Review on Sony DVPS530D DVP S530D DVD Player by James Lapa

I have owned this player for about 3 years and know all (or at least most) of its shortcomings. There are a few important issues to be aware of when using this device: (1) Lip sync issues. The audio and video streams will unpredictably get out of sync from time to time, requiring you to stop and restart the drives to get the streams back in sync. DVDs containing scenes with "complex" MPEG encoding. (3) Poor handling of many discs with barely visible scratches. A disc we borrowed ("The Talented Mr. Ripley") was so bad that the Sony S530D couldn't play an entire chapter of the film. However, the cheap DVD player in my dinosaur laptop played it without incident. (4) In most cases, the player turns off spontaneously about ten seconds after "turning on". The second time I turn it on it stays on properly. It doesn't matter whether a DVD is in the tray or not, whether it was "turned on" via the front panel or the remote control. (5) Slow transition from one DVD layer to another. In short, buying this machine was a bad idea when it was first introduced. Today there should be literally many better models. Buy one of these instead.