I bought the DVD-RV31UK, which replaced the RV30 (didn't it?). The RV30 got great reviews.

I can't believe nobody has bothered to mention this, but there is NO COAX DIGITAL OUTPUT!!!

I am impressed by the reviews this player got. I didn't
see a single broken unit. Take a look at the Sony 360
and 560, and you'll see a lot of defective players, or
players that quit working after a few months. The Sony
models did have a lot of features, however, including
two S-video and RCA A/V outputs. But I heard you have
to fill out some survey before Sony's customer service
will talk to you, and can you believe this, you can't
look at their specifications on the internet without
filling out a survey first. Is that stupid, or what?
I am so glad I was able to find another player so I
will never have to deal with Sony.

I actually took a Philips 711 home, and kept it for
a week. I was so glad to have a player that worked
right (see Toshiba comments below), that I almost
failed to see how bad the picture was. It looked
much worse than VHS. It must have had a defect.
So I took it back, and almost bought the Sony from
Best Buy, but I was getting annoyed with them. They
won't let you see the owner's manual, and they
advertised a player on sale when they didn't even have
them.

I was then fortunate enough to see the reviews for the
Panasonic RV30, and decided to buy one. Sears had about
as good a price as I could find on the internet, so I
went there. The guy told me they were just instructed
to quit matching prices from the internet anyway.

============================================================
The RV31 has a great picture, a Dialog Enhancer that seems
to work well, a nice remote, is a brand new model, which
means it should have the very latest firmware, BUT NO
COAX DIGITAL OUTPUT, so I haven't been able to really
listen to it (I'm waiting for a 5 meter Toslink cable
to be delivered - yes, I wanted to keep this player bad
enough to buy one).

With this player, you can also hear audio when you play
at double speed, which I've never seen before.
============================================================

I bought a Toshiba 3108 for $500 2 1/2 years ago that
worked fine until some of the later releases. I went
to a Toshiba authorized repair center and had it upgraded,
at Toshiba's expense. Afterwards, it played the dvd's
that it couldn't before, but every couple of minutes the
audio would skip or blank out. What really motivated me
to buy another player, was the Toshiba not playing a new
disk I bought. Apparently, my player had been fixed, but
they didn't bother to put the latest firmware on it. So
I'm glad I didn't buy another Toshiba.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 360 & 560, Philips 711, Toshiba 3108

great picture & sound quality, reliable performance

menu's & features are confusing.

What can I say - I love DVD's, no rewinding, perfect picture, perfect sound & surround Imaging. pick & choose favorite scenes & you can watch actors & directors stroking their ego's afterwords in the documentaries section (if you like that sort of thing)

Digital Optical cable for sound is an absolute must have. Make sure you have a reciever that has an input for this, & speakers that blend well because the difference this makes in sound imaging will blow you away. Last night I was watching "The Patriot" & in the scene where Mel Gibson & sons ambush the english to rescue his son. I was on the edge of my seat bullets whizzing all around me, shouts up in front, gunshot over my left shoulder, footsteps running around behind me, bullets hitting a tree behind me on my left, more shots from my right, I felt like I was there. It really sounded better in my living room than it did in my local multiplex. But you've got to use the digital outputs or its no different than a nice vcr.

Basic controls are easy enough to use, you can enhance dialogue, & change screen contrast for different room lighting at the touch of a button, automatic detection & decoding of digital or analogue source. Does most functions for you so you can have your technology & enjoy it too. advanced functions & menu's are quite confusing & I've lost my manual, so I may never know what all it does. I would've like a zoom & CDR/CDRW/MP3 decoder built in but maybe thats too much to ask for from a mass marketed $300 DVD player

Similar Products Used:

none

Comfortable remote. This machine is very quiet, and we love the Dialogue Enhancer on this model. Picture is great, we are using a S video cable. The quality of movies we use to watch off of cable, cannot come close to our movies viewed off of our DVD player.

Can't think of any major weaknesses. If this model has any, I guess I would say it should have backlit buttons on the remote. But, then I probably would have paid more. Just wish I could find a DVD movie where we could use the change of angle feature.

This is our first DVD player. We are very happy with its performance. The remote is nice and the button size is ok. It was all the previous reviews on this site that helped in our choice of brand and model. We were also thinking about a Toshiba, but their remote didn't feel as comfortable. So, thanks to everyone who submitted their reviews to this site. We've had the player for two months now. A super machine for anyone who is starting out for the first time. Go buy yourself one, if you are sitting in the middle of the fence, you won't regret it.

video performance and direct subwoofer output, which I plan to make use of.

Over-emphasizes upper frequencies?

Very good video reproduction. Very good music CD fidelity in terms of clarity and definition, BUT highs seem to be too shrill and strident. Anyone else notice that or is it my particular setup?

Everything works! Hasn't skipped yet! Reasonable price.

No zoom, cannot play CD-R.

Bought the Sansung (actually tried 2 of them) it is a pig! Exchanged that for the Panasonic, and I'm happy to report it works flawlessly! Have used DTS movies such as Seven and Saving Private Ryan, now I'll never have to go to the movie theater!
Minuses. My only real gripes are 1) I felt the Samsung actually reproduced slightly deeper/warmer bass tones(I haven't purchased a Sub-woof yet) without the sub-woof. 2)The fact that it can't play CD-R. 3)It doesn't have a zoom function. Pluses. It hasn't skipped yet! The remote functions, while tricky at first, work well and are comprehensible and convenient. The sound through the optical input is very good and will be great once I get the Sub-woof. The video quality thru my basic RCA input looks very good. Unit runs cool, not warm or hot to touch. The 199.00 price tag is a fair value for this unit. I'd recommend it. It is plugged into Technics SA-DX940 A/V receiver, A pretty basic 27" Sanyo Stereo TV, and the speakers are 25 year old Radio Shack Realistics(what can I say, they sound good and were built to last) and Sony surround and center.

Similar Products Used:

Samsung DVD-711(DO NOT BUY!!!)
Sony DVD-360( my girlfriends)(no problems reported)
Panasonic DVD-333(my Brothers)(no problems reported)

Still going strong!

Remote not backlit

Just a quick update on the performance of the RV-30. 3 months into ownership and no problems to report. Watched Gladiator, U-571, Tomorrow Never Dies, Tarzan, This is Spinal Tap. My only drawback is the lack of a sub-woofer, which I have to rectify myself anyway. The sub output from the player will come in handy I am sure. Tonight it's Braveheart, followed by Romeo Must Die and The Perfect Storm (man, I really need a sub!)

Similar Products Used:

None

Made in Japan, price and great reviews, but.....

Freezing up, sometimes it restarts, sometimes the unit will lock up and will have to power down to regain control.

After reading all the positive reviews, this was to be my first DVD player. Worked great for a week. Decided to purchase a Yamaha 5280 to enjoy home theater audio, then things went bad. RV30 started freezing up at random and freeze would last 1-2 seconds or just lock up the machine.
Sears says RV30 no longer available so they offered replacement with RV65 but no solid reviews to read.
One short comment of RV65 said video was great but audio was poor.
Comments and comparisons of the two would be appreciated.
Just wish my RV30 worked out. Have to note that a friend bought an RV30 at the same time from the same store. His is working perfectly.
Price was $199 less $50 Panasonic rebate.

Similar Products Used:

None

Great picture great sound fast

no playback of cd r's cd rw's.

This dvd player is great it has great sound and picture and it is really fast with a great remote. The one thing that i almost fell off of my chair when i found out was that it doesnt play cd r's or cd rw's because that is more than half of my collection.

Similar Products Used:

hitachi on my computer

Good picture, clear sound in both movies and most music, quick play feature, decent remote, S-video, Component video.

No coax audio output (which might not be a bad thing for some), a half-second of the beginnings of tracks on CD playback are cutoff, slightly warm sounding CD playback.

This is my third DVD player now and I'm hoping to God above that this will be the last one for a while. My first player was an entry level Emerson DVD player which looked great, had nice features, and a great picture and sound...however, it didn't have enough memory to play movies such as "The Matrix", or other DVD's packed with extras. That really made my blood boil and instead of opting to mail the player to the Emerson Radio Corporation for a period of 6-8 weeks, I decided to replace it with a Fisher Audio DVD player. This compact-design DVD player was a vast improvement over the Emerson, but I was starting to notice that it too was being driven quite hard with movies such as "Terminator 2" and it wouldn't allow me to play the "special edition" version of the movie (which is why I bought the DVD in the first place!). I felt quite bad giving up my Fisher because it had provided me with many hours of faithful service and entertained myself and my friends for many evenings. The Fisher now has a nice resting place in my bedroom system.

It's the Panasonic DVD-RV30 player that now sits on the top shelf of my A/V system which goes very nicely with the Technics SA-AX7 5.1-ready receiver and matching Technics DD, DTS decoder (see review of Technics SA-AX7 A/V Receiver).

Set-up of the Panasonic took about 5 minutes (since I've done it so many times). After hooking everything up to their respective inputs and outputs, I navigated a few on-screen menus to set the player's audio, languages, etc., and before long, I was ready to fire up my first movie. I threw in "High Fidelity" starring John Cusack. The dialogue enhancer on the Panasonic is a nice feature for dialogue driven movies such as this one and it was greatly apprectiated. The music soundtrack in this film is wonderful and the Panasonic player allowed the music to come through naturally and unobtrusively. The picture quality of this player is fantastic! Colors are bright and natural. Flesh-tones are clear enough to make me think that the actors are right in front of me in my living room...as any decent DVD player should do.

After sampling a variety of movies ranging from "High Fidelity" to "Toy Story 2" to "Saving Private Ryan" to "Gladiator" to "Princess Mononoke", I have to say that there are absolutely NO complaints when it comes to movie playback.

But as for CD playback...here's where the player seems to suffer. Now maybe I just managed to purchase a weird player, but something tells me that I'm not alone in this...It seems that the player cuts off about 0.5 seconds at the beginning of each track and so the first half-beat of songs, or symphonies, are cut off! Also, the sound quality of CD playback is a bit too "warm" for my tastes and there aren't enough details in the sound. Overtones are muffled compared to the Sony 5-disc CD changer that rests a couple of shelves below the Panasonic. So, I reserve my critical music listening for the Sony CD player.

All in all, this relatively unexciting player is terrific for movies. It's clean visuals and audio are mighty impressive. Price is highly reasonable especially with a $50 dollar mail-in rebate! Where it stumbles is in its CD playback which is too warm for my tastes and the fact that it cuts off a half second at the beginning of tracks is unacceptable in my mind. I would recommend this as an entry-level player, but I would also recommend that you don't use it to replace your CD player.

4 stars for value and 3.5 stars for its great movie performance but poor CD playback.

Similar Products Used:

Fisher, Emerson

Great Picture, Excellent Features for two channel operation (VSS, Dialogue enhancer, night mode)

None that I've noticed yet. No Coax digital could be an issue when I finally get the Digital receiver. Remote is a little weird and backlit buttons would have been helpful whenthe lights are low/off for movies.

Basically, I wanted a player that would allow me to enjoy DVD's on a 12 year old Yamaha two channel set up that would serve me well until I can find the funds and opportunity do the full 5.1 receiver and speakers thing.

I don't think I could possibly have made a better choice.

I'm very happy with this player. I pretty much agree with everything Andy Kim wrote below so I won't go into too much detail on individual features.

One thing that surprised me is how much of a difference I can hear with regular audio CD's compared to my 14 year old Pioneer CD player. DAC's sure have gotten better over the years. I wouldn't have believed it before I heard it.

Another nice thing is that there is a line out for a subwoofer so I'm thinking that mayber I could stagger the upgrades and buy a sub first before I do the receiver and other five speakers. I'm thinking that this may be a good bang for the buck approach. Now, where can I find a good 10" sub?

Another thing, Sears Canada rules again. Here's why:
Easy ordering over the web, fast delivery, No shipping charges (local pickup point), They even price matched a website price I found for $50CDN less than their catalog price 10 days after I ordered it with no hassle at all.

What a store, all this and great wrenches too!

My only beef was that Panasonic Canada told me that the $50 mail in rebate going on in the US right now was not available in Canada because they were a "Different" company. Sheesh, give me a break!

Similar Products Used:

None this is my first DVD deck