I just purchased the player at Costco a few days ago June 17th, 1999. So far it seems a far unit for the price ( under $300 ). I purchased it for the color component output ( Y Pb Pr ) and the s-video output connector. The previous unit I had was only Analog. It has digital outputs to go to my reciever, both optical and coax.
There is an interesting feature called " VIRTUAL Surround " that works with analog connections to two channel ( stereo )audio, that plays Dolby digital and Pro logic DVD in an interesting way. The only issue I have is that the unit is very light weight so I question it's long term durability. The user manual is fair, with detailed instructions on the use of the remote control. I appreciate the front panel stereo headphone jack with volume control, because I don't always want to rock the rest of the world.

I ran the Video Essentials DVD by Joe Kane productions through it's paces and found a few anomalies, but nothing earth shattering. Over all not a bad unit, but time will tell.

Last week, I was testing a Phillips 825 DVD player. I'm now test driving a Sharp DV-600U that I got at Costco for around $270. It doesn't have the dual laser pickup, and thus does not do the CD-R thang. But, the video quality is very nice, and my goodness, the handling of layer changes on this unit is TERRIFIC, it totally blows away the Phillips on layer changes (you don't get the AC-3 dropouts during a layer change at all). It even handled the layer change for Tomorrow Never Dies very well, and that DVD played well on both fronts,the video and audio. I checked the later changes for Aliens and True
Lies, and the playback never missed a beat. I was amazed.

The Sharp has coax and optical outputs for AC-3/dts bitstreams. Also,
it has component, s-video, and composite video outputs. Plus, it
even comes with a s-video cable! Amazing. It purportedly plays real
audio CDs and VCDs (those with the nice shiny silver backing, not the
blue/green backings from CD-R's as mentioned before.). It also has a
headphoe jack with gain control. Its footprint is like a mini CD
player for your home stereo, about 11" wide and 13" deep. Would
make for a nice bedroom DVD player if space is an issue.

Normal music CDs sound nice on this player as well.

Now the negatives:

1. The remote is medium-sized, but the button placement for the menu
navigation is horrendous. The buttons are not arranged in a PLUS formation,
rather imagine Up/Down as one tall button, and then left/right as one
tall button just underneath the up/down button. Absolutely ludicrous.
The chapters skip and the play/stop buttons look like your typical
layout for a VCR remote. The FF/FRev buttons are just underneath the
abovementioned playback buttons, which I can live with.

2. When you do a chapter skip forward or reverse, there's a slight
pause which seems like the player is trying to sync up the video with
the audio. It's not too annoying, but it's present only some of the
time that I had tried it on 6 different DVD's tonight.

3. It doesn't play CD-Rs.

Notes: I can't test dts playback since I don't care for the format, and
I don't have a dts decoder built-in my receiver. no big loss. I can't
test component video playback since I don't have a TV that will entertain
component video inputs. But the video playback with both composite and
s-video looked nice. I also couldn't test 16x9 since I don't have a
16x9 TV set.

Well, that's it for the negatives on this unit from me.

I can't vouch for Sharp's reputation for product reliability, but
for a backup/bedroom DVD player, it's not a bad choice.

I picked this one up locally for $321 CDN or about $220 state side. Definitely a unique design given how much smaller it is compared to the typical table top units. The unit is classified as a throw away unit for me given it's cheap price ... my 3rd DVD player ... a test of other brands.
Just some observations about performance first. The unit will not pass blacker than black signals like the Toshibas and the Sonys and others. An oversight, but not fatal.

The AVIA test disc resolution pattern clearly shows 490 to 500 lines of resolution from this unit.

Component output is nice, but the resulting image is noticeably different from my Toshiba units in terms of color saturation and the tint is slightly different. Hard to tell if the Toshibas are correct or this one is or neither?

Menus are almost nonexistent ...

The remote is cumbersome and gawd awful in its design in that all the buttons seem to be placed in the wrong location. Horrible, horrible. I programmed all the functions into my pioneer universal remote and now it works great. :) my pioneer remote.

Well, it does what I need it to do for a low price point. The DTS works fine, but the unit will not pass 96/24 coded information.

Remote: 1/5
Price: 5/5
Picture: 4/5
Audio: 4/5

price/form factor/features

remote is too small

Price was my motivation, so I recently purchased this unit at Costco for $179. The manufacture date of this unit is 11/99, and to date I have had no major problems with this unit. I do think that it is a bit too noisy, and the remote is too small and difficult to use.

If price is a concern, you can't do much better. The feature set is fantastic, the picture looks great and the sound is good too.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba 3109

Hands-down, HUGE cut-above ANY VCR. Even through a non-Dolby receiver, it's virtual surround sound is impressive. Sharp picture. Good sound. Small footprint. Has optical, S-video and "RCA" outputs. Great price.

"Occasionally" freezes in middle of some movies. Press pause and then play, usually resumes. Doesn't play CDR or MP3's. Slow load time.

If you're a high-end audiophile, you're not going look at this model. If you're a movie enthusiast (like me--who was just getting into DVD when I purchased this unit), and you can find one of these under $150, then go for it.

I have thoroughly enjoyed owning it. DVD is a pardigm shift of immense and obvious proportion. What a great leap forward for my movie viewing!!!

Into my second year of enjoying this box. Down the road, I'll probably buy a model with more features, like mp3 and cdr, but this Sharp has been great, overall.

Similar Products Used:

DVD on IBM Thinkpad. (Laptops with DVD rock!!! The screens are small, but the resolution is 3x's the average tv, equivalent to HDTV.)

Small footprint, excellent picture and sound, variety of output connections.

Clumsy remote, slow disc loading.

For the money I think this is a very nice player. I have seen a lot of complaints about movies freezing, but this seems to be caused by dust and fingerprints on the disc surface. Every movie I rent, I always wipe it off first and this has eliminated almost all of the freezing problems. This player has no trouble playing some of the "problem" DVDs like "The Matrix". I have been very happy with it.

NONE

Skips, stutters, pauses, poor remote

I bought this player in October, 1999 at Costco. From the beginning, we noticed little "glitches" in movies we watched. We'd experience skips, stuttering audio, & pauses that took skipping to the next chapter to get out of. I got concerned when I asked friends if they experienced the same glitches with the same movies. NOPE, they NEVER had. Of course, they were quick to remind me they didn't have the Sharp DV600.

I called Sharp and they had NEVER heard of any problems with this model. They suggested I take it in for repair. Instead I took it back to Costco and (bless their hearts), they took it back 4 months after my purchase and with no receipt! I got another. Then I found this web site, read the poor reviews and figured a new unit wouldn't help me. I returned it for a refund and I'm now looking for a new DVD player.

I consider myself VERY lucky to have gotten rid of this player so easily. I recommend you avoid this DVD player at all costs

Inexpensive, good outputs

Skips sporadically and freezes. Remote is horrible

Well when i intially reviewed this player I was quite happy with it. Well the honeymoon is over and I am now somewhat unhappy with it.My player will sometimes skip for a few seconds for no apparent reason on a perfectly clean disc. The thing that is odd, is that it always do it at the some point on the disc or at all. This leads me to believe it's my player. Also, the picture will sometimes freeze requiring the user to push pause and then play to start it up again. This occured on my Brand new(as in first time i opened it and put it in the player) BASEketball DVD during the Reel Big Fish video. However, upon repeat viewing of the same scene, it did not do it.Similiar things have happened on several of my 20 or so DVDs so i know it's not the disc. The remote, which i thought i could learn to use, is still pretty darn bad.Also, the unit froze and went to an all green screen while i had The World is Not Enough paused(i had actually hit the slow motion button by accident while i went to get a drink in the other room) so i think that might have bee part of the problem.Also it doesn't help that the nearest service center is in New York City. I've heard others have not had such problems but I unfortunately do. Overall, not a great unit because of the problems but it does work for the most part and was under 200 dollars.

low cost

skips, freezes, slow to load and resume

I bought this unit as a first player, and I've had it for over a year. Right from the start, it would freeze randomly, it seems to be heat related. I would avoid this unit.