Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DVD-F85S 5-Disc Progressive Scan DVD Player , Silver

I initially bought the 35S player, but had to return it for a few reasons: slow start-up time, slow loading time, inability to read certain DVDs of poorer quality, inability to read certain VCD discs. This player, besides having a 5-disc changer, corrects all the faults I found with the 35S. The video and sound quality are amazing, especially for a player which does not cost too much.

My husband and I have held off getting a DVD player because we have so many VHS tapes (all of the classic comedies, musicals, etc.) that it didn't seem worth the money to get into another format. A recent trip to a video store, where DVDs are the predominant choice, plus the urgings of our adult children, made us decide to look into purchasing a unit.

We never buy products without checking our Consumer Reports magazine recommendations AND the Amazon.com reviews from buyers. Both sources led us to a decision to buy this unit - the 5-disc unit enabled us to get rid of our old, bulky 5-disc Sony CD player. Since our VHS player works fine, we didn't need a combo VHS/CD player, so we feel we made the right choice. The slim, sleek lines of this unit are a decided plus!

The unit arrived within a couple of days of ordering, and we are AMAZED to find how much we've been missing!! WHO KNEW there were so many electronic enhancements?? -- certainly not us ordinary people! Our surround sound system is finally being used to its best advantage on our CDs, and we'll be exploring all of the audio and video options soon. We did have to buy some additional cables and my husband had to draw on his electronics experience, but this unit is a wonderful addition to our home entertainment set-up.

OH! I failed to mention some important decision-making factors: SUPER price and FREE SHIPPING from Amazon.com. We couldn't be more pleased.

My wife gave me a 'go get yourself a home theater system' card for Christmas, and - like I do for almost any purchase nowadays - I first spent a lot of time doing 'internet research' and reading buyer's reviews such as what I'm writing right now for Amazon.com. After much deliberation, I finally settled on getting an excellent speaker / receiver package from Onkyo (the very excellent HT-S760 6.1 system) and for the DVD player I went with this Panasonic F85S.

I can't say enough good things this DVD player: the picture is amazing (I'd previously been using my Playstation2 as my DVD player, and there's just no comparison between how much better this DVD player is!), I love the ability to load discs while one is still playing, and - very important to me - the remote control's main buttons are nice and big and overall it's easy to use (I can't say the same about the remote for my Onkyo receiver, but that's why I didn't get the Onkyo DVD player bundled in to the HT-S767 package).

Two big thumbs up - I highly reccommend this player to anyone, and the super-slim design REALLY helped me fit this into my not-so-big entertainment center.

One word of warning to anyone buying a home theater system though: be prepared to spend a lot of $$ on cables! The A/V wires that come with the HTiB system and this DVD player are 'good enough', but if you want the better sound and picture (i.e. digital audio, component video) those wires are expen$ive!

I'm no expert, thank God, on bells and whistles. All I wanted was a player that will play all the DVD's I made, DVD's from stores, CD's that I made and have pictures on and music CD's. So far it does it all, but with one little glitch, when I fast forward a DVD, I will sometimes get a black box on my TV screen. No big problem, I click my recall button on my remote for the TV and it's gone. Again, this is a once in a while thing and only happens when I fast forward a DVD. I don't believe there is anything wrong with the player, I believe it's from my TV. To get back on my main issue, it does play everything I have and had made with other brands of DVD burners and CD burners and I love it. What made me buy this unit was one person said his played everything and probably play toast if he could get it in there. He had the one disk version. Well, he was right, I do believe it will play toast. I'm very happy with it so far. If it breaks down sooner then it should, I'll write another report but for now, I give it five stars. I'm thinking of buying the one disk version for the bedroom, the price is right and it does what it should.

After searching and comparing many dvd changers, I decided to give this Panasonic DVD-F85S 5-Disc Player a try. I received it in 2 days. Set up was a brief. I've to purchase a new optical digital cable since it doesn't have coax. digital output. I was initially hesitated to purchase a silver one (the only color amazon has to offer) because all my existing equipments are black. But this silver dvd is so handsome and slim. It actually fitted well with my black projection TV and other sound system equitments. The quality of the picture is superp. The sound is great; 2 major things I was looking for. I love the audio only function which allows you to turn the video signal off when playing audio CD--it makes audio cd sounds better. The player allows you to randamly play any songs within and among cds but the menu is not very well written. This DVD comes with so many great features; like dialogue enhencer-allows you to hear the dialogue bettter during the movie, double re-master(to choose from pop, rock, jazz etc when playing cd); position memory-which is so useful for watching movie if you need to turn off the movie and come back to watch it next time. With the position memory, you will be able to watch the movie from where you left off and not from the very begining. Midnight mode; sleep timer; sequential(allows you to play audio cd one after another automatically without having you to push a button after finish playing one cd) However, I am surprised that Panasonic did not incoporate a screen saver in this DVD. To me, lacking of screen saver, I would be quite uncomfortable to use it with an expensive plasma TV; althouth the dvd will switch to stand by mode afer stopping for 30 mins. My final words, you can't go wrong with this DVD 5 dics changer. It combines beauty, quality and Low cost.