Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DVD-RV32S DVD Player, Silver

I've been looking for a long time for player that would be versatile, cheap and come from respectable manufacturer.
Finally my search was over.
This new player from Panasonic has a very clean and easy to navigate menus, good features for DVD playback. A lot of functions have been coded into dedicated buttons on remote so you don't have to invoke menu if all you want to do, let's say is to review the last several seconds of a scene that interested you.
The functionality that really won me over was playback of MP3 and WMA files coming from brand new hardware decoding chip. You can say that a lot of modern day DVD Players can play MP3 files. But what about usability? Most of these players won't let you navigate files in tree-like structure and those that do usually crop file names to the first 8 characters, leaving you to guess what could '001. Fl~.mp3' mean. This player displayes up to 41 characters of the file name and presents it in a very nice interface where you can easily navigate between folders and choose the track that you really want. It's such a pleasure to use that I forgot when was the last time I fired up my PC to listen to some track. If you own the receiver, then Optical Digital output will make sure that these sounds will get to your ears unaletred. As for the DVD picture quality, it is great on my 36'' TV with provided component video Outs.
As any other player it is not perfect. Some of the things that you may want but are not in this player:
- no progressive support;
- no mp3 playlist support;
- only Region 1 decoding and only NTSC (too bad if you own DVD movies from Europe or Asia)
But for the price this unit is selling I can afford to buy it now and then replace it in a couple of years with much more modern player without breaking the bank.

The Panasonic RV32S and RV32K are the same machines except for the color of the enclosure. The S model is silver, and the K model is black.

I only demoed this unit at a local electronics store and this player blew away many other machines that were priced... more than this one. I compared this machine to a Toshiba 2500 (I think) and a couple others for which I forget the makes and models.

It has the ability to play back DVDs, VCDs, MP3s and audio CDs. It can read off regular pressed DVDs and CDs, along with CD-Rs and CD-RW discs. The latter two are useful for making your own discs with a CD recorder drive on your computer, or a standalone unit.

VCD video quality is similar to that of VHS tapes, but they are popular in Asia and are region free. Asia also seems to release many US films on VCD before they are released in the US on DVD. I have seen legitamate copies with Chinese subtitles.

The DVD video quality on most machines I tried that day were all the same. VCD was a bit different, however there were still little discrepancies between different units. However, what really blew me away about this machine was the audio quality. When I played back music, whether on DVD, VCD, MP3, or CD-Audio, the RV32 shined over all the other units.

The sound coming from this machine seemed to be brighter and have a wider frequency range. The other machines I tried seemed to have a smaller range of frequencies which they could produce. It seemed that the same notes on other machines were either softer or not there. It's like comparing sound from a radio FM source to a CD-Audio source. It's not that much difference, but it was very apparent.

The bad thing is that few stores have DVD machines properly hooked up for you to demo them to their full potential. The store I went to had this machine connected to a 50" plasma TV, and a very good 5.1 sound system. The other store I visited while DVD shopping was large chain store. They had the players on a shelf, but not hooked up in any way. The employees were even hesitant to hook it up for me to demo. With some coaxing, they finally hooked it up for me, but unfortunately it was to a 20" television. Needless to say, I walked out of there.

I got this DVD player the other day and so far it's working great. I had a little problem using my original RCA cables but the ones supplied in the box did the trick. I also tested a DVD+RW disc I had burned with a HP dvd200i dvd burner and that also worked great! To top that off I tested a CD-RW filled with about 8 folders of MP3s. It played the mp3s flawlessly and changing between songs/folders was also fast. It had a neat playlist view to see all the songs and navigate through the different folders.

The remote is pretty good with the main functions comfortably right at thumbs reach. The dialogue enhancer increases dialogue volume in the movie which worked really nice instead of having to constantly change the volume of the tv.

I really like this DVD. Sure, it's somewhat basic and may have a few flaws and setbacks here and there (which I really have yet to find) but for the price you can't beat it. It has everything you need and plays just as good as higher priced players. I would highly recommend it!

I've been looking for a long time for player that would be versatile, cheap and come from respectable manufacturer.
Finally my search was over.
This new player from Panasonic has a very clean and easy to navigate menus, good features for DVD playback. A lot of functions have been coded into dedicated buttons on remote so you don't have to invoke menu if all you want to do, let's say is to review the last several seconds of a scene that interested you.
The functionality that really won me over was playback of MP3 and WMA files coming from brand new hardware decoding chip. You can say that a lot of modern day DVD Players can play MP3 files. But what about usability? Most of these players won't let you navigate files in tree-like structure and those that do usually crop file names to the first 8 characters, leaving you to guess what could '001. Fl~.mp3' mean. This player displayes up to 41 characters of the file name and presents it in a very nice interface where you can easily navigate between folders and choose the track that you really want. It's such a pleasure to use that I forgot when was the last time I fired up my PC to listen to some track. If you own the receiver, then Optical Digital output will make sure that these sounds will get to your ears unaletred. As for the DVD picture quality, it is great on my 36'' TV with provided component video Outs.
As any other player it is not perfect. Some of the things that you may want but are not in this player:
- no progressive support;
- no mp3 playlist support;
- only Region 1 decoding and only NTSC (too bad if you own DVD movies from Europe or Asia)
But for the price this unit is selling I can afford to buy it now and then replace it in a couple of years with much more modern player without breaking the bank.

If you still have a unit that has experienced the H07 death message, call Panasonic Executive Customer Relations at 201-392-6870. Politely but firmly ask them what they are doing about this widespread problem, and tell them you would like them to fix your unit at no charge.