Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DVP-S7700 DVD Player

This is a great DVD player. Only one problem really: This DVD player only supports 96khz/24bit ANALOG output. It downsamples on the DIGITAL output. Sony did this to prevent piracy.

The best DVD player I have ever seen. Expensive but worth it! Superb picture and sound quality. Dual discrete lasers. Precision Drive System enables this player to play discs that are warped or otherwise less than perfect. The Quick Access Drive allows very fast- virtually instantaneous- access to DVD chapters and CD tracks. Great remote control that glows in the dark. The Sony is vastly superior to the Panasonic DVD player I also (unfortunately) own.

There are many similar purchasers of the Sony S7700 that are extremely disappointed in the sound quality of this unit and have had another piece of equipment previously who's audio was far superior and cost less money. For example, my previous player was a Sony S-530D which had within 6 months lip-sync problems, an audio that would periodically cutout, and a picture that froze and broke-up into pixels (similar to satellite broadcast problems), however, its' audio was excellent when it worked. Now that I have moved to the top-of-the-line in Sony DVD players, I am again disappointed and am of the opinion that they can not make a quality product that is complete. Thus far, I have contacted Sony to see if they are willing to do anything about the situation and to determine if the reported down-sampling of the digital output from 97 MHz to 48 MHz is the cause for the poor sound quality or, if not, whether they will do something about this issue. At this point I am not very optimistic about Sony satisfactorily addressing this issue and offering a fix via a service center. Unfortunately, out of all the buyers who have this same issue and want good sound quality, none have posted results of pursuing the down-sampling fix by MSB to address this issue-does it work or is it something else. This unit was supposedly designed to be a top quality audio player since it has dual discrete pickups with separate lasers for CD and DVD at the optimal frequencies, however, the audio output is dismal at best for both. If I were the manufacturer of this product, I would be so embarrassed about my top-of-the-line product, I would move heaven and earth to rectify this issue, we can only assume that they are either incapable or don't care.

I set out to purchase a DVD player to complement my already in place home theater setup. I previously had a second generation, yet ~2 year old Panasonic DVD player with the DTS output. I finally found a dealer with the S7700 in stock and bought it. Once installed, I was thoroughly impressed with everything but the sound. I purchased, along with the player, a 36" Sony XBR WEGA TV, and, as expected, the picture quality was incredible. Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a problem on my hands. After connecting the player into my sound equipment, there was something missing. The sound on my older player was much better than the Sony. Caveat emptor: If you are looking for a top-of-the-line player, purchase the DVP-S7700. It's ease of use and picture quality are great. If you have already invested a lot of money into a sound system that works great with your current player, beware... you are in for disappointment.

I have been considering this player (though am having troublelocating a dealer that has one in stock), and have learned somethinguseful about the fact that the player downsamples its digital output to 48kHz. There is a company called MSB that offers a factory-installed modification that returns the digital output to 24/96.

I do not work for this company and am not getting paid to post this message. On the contrary, if anything, it is good for Amazon and Sony at the bottom line for customers to know that there is a "fix" available for Sony's ill-advised decision to downsample output. If I didn't know of this myself, I would probably pass on the Sony player for this reason. For those interested, information about the modification can be found ... by searching MSB on the Web. Sorry I can't give you more details.