Best standard-def video I've seen, period. Sound quality excellent, but I always use the D/A converters in my HK receiver, so they sound about the same. Build quality on the Sherwood is great for a sub $500 player.

Not sure yet. I'll write a follow-up review in about 6 months.

I used to use a JVC player. It worked just fine, had (has) the fastest disc read time in the world, will play almost any disc I throw at it, and plays scratched discs very well. Then I bought a Harman Kardon Dvd 22. Finding Nemo looked amazing. I saw things I'd never seen before. The HK was the best I had ever owned, and it even matched my receiver! I thought I'd use the HK player for years.

My friend likes to order all kinds of movies, imports, strange and obscure movies, you get the picture. He GAVE me the Newcastle after it wouldn't play one of these off the wall dvds. I took it home, and sat the box in the corner of my room where it laid for at least two months.

I hooked it up just to see how it compared to the highly-touted Harman Kardon unit (see reviews, this site) and to my surprise the Sherwood has bested the HK in a number of areas, including the most important, picture quality.

First, the Sherwood's build quality, including user buttons and unit housing are more user friendly and have a more high-end look and feel. The features of both players are very similar, but the V-903's menu screens are much more easily navigated. The Sherwood also has a "high-resolution," "Non-flicker," and "Auto" progressive scan video adjustment setting, something the dvd-22 from HK is lacking, and the functionality of this feature is where the Newcastle is able to significantly outperform the HK in picture quality (in hi-res, proscan mode). Detail is more than just noticeably increased; chaotic video sequences that were difficult to see before now come through clean and clear. Near dark sequences show much less digital noise, and the bright colors and whites are so much more vibrant with even less bleeding than the HK (which is very good at color separation). Whites are whiter and blacks are blacker. The video on the Newcastle simply looks better. Even my wife could see the improvement. The two players sound about the same, and the remote on the HK is awful

Customer Service

Don't know.


NOTE: RATING OF ALL 5'S INDICATE "perfect" to me. Wiring, linecondition, interference, the tv, can all affect the qualities of picture and sound. I did notice things I could consider less than perfect, which could be the player or any of the above listed factors. Therefore it's difficult to list a product as 5 out of 5, at any price, but this dvd player is very close. Again, it's the best I've ever had in my home.

Similar Products Used:

Harman Kardon Dvd-22. The reason I did a comparison review is bebause these two units both share the same MSRP of $299.99