Build Quality, Looks, features, Picture and Sound Quality

A little pricey, lip sync. pbs now and then(no big deal). BIG remote control, Joy stick is no joy at all.

This machine has been the first element of my HT system. After purchasing it, I HAD to buy elements wich could enhance the quality of this DVD player.

My machine has been modified to be zone free before I purchased it; it has beenproblems free and able to play any DVD I have been able to put a hand on.

As a CD player, it beats the concurrence of mid - high end CD players, I have dumped my CD player as a consequence.

As a DVD player it compares very well with the more pricey and more sexy looking Sony 7700, but as far as sound is concerned it beats it as several test/reviews in Specialised magazines have confirmed it.

The picture and sound produced by this machine are immaculate, at least for my liking; but some light lip sync. pbs now and then for some DVD's.

I like its looks and its build quality, its transport system is extremely quiet. Its features e.g bookmarking, Picture saving, restarting a DVD exactly where you stopped it, OSD, connectivity(RGB, Composite video, 5+1 CH), etc.. are above average, the lack of zoom does not bother me, what could I use it for ?. Some say it can play CDR-CDRW , some say it cannot, I have not tried that feature and have no intention to do that, if I want to listen to good music I will buy the music I like on CD's.

The remote control is a big piece, the joy stick is a joke, no compliments to SONY for that; i have dumped it in a drawer and use a Marrantz RC2000, so no big deal there.

In conclusion, as far as I am concerned, I am very happy to own this equipment and would warmly recommend it for any who is after a serious DVD / CD player.

Similar Products Used:

Pionneer 717, Sony 7700

Good DVD player (you will understand why if you read below), easy to use, good picture, good sound,all the features you need and will need for about a year included

remote control was designed 40 years ago! lip synch (not the first time you heard it),tuning seems complicated

Firstly, let me get this out of the way, i hate sony, always have always will, i hate their equipment, how it looks, their remote controls, everything-- which begs the question -- why did i get this DVD player? well i had a real good look around and although i hate to say it -- this is a good machine. There is the lip sync problem , nothing new there -- but here is a tip -- and it works on mine -- REBOOT your DVD now and again. Remember we are now dealing with software and a good reboot works wonders!!! I had some 'special' work done to the DVD -- all non americans will understand what i mean ;) and this 'extra' ability added works well with the kit so no problems there. it has DTS but i am just getting my DTS acompat mp so i cant comment on that.

Music is fine but nothing to write home about, then again i am not a big music buff.

There is a chapter switching problem now and again and i have had it skip to the end of a movie or two for no reason but a couple of friends with different machines have the same problem, so this is a generic DVD problem. It has played all DVD's i bought.

Would i recommend it ~~ i never thought i would hear myself say this but yes...i will never forgive myself, the DVD is mightier then the flesh...

Similar Products Used:

na

Sound, picture quality

None, depending on where purchased and who chipped! Big remote.

Looked at many DVD players inc. sony 735.The 725 (genuine UK product) smashed them all. I first purchased an import (725)from Richer Sounds in UK, and obviously chipped abroad. It was the worst I had seen, my video cassette player gave a better picture. I took it back the next day and had a demo of one (725) in another shop. This was completely different, like two different machines. I bought it and the sound and picture are perfect - Well worth the extra 100 UK Pounds I had to pay. It was chipped by Sony. It is not worth buying imports in the UK - they are NOT the same!

Sony STRDB 940 Amp
Sony DVPS 725 DVD
Sony Wega TV 28"
JBL Centre, Paradigm Sub, B+W Front, JPW Rear.

Similar Products Used:

Many

Great picture and sound. All what you need and more.
Outstanding look.

Price

I use my Sony 725 since 2 Month with very good results. It is one of the best products on the market. A must buy

Similar Products Used:

JVC 505. Phillips 860. Sony 525

Audio, Video, Conections, Remote, Functions, Extras, DVD DISC TRANSPORT ( THE BEST I'VE EVER SEEN! )

Does not read CDR and CDRW

Well, this machine has it all!
Nice looks ( it could be better finished for the price ), excelent video, better Audio (even with CD... compared to the Marantz CD63KI-S, almost get's to it's musicality!... can't say the same of the Pioneer DV-717... )
Dolby decoder on-board... but the best are the extras!
Menus as simples as that! And GOOD looking too ( pull them over the movie... )
Memory for 200 discs! YES 200! Bookmarks for your favourites scenes ( on every disc! )
AND A DVD TRANSPORT that's the best thing i've ever seen. Yes... Frame by frame, on forward and Reverse, with total precision. If you're looking for a good performer in all levels look no further! This baby is yours!

The Sony DVP-S725D is undisputably the most awesome DVD player in Australia, it really is. I upgraded from the Panasonic A330MU, which I've had since 1998 and was what I considered to be the best available player at the time - boy has she been made obsolete by this baby!
For starters the menus are simply gorgeous, it's like stepping up from 16 colour graphics to 16 million colours graphics...they are so detailed and extremely easy and nice to use.

She has a built in Dolby Digital decoder, whoopie do really, but she does pass the DTS bitstream down the fibre optic (or coax if you use that) so my amp can finally decode it! The audio is decoded in 24bit and despite all the hype about Toshiba's having only a mere 0.003% distortion, this baby is at 0.0025%! The audio circuitry on this thing is fully isolated and an r-core transformer is used to keep interference down to practically zilch! There is also numerous audio equilization settings, though these seem targetted more at 2-channel stereo users.

The picture quality, wow you can configure this directly at the player - full video equilization! You can adjust the sharpness, brightness, colour, etc. and there are preprogrammed settings such as Cinema. People claim the Toshiba's have the sharpest and best picture, well check this Sony out baby she not only has the best picture but you can fine tune it to your hearts content! The video is decoded in 10-bit and also features numerous video noise reduction settings.

Features, man does this baby have some fancy features. For DVDs that have text titles, the Sony can display this on its display. For DVDs that don't have text titles, you can program one into it. You can also, get this, take a screen shot from any scene in a movie and use it as the DVD player's startup screen and/or background screen. Awesome stuff, got a great shot of the Enterprise-E bellowing smoke from its nacelles. You can view a picture of what layer of a dual layer disc you are playing, you can see bit rates, you can even analyse a history of bit rates. You can get it to display a shot from every chapter on the DVD, and believe it or not the baby can even display a screen shot from every title on the disc...I've found plenty of hidden DVD easter eggs using this nifty feature! Even strobe playback enables you to see all the various frames of a scene at the same time, and they animate (though albeit slowly). She can automatically select the best soundtrack on the disc, meaning no more having to specify the Dolby Digital track (though I still have to do this for Paramount discs which seem to force the matter) and she can even display different angles at the same time. You can even store individual settings, such as video equilization and sound track and subtitles and bookmarks and so forth for up to 200 individual DVDs...YEAH BABY!!!

This player is very quick, it spins up and responds pretty darned fast. She looks great and is extremely quiet, you can even navigate the menus and so forth from the DVD player itself (all other players force you to use the remote). There's even a jog dial, on both the player itself AND the remote!

And best of all this baby even has component outputs!!!

I've had mine fitted with a PREMIUM mod from the DVD shop, which not only gives me the automatic region selection I was accustomed to with my former Panny but I can manually specify the region as well (in case some form of protection causes the automatic selection to not work). The PREMIUM mod also knocks out the macrovision and best of all it prevent titles from locking out controls - for example I can now skip past those frustrating Paramount copyright messages that you can't get rid of as well as change the audio on the fly (Paramount discs lock such controls out). The service menu on the player itself has a colour bar, quite useful for calibrating your television!

An absolutely awesome machine, awesome!!!!

But it does have a couple of negatives. The joystick on the remote sucks, it really does. Too sensitive, and when you click boy does it make a CLICK sound. I miss my Panasonic joystick, that was cool. A lot of the buttons on the remote glow in the dark, though not as well as the ones on my amp, but still nifty. The remote also allows you to control your TV and the VOLUME ONLY on your amp. Had the remote also allowed me to turn on the amp and specify DVD input, then I could have now done away with all my remotes as the Sony is quite nice. Bugger!

I also seem to notice small amounts of MPEG artifacts, more so when video equilization is in use. I never had this on my Panny, or at least couldn't see it, so either the video equilization takes up CPU time on this unit or it is simply showing up detail (which it certainly does) that my Panny did not.

The player also gives you a lot of very user friendly messages such as "The movie has been halted by pushing stop but you will be able to resume exactly where you left off" or stuff to that degree. Very good for beginners, but for me...it's pissing me off!!!! Need an option to get rid of them!!!!

The player also seems to forget the custom video eq. settings I make after power off, though I have a feeling that may be a quirk caused by the mod. Instead I use one of the pre-programmed ones.

Finally the dreaded lip-sync issue, which I had never faced before. I've seen it once, only once, on Deep Impact. I had been jumping around chapters something chronic testing the unit out, backwards and forwards, and at one point when I started playing it was fully out of sync by over a second!!! VERY NOTICABLE. But after stopping and starting it again I've never had it since, can't reproduce it either.

With the way some of the features work, and the type and variety of information it stores for individual discs, I have no doubt that this firmware seems to be heading towards some kind of future 100disc or 200disc player! Imagine that baby sitting there on top of my 110disc CD player, YEAH BABY!!!

Over all, this is by far and undisputably THE best DVD player in Australia - it really is. This baby is so awesome, and comes complete with five free DVD rental vouchers for Video Ezy!!!

My partner's opinion? I liked the silver colour of the old one! And get rid of that Star Trek background!

Good guality, looks serious, complete outputs and inputs, nice sound quality and image as well. And the tray is very silent.

No cd-r, OSD is not really user-friendly and clear.

Spend one month studying the products available, hesitated a lot between the pioneer 626 and this Sony, but finallyu opted for Sony, even if I had to pay a 150 $ to get it multi-zone. Why? because if the two had similar characteristics, Sony offered better sound and a better intreraction xith my Sony TV. And, yes, I regret the lack of cd-r compatibility, and so my CD changer will be a Pioneer, in order to read cd-r's. Sony's (and others) policy on protection of copyright and zones is ridiculous: they force you to go for other brands only because of that. Reason enough to give only 4 stars in value rating.

Good image and sound quality

Lip Sync problems and a slight delay when loading chapters

I must admit for a first major DVD system the sony is great but not as good as I expected.

I've noticed a small lip sync problem on certain DVDs. I don't believe it to be related to the disk as the disks do work perfectly on other systems. I've tried to adjust the amp settings but it just seems to cause sync problems with other DVDs.

There is also the ocassional delay when loading to the next chapter. Its not noticeable at first but I've compared it side by side with a Toshiba SD-2109 and the sony looses seems to stop momentarily when loading a chapter.

Other than that its a great DVD player.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVD - 525, Toshiba SD2109

Picture quality

Lip sync problem, periodic loss of sound (really annoying!) on certain disks (but no problem on other players: Yamaha, Philips), sometimes you can't play a movie straight from the menu (you must press play button twice).

The above mentioned audio problems are really annoying. I had my player at Sony service twice. They cannot solve the problem.
Of the last 3 products I bought from Sony all of them cause problems and went to service more then twice.
I totally lost my trust in Sony.

Picture and sound quality, good on-screen menu

No CD-R and CD-RW playable, price.

A very good one to watch films. It's a pitty it can not play CD-R and CD-RW.

Similar Products Used:

none