Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Excellent inexpensive DVD player
The look and feel of the Panny DVD-S35K is very sleek and modern. We've placed it on a bookshelf in our bedroom, and the slim lines of the unit means that it does not "take over" and visually dominate the other items on the bookshelf.This unit was so low-priced that I was not sure what to expect in terms of picture quality, but I was pleasantly surprised. The colors are accurate, the image is sharp, and I have not seen any visible video artificats in any of the numerous DVDs we've watched so far. Within the display limits of our television I have absolutely nothing bad to report about this DVD player. Overall, the picture quality from this unit is head-and-shoulders better than that from the flaky and unreliable 3-year-old Sony 530D DVD player I have in our living room. (When reading my comments as to picture quality, please bear in mind that we are using this player with a Philips 20PF9925 20" LCD panel TV. As many of you already know, there are certain trade-offs in using LCD technology, e.g. lower contrast; and of course a 20" screen is not exactly widescreen and hence certain categories of defect are largely invisible even when they are - or might be - present in its input feed.) This unit is also feature-rich. As advertised, it can play CD-R's with MP3's/WMA's and JPEG images. Frankly, I assumed that this would probably be poorly implemented and/or frustrating to use. But in fact I was rather startled to see how *well* it worked. I placed into the tray a CD-R made a couple of months ago which contained about 150 family pictures in three different directories. After only a few seconds load time, the player correctly identified the disc as containing photos, indexed all of them, and offered me the choice to begin a slide show. Very easy to operate and highly configurable, for instance if you want to show the whole disc or merely one directory. Easy enough that even the proverbial "grandma" could use it. Final comments: in giving this player 5 stars, I am relating it to my expectations for a DVD player in the "budget" category. I think that if I wanted a progressive scan player for a dedicated home theater, or for a big-screen (43"+) HDTV monitor, I would probably look elsewhere and buy a more expensive unit with a more advanced decoder chip, SACD or DVD-A support, etc. But among players in its class the Panny DVD-S35K simply cannot be beaten.
Rating: - And this costs how little!
We've already got 3 DVD players at home. A 4 year old Onkyo DVD changer, a 3 year old Toshiba, and one of those portable Panasonic DVD players. Well the Onkyo went on the fritz, and I decided to replace it with a progressive scan single disc player, since we have an HDTV and the picture is supposed to be better.Last time I checked progressive scan DVD players ran $... and up, yet here is the Panasonic on Amazon[.com] for under $. Well the price is right and the product is incredible. The picture quality is very impressive, definitely better than the old Onkyo. Plus the features are better as well. Zoom is much better with complete flexibility to zoom to any level, not just a few presets. No signs of any artifacts or digital pixelation that I've occasionally seen on my other players. Very smooth transition during DVD layer changes, and excellent sound over my stereo. Plus this player is absolutely skinny! It has all the outputs you would expect for video and audio(except perhaps audio coax, but I think the industry has committed to optical). Operation is simple, and my kids have no problem using it. No way you can beat this for the money. I say go ahead and make the purchase.
Rating: - Sweet, my dream dvd player
I bought this one as a replacement for my 3 year old DVD player. So you guess I already have a list of attributes for my dream DVD player. The Panasonic DVD-S35K comes very close to that: Energy efficient, quiet, play all formats from DVD to VCD to SVCD, ability to zoom and crop letter box to fit the screen of a normat TV with 1 click on the remote ( besides the variable zoom), memory so I can go back to where I left off. The picture quality is great. No complaint about audio. I fully recommend this unit. The price.. after rebate, is a steal.
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