Excellent player with a significant flaw
Written: Jul 20 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Features, video/audio performance, component video, price
Cons: Menu color combinations
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| narenji's Full Review: Panasonic DVD-RV30 DVD Player |
Panasonic has always made quality audio and video products, and for a while now, I've known that Panasonic is generally one of the best marques to buy if you're looking for a good, reliable product at a good price. Sure there are cheaper products, and more expensive brands, but no Panasonic product could ever be considered deficient to anything else in the market at their price points. I bought the RV-30 on this premise. I had also researched the model on the net and found that it had gotten favorable reviews.
Panasonic really squeezed a lot of features into the RV-30. It has such extras like Digital Cinema enhancer, which works to improve picture clarity during the darker scenes in movies. Dialogue enhancer increases dialogue volume so that sound effects don't drown out speech.
The RV-30 has a full complement of jacks in the back, including component, S, and composite video out, along with analog and digital audio out. The remote is loaded with buttons, but it is actually organized better than most Panasonic remotes. The player is very solidly constructed, another sign of a quality manufacturer.
The player has a quick start, which really does get the DVD playing very quickly. The hi speed scan feature is also impressive, but 100x scanning is really not necessary because the picture is moving so fast that it is impossible to stop it at the place that you want to. The hi speed scans offered by most other players is plenty enough.
The player plays all DVDs without problem, and the picture quality is sharp and clean. The audio is similarly spectacular. It is on par with some of the other DVD players I've auditioned so far: The Toshiba SD1200, and the Samsung DVD611. The RV-30 succeeds in its main goal of being a good DVD player, but there's a major problem with the software design of the player. The menus are presented in non-contrasting color scheme combinations, which is very annoying to try to decipher. Granted my TV isn't the newest on the block, but the other DVD players and VCRs I've played through my TV have vastly cleaner menus. You do have the option of picking different background colors for the menus and on-screen displays, as long as you like pastel colors. The text is always in white, making it difficult to make out the information quickly. Panasonic should have tested it more. Believe it or not, the menu scheme was the reason I returned the Panasonic and bought a Samsung DVD611 player. The menus are easy to read with high-contrast color combinations, and its still $60 cheaper than the Panasonic. You can test the Panasonic's menu on your TV- your mileage may vary.
Overall, the RV-30 is a very good DVD player that produces very pleasing audio and video. It is packed to the gills with features, and the remote is good. The menu color design is lacking, and text can sometimes become unreadable. There's nothing else that holds me back from fully recommending this player.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
narenji
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 - Top 1000 |
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Location: Glendora, CA
Reviews written: 99
Trusted by: 33 members
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