SONY DVP-NC555ES 5-Disc DVD / SACD(TM) / CD Changer

Rating:
Summary: Best of Both Worlds
Review: It's hard to find a high-end DVD/CD player with 5 disc capability. Most today are only single disc. The SACD audio is awesome, but make sure you use the individual channel outputs for SACD as the optical out does not work on SACD for my tuner. Picture clarity is great and near HD quality. If you want a single unit to run high-end DVD and audio, buy this unit. The only complaint I have is that there is not a shuffle button on the unit, you have to use the remote.

Rating:
Summary: It's good, but...
Review: This is supposedly Sony's "top-of-the-line" dvd player. The panel controls are minimalist (featuring a useless chapter skipping KNOB?!?!). The picture quality is very good. I have a REAL problem though with the remote. It feels CHEAP. The first dvd player I ever bought was a Sony single-disc DVP-S500D player. It cost about as much as this one, yet everything about it was infinitely better designed, especially the on-screen menus. The remote that came with that player, the RMT-D102A, felt heavy, solid, hard, and built-to-last. Unfortunately, with this new player, the remote (RMT-D160A) feels terrible in your hand. The buttons are again, CHEAP. I had to take it back to the retailer because the "nipple-stick" was off-center and stopped working after only 5 months. Inexcusable. The menus on the NC555ES do not look very good. They take up too much of the screen, and the colors feature way too much blue. There are a number of picture controls that hardly produce any noticeable changes. Not only that, but the responsiveness of menu selections and even the dvd layer transitions are SLOW. This is profoundly disappointing for a name like Sony, and for their ES line...well, it just boggles the mind why the quality has slipped operationally. It also isn't a fully universal player. It does not playback DVD-Audio, only their proprietary technology, SACD. As a loyal Sony buyer, this is a huge disappointment. Spend a little more money, Sony, and produce a better player and REMOTE CONTROL than this.