Panasonic DVD-S55S (1 Viewer)

[TonyE]

The search funtion is disabled, again. So i thought i'd post about this. Crutchfield's website has this up, it's the new Panasonic DVD-S55S.

Features include:
-Progressive
-DVD Audio Playback
-Plays DVD-Audio, CD, CD-R & CD-RW, and MP3 and WMA CD-R& CD-RW
-Plays digital photo CDs (JPEG)
-Image Sizing (4:3 Shrink and Letterbox Zoom & Shift)
-Built-in Dolby Digital/DTS decoding with 5.1-channel output
-Double Re-Master upsampling for CD, DVD, and MP3/WMA (selectable)
-Audio Only mode (switches off video circuitry)
-54MHz/10-bit video D/A converter
-192kHz/24-bit audio D/A converter
-Audio signal-to-noise ratio 115 dB
-etc.

All for $129.99....

What do you guys think?

 

[MikeMcGrew]

Sorry, can't comment yet but I have a question or two. Is this a single disk player or 5 disk changer. I had about 4 minutes to kill on a break the other day and I think I saw this player at a local CC. Is this correct? Does anyone know if this player is available at Circuit City? Great looking player and the footprint is totally reasonable. I have a decent JVC (FA95) but it's huge. Also, does anyone know if this player has random function across disks and not just across one disk (if this is even the right player)? I think the price on the one I saw was $159.00 which sounds about right. Any info would be appreciated. I will do a quick search and see what I come up with. MM

 

[TonyE]

This is a single disk "ultra-slim" player. Not sure how DVD playback is, but doesn't this thing have a ton of features for the money!?

 

[MikeMcGrew]

Sorry about that. This was the one I was talking about. Not too sure if this long link will work, if not then try here and go from the begining. I can't believe all the features on this thing for a mere $150 bucks!

 

[Zack West]

I just got this DVD player the other night from Fry's. Nice little unit, excellent picture quality, features galore. Progressive scan and DVD audio for $129, can't beat that! Very tiny gripe: I had to buy a new optical cable, no digital coax, oh well.

 

[Danny Tse]

I already have the Sony DVP-NS500P DVD/SACD player, and I was ready to get one of those $270.00 Pioneer universal player for DVD-A when it comes out. But now, I may just get this Panasonic player instead. Excellent deal, especially with Panasonic quality.

 

[LanceJ]

I am pretty sure the low price is mainly from the big "mega" processing chip Panasonic uses now instead of the 6 separate chips they used to use. Read about this here.

Most of the Japanese electronics companies have been hit hard by the lousy global economy & it looks they are tightening up their operations (fewer models; simpler manufacturing techniques) to better weather the bad times.

LJ

 

[MikeSRC]

The S55 is just a DVD-A version of the S35, which you can read about in the thread here.

The F65 and 85 are changer versions of the "S" models. All of the new models use Panny's all-in-one chip solution which has some excellent zoom features, but has inferior deinterlacing to prior models with the Faroudja chip.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Mike,

Just curious but would you say the Zoom features would be useful for "scaling" non-anamorphic titles like Titanic?

Also, is the inferior de-interlacer any worse than that used by JVC?

I have a CP-72 with Sage-Faroudja chip but really miss the scaling feature of my previous JVC. Problem was that the scaling feature on the JVC doesn't work with improperly flagged non-anamorphic discs.

The de-interlacing on the CP-72 is better than JVC's for video-based discs, but I could live with the JVC if it could scale improperly flagged discs.

If the new Panny's zoom can be used for scaling improperly flagged discs, I'd be willing to put up with inferior de-interlacing for video based stuff.

 

[MikeSRC]

The JVC is a good comparison to the S35 in the deinterlacing department. I did compare the S35 to a JVC XV-S60 and while I preferred the JVC, they were pretty similar in performance. The S35 has a manual zoom that goes in 0.01X increments, so if you have a letterboxed non-anamorphic DVD, you can manually adjust it to fill the screen (or any point inbetween)with reasonably minimal degradation in PQ (depending on screen size).

 

[Adam Bluhm]

Could someone tell me how this player (S55 or S35) would compare to the XP30? The XP30 is significantly more. At Panny's website, I noticed that the XP30 does not have 4:4:4 signal processing, yet the cheaper S55 does.

Any input regarding this?