Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DVD-S54K 1080p Upconverting DVD Player

There are DVD players out there in the same price range that offer a better picture. But what the Panasonic has going for it is rugged construction, a good remote, quick loading, easy set up and it plays everything (not multi-region though). I bought the S54 to replace my S47 which has given me six years of good service and is still running (the motor is getting tired though). I have tried other brands, including a Philips, which gave me just six months of service. So six years of intense use for this price is excellent (My friend's S47 is still going strong after six years). I watch my quality DVDs on a Denon or Marantz, but like all good DVD players, they can't handle shoddy media. They stick, skip or refuse to load. Which is why I always have a cheap DVD player on hand for less than perfect media. The S54 does that job in style, none of that dreaded 'disc error'. Simply put, this Panasonic range is the AK47 of DVD players. If it had better picture quality it would rate five stars.

This DVD player is worth more than its cost. The price is great for a full featured, multiple format player. For those of us waiting for Blueray players to become reasonably priced, this product fits the bill.

great picture quality, so far watched 2 movies and they looked incredible. much clearer then a reg DVD player@ 480i. the only fault that I see is the tray is a little flimsy. I would recommend this DVD player.

I own a DMR-ES25 Panasonic recorder and wanted a player with DVD-RAM capabilities. However when I hooked this up to my 1080p LCD TV through HDMI, I noticed that the resulting picture was noisy and much worse than the 1080i upconversion coming from my old Panasonic's HDMI output. There was practically no noticeable difference between the 480p and 1080p outputs when watching DVDs. It was as if there was no upconversion. I even experienced occasional video and audio loss. BTW I was using the same HDMI cable to compare my DVD recorder and this unit, so I don't think that was the issue here. The menu screen had superfluous white dots in random places.

Also the tray is flimsy and it's hard to get DVDs out. I ended up returning it. I either got a bad unit or the quality of the upconversion circuitry is just not up to par compared to older generation Panasonics.

I got this to team up with the Panasonic 42" Plasma Viera tv & it really makes my dvd's alot sharper & clearer than before on a regular dvd player. Why buy a Blu-ray player & spend all the extra money on the Blu-ray dvd's when you don't have to?