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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent progressive output
Review: I bought this player almost totally because of the excellent reviews I had read about its image and sound quality, and the reviews appear to be accurate. This player replaced my old Pionneer DV-414 player, and it is much better. The progressive output is amazing on my Panasonic Tau television. I believe this player does not exhibit the 'chroma bug' that many high-end AV magazines have found in some players, even some high-end ones. If you don't have an reciever (or an external decoder) that can decode Dolby Digital or DTS, this player will decode them and pipe them into a reciever with 5.1 channel RCA inputs. My receiver has its own decoder, but I have decided to use the dvd player's decoder full-time as I appreciate the sound quality improvement it gives over my receiver. I also haven't experimented with the DVD-RAM playback because as of yet I do not own a DVD-RAM drive, though I will probably remedy that in the near future. This dvd player will also play DVD-AUDIO discs and CD-Rs with mp3s on them. The mp3 feature is pretty nice, though it won't decode id3 tags in your mp3 files. It played all of the CD-Rs that I presented it with flawlessly, however. If you play DVD-AUDIO discs on this player you'll definitely want to use its built-in decoders, as the analog outputs are the only way to get the true level of quality in a DVD-AUDIO disc (the digital outputs are downsampled to reduce the quality of a pirated copy -- it stinks, but that's how it is) All in all, though expensive, this is a great dvd player, especially if you have a TV that can accept progressive output, and perhaps you need a DD/DTS decoder (or you'd like to upgrade the one you have). Right now the DVD-AUDIO, MP3, and DVD-RAM features are just icing on the cake, and shouldn't distract you from its extremely well-done core competencies of picture and sound quality.
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