A DVD Player is the best alternative to cable-TV/DTH connection. It’s a must for watching our favorite movies(without lengthy commercials) when cable TV channels are all junk or boring. After more than 2 years of heavy usage, my Philips DVD Player became very slow in reading discs. So, I needed a new DVD Player. As a fan of the trustworthy Japanese electronics, I ruled out LG and Samsung. While looking for other brands, I came across the Panasonic S485 DVD Player in SP Road. It was a cute looking player and looked quite promising. Upon checking it’s DivX® playability, it played DivX® files of sizes more than 3 GB from USB pen drive. When I asked the store-keeper about the quality of Panasonic DVD Players, his answer was:
Panasonic has entered the DVD Player late but still their quality is good. This player’s video quality is really good - I think better than Sony, Sir
So, I bought it since Panasonic is a reliable brand.
Official Web-Page:
https://panasonic.com/in/consumer/audio-video/dvd/dvd-s485.html#page
Looks and Construction:
Panasonic S485 is a cute & slim DVD Player and comes with a all-black colour body. The highlight of the DVD Player is that its front part is glossy black and this makes it look very cute because of the shine. Its remote control is lightweight and has all the necessary buttons to operate the player. The USB port and the PLAY & STOP buttons are located right in the front section whereas the POWER and the Tray-OPEN/CLOSE are located on the front-top.
It has component out and composite-out in the VIDEO section. In the Analog-AUDIO section, both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Stereo Outputs are supported. For Digital, Coaxial Out is provided to connect its sound to to external Home Theaters. HDMI is absent as this DVD Player does not support HD video playback and HD-Upconversion.
Features:
This Player plays all common formats/files such as DVD-Video, DivX®-Video, CD-A discs, MP3 playback from discs and USB-drives and JPG files.
.WMA Audio files, MPEG1(VCD), HD-MKV & MP4 Video files and DTS Sound formats are not supported.
Specifications can be found in detail at:
https://panasonic.com/in/consumer/audio-video/dvd/dvd-s485.html#specs
Performance:
While Philips DVD Players do not read DivX® files of size > 1.5 GB, this player reads them easily from the USB port. But what I really liked about this player is its COLOUR-REPRODUCTION capability. The colors of video played on this player are very smooth and superior to others. Watching DVDs and DivX® files created from HD Blu-Ray discs is stunning since these files have wider range of colors(technically HD Blu-Ray discs are far-superior to DVDs in video quality).
Watching the BR-to-DVD of A Good Day To Die Hard on my Sony Trinitron was a great experience. It is a heavy action movie and has many action scenes. The Yellow and Orange/Red colors of bomb-explosions during the action scenes are rendered by the player with amazing accuracy and superb richness. DivX® movies watched viz Narnia, LOTR, Battleship, Avatar, Wrath Of the Titans and Pacific Rim also look great. I have to admit that I watched some of the scenes again and again because the colours are so stunning.
Also, the picture does not create strain to the eyes even after watching for a long time. But images are softer than PHILIPS, which has superior DivX® decompression technology.
For playing music, Panasonic never disappoints since its sound for Audio CDs & MP3 files is crisp and treble-rich. But it lacks the virtual-surround-effect and the rock-hard bass of Philips. Two important missing sound-features are volume-control and equaliser/presets.
Panasonic is a great brand. One fine example is that Panasonic Plasma TVs are the best TVs ever made with best image processing surpassing Pioneer Kuro.
Pros:
Cute and compact in size
Amazing Color Reproduction
Easy to use
Cons:
No volume control
No Equaliser for sound
No support for .WMA and MPEG1 files and dts sound-format
Somewhat cheap-looking Remote-Control.
Conclusion:
If you’re looking for a basic DVD player from a reputed brand at less price to enjoy your DVDs and DivX® movies collection, look no further beyond THIS Japanese beauty.