Features & Great Styling Don't Translate To The Screen

I bought a Panasonic S55S with high hopes, based on reviews of the models it has just replaced, several of which used the Faroudja FLI2200 deinterlacing chip, without advertising that fact on the outside or tech specs. The RP82 and XP30 in particular had great pictures. Talk is that for the S55S Panasonic shifted to an in house produced deinterlacing chip.

The S55S has wonderful styling, a very good remote, and just about every form of setting, adjustment, multiple picture output profile (Cinema 1, Cinema 2, User, Fine, Soft, Normal, etc.), picture noise filtering, picture gamma and color adjustment and more informative pop up data bars than you could possibly want. It supports all kinds of other audio and video formats, including high bit rate DVD-audio, but not SACD. It's very reasonably priced. The LCD display on the front is sharp and easy to read and shows icons for all the various modes the player may be in. Faroudja... Read more

Big pluses imho:

1. Bookmarks
2. WMA support (in addition to MP3, etc)
3. Amazon's price was not just competitive, it was amazing.
4. Arrived to my door in great shape

All the other goodies are here too: built-in decoders (sometimes it's really useful to have these built-in), zoom support, simulated surround sound (which actually works), DVD Audio/VCD/JPEG/MP3 support, speaker delay setting, progressive scan, etc.

I personally found the on-screen display/setup to be easy to use & quite sophisticated for this level of price. Also, according to reviews elsewhere, this model is one of the absolute latest panasonics out there, with the latest/greatest firmware, etc. - in other words, people often thought that dvds look better played on this model, relative to other players in the same or slightly higher price range. Mine was built in June 2003.

For what it's worth, decide whether you need built-in decoders or not, if you want to save money. I personally... Read more

My family has been buying Panasonic products for years, but this is the first time I've ever bought one of their DVD players. I've previously had a Sony and a cheapo KLH Home Theater in-a-box. When I was looking for a new player I knew that I wanted something that looked nice, had progessive scan (for the future), could play DVD audio, photo CDs, and MP3s. Oh yeah, and should be affordable for a college student.

Enter the Panasonic DVD-S55S.

1. DVDs boot up quickly and it plays them perfectly. I've tested a few movies out and I don't even notice layer changes (a BIG problem with the KLH). There does seem to be a fair amount of flicker with contrasting colors on some menus.

2. Photo/MP3 CDs play well and are easy to navigate. However, vertical photos don't seem to play and MP3 filenames can be cut off if they're too long. The flicker shows it's ugly mug again on photos, but is easier to ignore.

3. Features galore! Progressive Scan, DVD-A (don't assume that all players... Read more