DVD was invented in 1995 & it's taken more than 10yrs to perfect the DVD player. The early DVD players all suffered from the same problems that plague Bluray players of today. They were plagued with slow loading times & they came locked - region coded. Even today, there are a lot of DVD players out there that are region coded & they need to be hacked, if U intend to play international DVDs.

The Pioneer DV-610AV is a true universal DVD player because of the following reasons:

1) Out of the box, this player comes unlocked. It plays DVDs from all 6 DVD regions.
2) Universal power supply, it works on both 110V - 220V. It comes with two power chords, one with the N. American flat pin & the other one has the Asian (Chinese) round pin. It can be plugged anywhere in the world with the help of the right pin / plug adaptor.
3) It plays almost all formats other than High Definition formats such as Bluray. It even plays DVDA & SACD.
4) Available in both black... Read more

I bought this as a present for my parents in Europe - it was a steal at below $100! It works with both PAL and NTSC TVs (for HDTVs this means that it works with both 50Hz and 60Hz sets). Also, it accepts both 120V and 220V AC power. It was a perfect present - it's also light and compact, so easily fit in my mid-size luggage, with lots of rooms for travel stuff. When I got back from my trip, I bought a second unit for myself (at a higher price)

The build quality is better than I expected at this price - it looks very nice. The on-screen menu system is much better than on my main well-reviewed Panasonic DVD player. It definitely up-converts to HD resolution just as well as my Panasonic. I did not run any image-quality benchmarks, but there are no image problems that I noticed.

PRO: True Region-free, works in US and any country in Europe; lots of features (even rips CDs to mp3), plays SACDs; looks nice, good menu system.

CON: nothing as far as I can tell... Read more

This is the most amazingly satisfying electronics product I have ever bought. The features are many and easy to learn. I especially enjoy some of the audio and video adjustment features:
Audio: DRC setting helps bring up quieter sounds while controlling loud peaks. Great for taming those annoying audio surges in 'background' music or battle scenes, etc. The Dialog feature lets you adjust the dialog perception so that you can hear the voices better over the background sounds in the soundtracks.
Video: You can adjust the Sharpness, Brightness, Contrast, Gamma, Hue, Chroma Level and BNR (block noise reduction). Each one has several levels to choose from and you get to sample it as it adjusts, so you can skip back and forth and compare the difference before you decide what to settle on.
The USB mode has great, easy to navigate menus. You can also record to your thumb drive from a CD that you are playing. There is a choice of different bit rates to do this and you can record... Read more