I have a friend with the sony set, 27 inch vega tv and the vhs/dvd combo. the DVD is not what i'd consider happy, it won't play home brewed CDs nor VCDs at all, and CDs skip something horrid. He told a friend of mine he didn't see a problem, but I know for a fact he told me he rents VHS tapes from blockbuster cause the DVDs won't play on his set, thinking there is something wrong with the blockbuster DVDs.

To make things worse, the warrenty on this unit is only 3 months for parts/labor, then it's just 1 year on parts, no labor. I never worked right out of the box.

An Apex at walmart, one of those sub $50 players outpeforms this Sony DVD player. If I'm not mistaken, the Apex uses a standard PC transport, so even if it buggers up after the warrenty expires, it's only a $20.00 for a PC DVD drive, 8 screws and two cables if my facts are correct. If it's not the Apex, i'd have to do some hunting around to see who makes a home dvd player with a PC transport.

I've not been happy with Sony quality control as of late. It's my belief they are cutting costs in order to keep China from totally taking over the home electronics market.