Panasonic DVD-S52S DVD Player

• 720p output
• Up-conversion to 1080i
• Supports DVD Audio (5.1)
• Dolby Digital and DTS decoders
• Plays DVD-R, CD-R & CD-RW; MP3, WMA, JPEG & MPEG4 playback with on-screen navigator

I bought this dvd player thinking it should be quality product. At a good price I didnt second guess myself. I have had good luck with Panasonic dvd players. My first one I bought back in 1997 when they first started becoming popular It was over $300. That old player still works flawlessly.

I purchased this dvd player along with my new 50 inch screen rear projection lcd t.v. I hooked it up through HDMI cables. I watched The Incredibles first , being that I have kids. I thought the movie looked good on regular tv but this was not only bigger but better overall picture than my old 32 inch. My kids now call this my Movie theater. I have watched a lot of computer animated movies and they all look as if I am watching a real movie screen. Very impressed with picture of most movies. There are some movies that dont look as good but definatley not bad picture.

As far as the upconversion I didnt see a big difference from 480p, 720p, and 1080i, I keep it set at 720p and this work fine for all movies. I find it pretty easy to jump from one setting to another.

Overall I think I could not be happier, dvd movies look good, not too complicated to operate. On a side note, I think watching sports in HI DEF is the best way to take advantage of this technology. Movies look real good but nothing like watching outdoor game on Sunday.

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I bought this to replace a sony progressive scan player I bought about 4 years ago. Remember when 480p was the bomb resolution? After recently purchasing a 1080p HDTV I wanted a solid upconverter w/ an HDMI output. I am in no rush to consider (true 1080p sources) HD DVD/Blu-ray until their "war" is over (& price drops on movies & equipment). The HDMI is spec. 1.2a for those who are familiar. The unit itself is very slim (a big plus design wise) and lightweight (about 5 lbs.) The sole drawback is the remote's design w/ it's ugly bottom battery bulge. I strongly considered Sony's 75H player, but this model offers more features and a lower cost. In fact I was able to buy an HDMI cable & this player for less than the sony cost! It's nice to see the DVD audio is finally playable through a digital output (HDMI). Keep an eye on these kind of players I'm sure they will all be upconverting to 1080p soon, perhaps by next year? In closing, this Panasonic is an overall great value and I would highly recommend.

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This is a pretty good upconverting DVD player, and I am happy with my purchase. I have it connected to my Panasonic 42" plasma and the picture quality is great!

Note that for the upconverting to work, you have to use a HDMI cable (component outputs only 480p in this player) and turn on 720p/1080i output explicitly from the menu.

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This player displays movie dvd's with optional image zoom which can display a widescreen panavision 2.35:1 anamorphic dvd to fully fit a 16:9 widescreen tv vertically as well as horizontal, cropping only the sides of the image and preserving the enhanced vertical resolution of the anamorphic widescreen dvd. The zoom control settings are specific to standard film types as well as an Automatic mode which works for panavision. Tv's with aspect control to display the anamorphic widescreen image (via the required horizontal stretch preserving the height) leave horizontal black bars consuming 1/3 of the screen height because of the extremely wide format; you may get the higher anamorphic resolution but not the display height. None of them have the particular mode required even when equipped with various zoom controls. I have not found any other player with this particular zoom control either, and some will only zoom static photographs. The panasonic feature allows a 32" widescreen tv to display the movies in the same height as would a 40" screen, at the cost of some cropping of the sides only.

This is less of a problem with less wide Academy Standard 1.85:1 widescreen films, but most films with panoramic scenery are in panavision.

For best results it may be necessary to use the new HDMI cable, as the component video connection only outputs 480p; the 720p hd signal is only on the digital connector.

I bought this DVD player to replace the Toshiba SD-K860SU DVD player, which was giving me trouble mainly because it would pause every once in a while, apparently to "buffer" the program data. So far, after about a month's worth of use this machine does not exhibit that problem the movies play fine from start to end.

This Panasonic has a feature that I really like, and that the Toshiba and some other players I have had were lacking. It is that if you turn off the unit while you are watching a movie, it will remember the exact location you were at so you can resume at some later point (without removing the disk of course).

Another feature I really like is that you can move captions down, out of the way. That won't matter to you if you don't use captions but most people do for foreign films, and I use them for most movies because I'm hard-of-hearing. When the movie has a very widescreen aspect ratio, you will get a small black letter-box effect at the bottom and top of the screen (when using a 16:9 HDTV), so it's great to be able to move the captions down into that black area. The DVD player will not remember that setting from one movie to the next, so you have to set it each time you want it. No big deal. Note that if the movie has the 16:9 aspect ratio, it fills the screen all the way to the edges, as it is supposed to.

It has various audio enhancing controls that I've played with but don't fully understand. One of them is supposed to enhance dialog, so the background music doesn't overwealm the dialog. I think it works pretty well, but I have not done exhaustive parallel testing. Also I do not have an audio system, just the speakers in my Visio HDTV, which I'm actually pretty happy with (someday we'll upgrade to home theatre audio...)

You can set the various menus to be semi-transparent, so you can see the action behind the menus while the movie is going on. I like that.

Of course this player is an "upconverting" model. I am no videophile, but I am extremely impressed with the pictures I get on my TV from this DVD player. They are brilliant, and quite satisfactory.

Meanwhile speaking of pictures this DVD player appears to be much more "intelligent" that the Toshiba in this way: A lot of the time the special features on DVDs are presented in 4:3 aspect ratio maybe to save space on the DVD or save production costs. The movie itself is typically in 16:9 ratio or some such. The player is "smart" enough to show each in its correct ratio. With the Toshiba, I would have to manually switch to 4:3 when watching the features, and then switch back for the next DVD. (Unlike some people, I really prefer to watch the pictures in their original format I don't get the notion of stretching the picture, which distorts all the images. I know using 4:3 on a 16:9 set "wastes" the space on the sides, but so what?).

Now for the ONLY thing I've found that could be improved: On my old machine (the dreaded Toshiba), if I pressed the "info" button, it would tell me the elapsed time, the time remaining, the chapter number, and the number of chapters. The Panasonic will give all that information, EXCEPT for the total number of chapters. I would have liked that information, because the main on-board digital display just gives the current chapter number (no elapsed time, like on some DVD players), so you don't have a sense for how far into the movie you are, unless you are watching the clock. Of course this is completely irrelevant if you are watching a gripping movie, but when you're watching "My Dinner With Andre" you really want to know how close to the end you are.

I read some other reviews indicating that the DVD tray was flimsy. It is not made of iron and I wouldn't use it as a sledge-hammer rest, but it seems sturdy enough to me.

Delivery of this machine from Amazon's vendor was rapid and uneventful, and setup was quick and easy.

I have not used the remote, since I use a universal remote (the Osiris MX-350). I used a pre-programmed Panasonic DVD code on the remote, but had to make numerous manual programming adjustments to get all the buttons to work. As every Osiris owner knows, making those adjustments are VERY fun and something to look forward to.

I'm very happy with my purchase and expect to use this DVD player for a long time to come at least until they settle on an HD-DVD standard and HD-DVD players become affordable.