DVD was invented in 1995 & it's taken more than 10yrs to perfect the DVD player. The early DVD players all suffered from the same problems that plague Bluray players of today. They were plagued with slow loading times & they came locked - region coded. Even today, there are a lot of DVD players out there that are region coded & they need to be hacked, if U intend to play international DVDs.

The Pioneer DV-610AV is a true universal DVD player because of the following reasons:

1) Out of the box, this player comes unlocked. It plays DVDs from all 6 DVD regions.
2) Universal power supply, it works on both 110V - 220V. It comes with two power chords, one with the N. American flat pin & the other one has the Asian (Chinese) round pin. It can be plugged anywhere in the world with the help of the right pin / plug adaptor.
3) It plays almost all formats other than High Definition formats such as Bluray. It even plays DVDA & SACD.
4) Available in both black... Read more

This player is quite amazing. I use HDMI output for video, and 2-channel analog output for audio (with digital audio turned off). The audio is connected to a tube pre-amp and MOSFET amp. SACDs (stereo layer) sound sublime on this player, and CDs are very crisp. Note that it down-samples 5.1 digital audio to stereo. One great feature is that it remembers where you stopped the DVD after turning it off. The picture quality up-sampled to 1080p is fantastic. The on-screen menus are well laid out. The player has buttons to do whatever you want without a remote. I was deciding between this and a blu-ray player, and decided on the 610 since most blu-ray players apparently do not up-sample DVDs very well. Unlike the 610, they also do not play SACDs or Audio-DVDs (unless you're willing to pay hundreds of dollars for one that does). Even if I end up buying a blu-ray player, this one won't be put away. This model is one of the latest Eurepean models (check on pioneer's .eu site).

Fantastic value for money, easily the best bargain i've bought in years. The audio quality via H.D.M.I is first class the video was very good but not top quality when upscaling from DVD. However as an all-rounder for SACD / CD / DVD Audio it is impossible to beat!