Performance

Reliability

I've had this unit for over two years now. I play about 70-30 music and video on it. Overall I have enjoyed the performance of this unit. For the last several months the unit has intermittantly refused to read discs. Often this happens after playing one disk and trying to switch to another. This can be resolved by switching the unit off and on, often several times. The problem seems to be getting more and more frequent. I've contacted Onkyo about the problem. They said I need to send take it in for service. I haven't done this because I am concerned with the ridiculous service prices I've heard for these things. I also have an Onkyo TX-DS575x receiver. I am starting to experience intermittant problems with that unit as well. Sometimes the unit will not play any sound. This is resolved by switching back and forth between sources. Onkyo has said that unit needs to be serviced also. Because of the reliability issues I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND PURCHASING ONKYO. The performance is very good to excellent, however the reliability concerns are just not worth it.

Good quality in picture and sound

Unreliable and costly to repair.

After intermittant troubles in reading disks, the unit was unable to see the disks any longer. Brought it into a authorized serve center and the estimate was $350 to repair. Am now trying to get Onyko to either repair, assist in the cost of the repair or a credit towards a new unit. Not sure if I want to go for #3 since I really not sure if I would ever purchase another Onkyo product again.

Excellent dts and dolby digital ex quality through an optical cable.

Unreliable (I could have had a lemon). Seems to only like pressed disks, no good if you make your own vcd's (I can't watch my family home videos through it).

I have had to take the player back 5 times for warranty repairs in the last 8 months (lucky it has a 5 yr warranty). It continued to display the same problem, it would freeze and then after freezing would not detect any disks. It has just come back again and Onkyo's Australian supplier swear they have swapped my player for another, I should have written the serial number down, I know, but I forgot... hopefully this player will function well. When it does work, it works well with any pressed (original) DVD from any region and any audio cd's. I have not found a vcd that is pressed and not burnt so I can't test it's vcd functionality. As yet I have not been able to get it to play any cd-r's but i will try the sony's mentioned by another reviewer.

Similar Products Used:

Acer 40x DVD ROM in Pc (perfect functionality for over 3 years)

None for the price. You get a better deal with other machines of same price

1. Doesn''t read all discs 2. Skips and freezes 3. Ejects and closes continuously 4. Gives disc errors

I am writing to warn potential buyers from buying this model and the next model of Onkyo DVD players. This one doesn''t read all discs, freeze often, and gives error messages. In addiiton customer seervice is very poor and you will be stuck with a melon soon.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic Sony

Price & quality

Not progressive scan.

This was my first DVD player so I have very little to compare it to. I bought the 5 disk thinking I would eliminate my old CD player, however this unit lacks some of the ease of use features of my CD player so I kept it (a good move with respect to the multi room feature of my new Marantz 7200 reciever). Contrary to other reviewers I havn''t had any trouble with this unit in over a year. It does pause sometimes between chapters (less than 1 second) but this seems to be related to the disk not the player.

Before I got one I just wanted to know is there a way to make this DVD player region free?

Great picture quality. Passes sound along to receiver extremely well.

Display will dim, but not go completely off.

This has worked very well for me. I have a 27" Sony Wega, I anticipated that I might use the zoom feature more often, but it turns out that I just watch everything in widescreen. You'll get use to it and realize that it is much better. The picture is brilliant, but where it really impresses is the sound. I have it hooked up to my Marantz A/V receiver(just the audio, the picture is right to my TV since I couldn't quite come up with another $2500.00 for the Marantz sr-18 with component switching)and Polk speakers. The Dolby 5.1 and DTS soundtracks really blow me away. I have also hooked up and tried the Sony 560 with my system, and the sound was not as good. I'm using the coaxial output, I haven't tried the toslink. I guess that the speakers and receiver don't hurt the sound:) I plan on using the Onkyo until DVD audio and recording become mainstream.

I bought it from ABT electronics online. They had free shipping and it went really smooth. They also had the 535 for about $277. I couldn't find it going through their website, but if you do a search on mysimon.com, there should be a link from mysimon to ABT for the 535. The 501 does not have gold component outputs, but the 601 does. I do not use this as my main cd player, but it could certainly take care of that need if it has to. I thought about the Onkyo 301, but it is only a doctored up Pioneer product. I wish Onkyo wouldn't have done that. I researched DVD players for about a month before I bought this. I was willing to spend up to $600, and I chose this one. At least go to your Onkyo dealer and take a look at it. Feel free to ask me questions.

DTS/DD optical outputs,Direct path audio,5 Disk,good on screen display,S video,comp out

None{Can't program remote I don't know if you would consider this a weakness)

When you buy an Onkyo product you expect the audio to be above avg.....So to my surprise it was better than I expected and I expected great sound from this DVD player and the real big surprise to me was the video that this machine produced...it was may above my expectations....This player clearly outperformed my Panasonic and sony player hands down period..This player holds 5 disk which I feel is a plus you can play a disk and make changes while it is playing...The difference between this player and the Onkyo DV-C535 is a single disk player and the price Diff is about $20.00 so for the money diff I bought the 5 player.. if you want 6 disk onkyo DV-C601....purchased mine from onecall for 325.Fed x to my door in 2 days.....Don

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic & Sony

5 disc , solid build.

Freezes and locks up on most DVDs. It is huge.

This thing locks up on every other DVD. At first it was fine. But after 2 months and many DVDs , now it is unusable. It will wait until half way through the movie and then kick you in the chomes with a frozen screen. I have a piece of crap Pioneer434 that does not freeze the same DVDs.

Maybe I have a bad one. None of the other reviews on this site are over 3 months old - just wait fellas.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer , Sony, Toshiba , Denon.

Well built, sound and picture quality, zoom modes

doesn't play CD-R's

I think this is a great player for the money. It doesn't seem to have any of the problems that plague the Sony’s. I had this for a couple months and the biggest problem I’ve had is that some DVD’s have a couple frame pause during the layer transition (almost a second.) It’s only bad in movies where the put the change in the middle of a scene instead of the end.

I found it really easy to use with great menus and displays. The zoom modes are really nice to. If you have a wide screen only movie you can zoom in 1 step and make the screen bigger. You can than pan around on the screen. It surprising that some of the panasonic’s don’t do this.

The down side for me was the remote. It’s got everything you need but it’s not back-lit and all the buttons are the same size. It looks like the older yamaha remotes (I have one those too.)

Some people complain about how the random access works for music CD's but I think it's fine. I think the reason that random play plays all songs on 1 CD before moving on to the next, is because of the load time it takes between CD's. If it did a truly random selection there would be a 10 second gap between each song (that would be worse.)

I would defiantly recommend buying this DVD player!