I bought this machine ages ago now, but I still use it so thought I'd at least make this page worthwhile rather than it sitting here redundant.

To look at it's a nice thing. An elegant brushed silver slab with a single dvd drawer, plus a clear display and the requisite buttons (play, stop, eject etc) on the front.

As far as playback is concerned it's more than fine. I will be honest and say I don't have a trained eye for things like that, or indeed the sound quality. I know however when something is bad, and neither the picture or sound can come under that heading in the slightest.

You have all the buttons and gizmos you'd expect from a decent dvd player on the remote control. You can alter the speed at which you forward or rewind a film in increments. You can change the picture settings, subtitle settings etc etc. And the 'resume' feature I've found very handy on occasion. It basically remembers where you were on the DVD when you stopped it or turned it off - one press of the button and you're back where you were. So no having to remember the time you stopped it.

Would I buy one again or recommend it? Frankly no.
Firstly, while this wasn't a very expensive purchase, it wasn't cheap either. So I didn't like the fact that some DVDs seemed to 'catch' as they were playing. Like a 'tick-tick' sound as the DVD was being watched. Not all did it, but I didn't like that any did it.
Secondly and more irritatingly it occasionally simply refused to play discs. Usually this could be remedied by a good clean of the dvd but even then you could sense that the machine was just itching to stop playing it and spit it out.
I took mine back to get it repaired. I brought it back and practically nothing had changed. It's still a bit tricky today and still sometimes has a fit (usually at the 'menu' part of the dvd) and won't play it. This isn't with dodgy copied dvds that have been lying around. This can happen with brand new ones straight out of the box.
That said, it hasn't resulted in me drop kicking it through the nearest window so perhaps the issue wasn't that bad. However for a non-budget range I still feel it unacceptable to have either of the above problems.