I 've owned 6 or 7 dvd players since 1998 . This is by far the nicest one , in so many ways . It 's very sleek looking with a very good front panel button layout , and it has a great feature set . Its fast-forward and rewind work much more smoothly and consistently than those of other models i 've had . It plays alternate video formats ( vcds , svcds , cvds ) very well . And amazon.com has it for such a great price -- how can you go wrong ? I 've bought one for the den and will buy a 2nd one for the bedroom . Strengths are well listed by other reviewers . What got me to buy was the reviewer that said it would play dvd-rs fill of files ( e. , mp3s ) . It sure does ! That 's a rare and valuable feature . I have a dvd burner on my computer and a zillion mp3s , and it 's a lot nicer to access them 4.5 gb at a time ( dvd-r ) than 0.7 gb at a time ( cd-r ) ! Another nice thing is that the unit has both optical and coax digital audio outputs , though the latter was not mentioned in the literature i 'd scanned before buying . Saved me from having to buy an expensive optical cable , as i already had a coax cable . At double-speed ( 2x forward speed ) , it still plays mp3s with sound -- they are pitch-corrected and smooth , but twice as fast ! I wish it would do the same for movies , but that 's one rare / cool feature you will have to forgo . Weaknesses are minor : the feel and layout of the remote control are only so-so ; it does n't show the complete filenames of mp3s with really long names ; you must cycle through every zoom setting ( 2x , 3x , 4x , 1/2x , etc. ) before getting back to normal size [ sorry if i 'm just ignorant of a way to get back to 1x quickly ] . If you 're a bargain hunter and you want a great feature set for a rock-bottom price , i highly recommend this model . Update : the finish is more " mirror " than silver -- and i like it !