Sony DVP-NS705 Silver DVD Player

The machine is quiet and sleek, on screen menus guide you through all the set-up procedures - I haven't had to refer to the manual once and even my non-technical flat mate has got to grips with it!

The only extra you will need is good quality SCART lead to connect to your TV for the best quality picture.

It plays mp3 cd's with no problems and will handle sub-directories as well.

The only slight issue is that there is a slight pause when you are watching a DVD and it changes between layers on the disc.

Overall very happy with both the sound and the picture, I now just need that silver plasma screen to complete my setup!

When I switched it on, I was surprised with how easy the quick set-up was for those who want to play with it as soon as they get it out of the box. However, I read-up on all of the different features in the manual to ensure that I was not disappointed with a waste of £200. To ensure that you get the best picture, it uses a 'digital video enhancer' to make the picture appear clear and crisp by enhancing the outlines and images. And it really works.

For some strange reason, Sony have incorporated a 'Block Noise Reduction (BNR)' function to alter the picture quality. Block noise is a sort of mosaic pattern similar to pixelation, which appears on the screen. There are three number settings plus an off setting for this function (three being the most effective) and I just keep mine on three for an obvious reason- the best picture.

This DVD player has a 27MHz/10 bit video D/A converter and a 192 KHz/24 bit audio D/A converter. Because the sound is handled by one converter and the video by another, sound and video are improved significantly. Another feature is that it compensates for the problem of not resuming DVD's from the point you left off last by...guess...re-starting the DVD's from the point you left off last for up to 40 discs. This is useful because it means that you do not have to write down the chapter and time at which you stopped and ejected the disc.

I do not have surround sound speakers and I can see the attraction. I have never experienced them and am not particularly interested. The DVD player has a built-in Dolby 5.1 and DTS (Digital Theatre Sound) decoders for surround sound for linkage to speakers and a digital (optical) output for linkage to a receiver.

As the other reviewer said, there is a slight delay between the transferrence between reading of layer one and two but this is a characteristic of DVD players. Perhaps, in the future this will be alleviated, but it is only for about a second.

I am overall very pleased with this DVD player.