Those A110 had a bunch of playback problems, didn't they?

I got a Toshiba 2107 in April of 1998, from WalMart.com. Paid $224 for it, and that was considered a MAJOR BARGAIN at the time.

And you know what? Six years later, it's the only DVD player I've bought that has never given me any problems. Those early generation machines were extremely well made to the hilt.

I also like Jews.

X-mas 1998 got my first DVD-Rom (with TV out) and then got a stand alone player in Summer 1999.

Got mine in Sept 98. Panasonic A110. Didn't discover online sources til 1999.

And reel.com ruled...

I still check out www.reel.com from time to time (in hopes?). Also, I like that I can look up movies there and they have that "Movie Anatomy" which assigns a number from 0 to 10 for things like "Violence", "Family Appeal", "Nudity", etc. I sometimes use that as a gauge on whether or not I want my younger kids to see a movie...

I had the A300 circa late 1997. It's essentially the same player. It stopped working (constant playback problems) after about three months. Panasonic either couldn't or wouldn't fix it after three trips to their ridiculously remote Boston "Service Center" and about 100 bucks in "repair" charges. Even though it was under warranty, they still charged for the "service" of doing nothing to fix the problem.

At the time, I was a recent graduate making peanuts and the 500 bucks the thing cost me was a fairly major expendiature (uh, it still is). It really pissed me off.

I ended up doing an Office Space-style ceremonial destruction of the thing with my brother. I will never buy another Panasonic product.

In 1999 Panasonic finally admitted that the video processing chip in the A110 and A300 was flawed but did not do a recall. At that point, of course, all of the players were out of warranty. Pretty sneaky on Panasonic's part.

I bought a replacement Toshiba 2109 in 1999 and it's worked ever since. My house is now full of Toshiba stuff.

What model year was Sony 530? That's the year I got my 1st stand alone DVD player.

Costco is always Costco, it wasn't Price Club, ever. Price Club go acquired by Costco and died.

I got my Panasonic A-110 in Summer of 1998, and its still chugging along just fine today. Its not progressive scan, and not region free, but I still use it in the den.

I worked at Blockbuster then and we were one of the first to rent LaserDiscs (pre-1990) and DVDs. The first one I rememebr buying was the Image entertainment box set of Record of Lodoss War....which I might just go watch again......