Sony DVPS336

This is a relatively early DVD player, which I bought in February 2001. It cost around £270 then, but its longevity has made it great value. It has been used frequently and has performed excellently, though recently it has had trouble reading some DVDs.

It's a very well designed piece of equipment. The silver finish looks great, the display is easy to read, the drawer's motion is fast and smooth and the fascia buttons are good to operate. ...
...is almost nothing you cannot do, making the remote the least essential one I know.

Perhaps strangely, the remote is actually one of the best I have ever seen. It is long and thin and perfect to hold and use. Button layout is faultless, far better than some Sharp and Toshiba remotes I have used. Every required button is present with the frequently used ones being the largest (play, stop, pause, enter and the direction buttons). The ... more

This is a relatively early DVD player, which I bought in February 2001. It cost around £270 then, but its longevity has made it great value. It has been used frequently and has performed excellently, though recently it has had trouble reading some DVDs.

It's a very well designed piece of equipment. The silver finish looks great, the display is easy to read, the drawer's motion is fast and smooth and the fascia buttons are good to operate. These buttons provide an amazing amount of control - there is almost nothing you cannot do, making the remote the least essential one I know.

Perhaps strangely, the remote is actually one of the best I have ever seen. It is long and thin and perfect to hold and use. Button layout is faultless, far better than some Sharp and Toshiba remotes I have used. Every required button is present with the frequently used ones being the largest (play, stop, pause, enter and the direction buttons). The player's sensitivity to the remote is second-to-none. Point the remote at the ceiling or behind you and it'll often still work.

Picture and sound quality I think are very good indeed. Importantly, and unlike some other players, audio is picked up immediately when starting a video. Two SCART sockets are here, one labelled RGB so should give the best picture. There are also S-video and composite video connections. For top audio, optical and coaxial digital are present, along with standard analogue stereo phono and a subwoofer socket.

Menu layout is very graphic and all text is easily read. But it is a simple player by today's standards. There is no DivX, MP3, WMA or JPEG playback. It's not multi-region and the only way around this would be to have it opened up and chipped (around £50 a few years ago).

However, I was impressed to find, years after purchase, that it can play DVD-R and DVD-RW discs, which not all comparative players (in age and original price) can. I have not tried DVD+R/RW discs. It also plays (S)VCDs and NTSC video, if you have any such region 2 (or region free) discs.

This model must be long since discontinued but if it can be picked up on eBay in good condition, it is a great player to have. 

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