STUNYC97

PANASONIC DVD-R80
Pros: Very Detailed Picture
Cons: Remote, No Menu Button On Player

This Player doubles the processing speed to give a much improved picture. Without the need for any special TV Inputs.

Your average DVD player has a 27mhz Processor.

This player uses the new 54MHz/x4 Oversampling Video Processing.

This helps assure faithful reproduction of an original image for stunning picture quality Digital Cinema Mode for cinema-like luminance and color with improved detail even in dark scenes.

This is the Only DVD player to use this improved 54mhz technology, that does NOT require your TV to have a
special progressive scan input.

The player seems more sturdier built than most. It has a large Jog Shuttle wheel on the front panel, but not on the remote.
It also has a headphone jack.

The Front Panel time / chapter display is large, blue, and easy to read.

It also shows a progress display
of the disk loading time.

Disk loading was Very Quiet and Fast.
It takes about 5 seconds from Power on to Play.

The chapter searching is also very fast and quiet.

Video quality was very bright and sharp. Even in Normal Mode.

The picture has exceptional color, and a finely detailed contrast.
The improved contrast is very noticeable in a movies darker scenes.

There are preset settings for FINE, SOFT, CINEMA , NORMAL modes.

You are also able to "tweak" the picture by separately adjusting the Color, Contrast, Brightness, GAMMA, Sharpness, & Video Noise.

You will need to read the manual to fully appreciate all this.

But the controls really work well and are easy to learn!

The five fast scan modes go as high as 100x.
They were smooth even at the higher speeds

A nice feature is a bar graph that displays how fast your scanning speed is.

The Player also has 5 Slow motion speeds which all work smoothly.

The Surround Sound modes are very good, even using TV speakers or Headphones.

There is also a 2x speed with Sound feature.
But on most movies it just makes the sound unintelligible.

There are No Menu controls on the front panel.

So if you misplace the remote, you wont be able to access the Players or the Disks Menus.

The Remote has small buttons, but it has Menu
cursor controls that light up.

A better idea would have been to have the Menu and Play controls light up.

Without the need to spend a lot of money. This is the only player to purchase if you want to view DVD movies with the highest quality picture. Especially since there is no need for any special TV inputs to get the best picture.

I believe that this player will set a new standard in picture quality for all new 2001 Model players.