Sony DVP-NC665P - 5-Disc DVD and CD Player with MP3

Author's Rating:

Pros: Solid performance, both coaxial and optical digital outs, plays MP3, CD/DVD-R/W+R/W, progressive scan

Cons: Pricey, no SACD or DVD-A playback, no zoom

The Bottom Line: 
The Sony DVP-NC665P is a good progressive scan DVD and CD player, but it is pricey and lacks high resolution audio playback. As such...

Author's Review
Available in black or silver color, the Sony DVP-NC665P looks good in a usual Sony fashion. Its front panel says “precision” twice: “Precision Cinema Progressive” and “Precision Drive 2”. This is exactly what I dislike Sony for – overuse of strong, positively sounding words on their products to make them look better than what they are.

In any case, the front panel looks nice and has a bunch of useful buttons. The display is located over the disc tray.

Connectivity

The rear panel has both optical and coaxial digital audio outs for connecting to a Dolby Digital or DTS decoder – equipped receiver. Also present are analog stereo audio outs, but no analog multi-channel audio out.

Video outs are represented by a composite video out, S-Video out (produces better picture quality) and a component video out (best picture quality), which can be switched between “standard” (interlaced) mode and progressive scan mode. Progressive scan mode produces smoother, more film-like picture, but can only be used if you have an HDTV or EDTV monitor/TV.

No SACD or DVD-A

The player cannot play Super Audio CD or DVD-Audio, which may or may not matter to you. If you want the best possible sound reproduction, you need a player that can play either of these (or both). But it is not relevant for many. Especially considering that there are not any DVD-A or SACD discs available and their prices are high.

Changer

The changer holds 5 discs and you can replace 4 discs while one is playing. In addition to being a DVD player, it can also play Video CD, CD-Audio and MP3 CDs. Recordable formats are also supported (CD-R/W, DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W). The player is compatible with many recordable DVD disc brands.

Performance

The player produces excellent picture through either of its outs. The picture is even better in progressive scan mode, but the standard (interlaced) picture looks good also. The colors are rich and well saturated, the edges of objects are well-defined and small detail visibility is excellent.

The sound (provided you connect the NC665 to the good receiver and speakers) is excellent. In fact, the sound quality does not depend on the player, but on the receiver and speakers. That is unless you use the analog audio out, in which case, the sound does depend on the DAC of the player. And in this case, the sound quality is very good. Of course, to get full 5.1 surround sound effect, you have to use the optical or coaxial digital out and Dolby Digital or DTS decoding in the receiver.

Features

The player comes with multibrand remote control that can adjust important settings on your TV such as volume. Very convenient that you don’t have to use a separate remote for this. Other features of this device are more conventional and standard to many DVD players: random play, instant replay of the last 10 seconds, soundtrack select, subtitle select, angle select, virtual surround sound, parental control, child lock, etc. The player also has block noise reduction to compensate for the MPEG block noise if the encoding used low bit rate.

You can select among several picture presets or create your own custom picture setting with your custom hue, color, brightness and contrast.

Warranty

You get full 1-year warranty on both parts and labor. This is important – the labor is very expensive if you need to fix anything electronic and most of the time, electronic devices come with only 90-day labor warranty. Sony DVD players are not known to be the best in terms of quality (believe it or not), so 1-year labor warranty may come in handy.

Alternatives

I have to mention that Panasonic DVD-F65 can do more for less money (including 2-channel DVD-Audio playback) and the Panasonic DVD-F85 can even handle multichannel DVD-Audio for about the same. Both also know how to scale the picture to fit your screen's aspect ratio.

Bottom Line

The Sony DVP-NC665P is a good progressive scan DVD and CD player, but it is pricey and lacks high resolution audio playback. As such, it is quite pricey. Taking that into account as well as its 1-year full warranty, I can give it 4 stars.