Great choice for a budget DVD

I own many DVD players ranging from the high end at $1000, to the very low end at $49. In my DVD experience you get what you pay for. But, there also isn't much since in buying more DVD player than your TV can handle either, which is why I have such a large array of players.

Recently I decided to add a DVD player to a TV that was not connected to my whole house system. It was going to be attached to a 13 year old TV, and I probably wouldn't even use it all that much, so my main objective was cheap. When I left the store I came out with an inexpensive Panasonic S35 that was inexpensive, but not really cheap.

Even though I was only planning to spend less than $125, preferably less, I still did LOTS of research. I narrowed it down to the Panasonic S35 and the Toshiba 3900 based on build quality, design, and feature set. Both of these machines featured Progressive Output and Zoom, which are not standard on all DVD players, and certainly not in the $100 price range.

I also looked at Samsung. Mitsubishi, and Sony. All of these players felt and looked cheap and had no design to them at all. I did not look at the Philips models as they don't claim to support DVD-R, which was a priority for me.

In the end the Toshiba had a better feature set because it offered BOTH optical and COAX digital audio inputs. The Panasonic only has optical. However, since I was going to be using analog anyone, this wasn't that big of a deal. More important to me was compatibility with DVD-R. While the Toshiba has DVD-R compatibility, my DVD-R Recorder is a Panasonic (DMR20) so I decided to play it safe. I think the Toshiba might be a better player overall still.

Inside the box you won't find much. The player, a skimpy manual, a power cable, and remote with batteries. You'll need to supply your own cables. (PLEASE don't buy the pricy ones they'll try and sell you at BestBuy, Circuit City, etc. For most people this is just throwing money away, especially when connecting to a budget machine).

Hook up is pretty straight forward and every thing is labeled well. The one thing I do LOVE about Panasonic is that they don't solder the power cable to the machine. Having a removable power cable makes installation so much easier if you are putting your machine in a small space or have to feed the cable through a small hole common in A/V furniture.

The machine itself it fairly quite and loads up quickly, at least compared to my older DVDs. Set up was a snap with the Quick Set-Up option. You can also set-up manually if you are so inclined. The picture quality was very good. I've noticed very little pixelization, which is common on cheap players. Moreover, I haven't seen any skipping even on the most suspect discs (though I confess this is hardly a benchmark since I've only tried a few).

As I mentioned DVD-R compatibility was key for me. I tested several DVD-Rs to usually good results. I tried three DVD-Rs burned with Apple Computer's iDVD program. Two of these were on Apple media and one was on generic media. The two on Apple media worked perfectly. Unfortunately, the generic disc failed to load. Next, I tried some discs burned on my Panasonic DVD-R settop recorder. As one would expect these all played fine.

For the money, The S35 is right at the top in my book. I have not really seen the Toshiba in action, but as far as features and build quality go it looks great too. If you are in the market for a new player take a look at these. And whatever you do, stay away from the feature packed off-brands like Apex, Mintek, and the like that are being sold for $59. Like I said, when it comes to DVD players, you get what you pay for (the S35 and Tos 3900 being the exceptions). Also, if you just spend $1000+ for a nice HDTV set, this ISN'T the player for you. You want a DVD that is at least as nice as your TV. Check out the Pioneer Elite and Sony ES lines.