA Color-Trak TV anyway, because my VCR does have a coaxial output on TV Channel 3 and also has a second component video input available which can be switched in and out via that remote. This indeed worked, however I eventually discovered that a couple DVD's would not play properly. The sound was normal but the video would endlessly fade out to black, negative, and then back to normal, over and over. Playing the same DVD's, but with a Sony TV hooked up to the video output directly, there were no problems at all. I did some research and learned that you can't run the video from your DVD player through your VCR and have it work every time, because for some reason the copy-guard on some DVD's goofs up the VCR which is feeding the picture to your older TV. Thus, it's best to buy an RF modulator if you want to use this on an older TV (eBay has these for less than $ 10 if you are patient.)

As another review says, the left-right and up-down buttons on the remote are pretty touchy but it isn't a big drawback.

My player was shipped poorly by the dealer, with the remote flying around loose in the box and no padding material at all, but it worked fine upon receipt. After about 1/2 hour of first use, it developed an annoying motor noise which was traced to the left side, and tightening the screw on the case at that side totally eliminated it. This was probably the result of poor shipping and not Sony. I have put about 25 hours on the machine since with no problems whatever, other than my one or two can't-watch-them DVD's which don't like to be played through the VCR.

As other reviewers point out, the physical construction of this player seems a bit flimsy and thin, but that seems to be the way of all the late model types in this price range. For some reason, these have been produced in either black or silver. Mine was silver although the same model bought by a friend turned out to be black.

I haven't tried it with jpg's or MP3's yet, but then why not use the computer for those anyway.

All in all, if you can get one of these for less than $ 60 I think you would be happy with it and it will be a lot more satisfying than the cheap Chinese and Korean no-name machines. Just make sure your TV has either S-Video or RCA jack video and audio inputs or else you will need to buy an accessory modulator unit!