I used review centre and happened upon the excellent reviews for Cambridge. Bought it, set up is easy and I was ready to go. The picture is clear, sound is excellent and it plays everything. It looks good and feels solid.

Purchased the Cambridge Audio DVD53 DVD Player from shop with slight worries as It came not playing many formats. 45 seconds after plugging in with a quick hack supplied on the box it plays everything and I mean everything. Just this week purchased some DVD R discs and tried them on 9 yes 9 other machines, NONE of the other machines played them, this little beauty plays them like a dream. 30p a DVD R. Machine has paid for itself there. Sound quality is excellent and picture quality sharp.

I have just bought this from Richer Sounds. I have had two Cyberhome 528's which were both good till they failed after 11 and 13 months respectively. Even though it failed out of warrenty, Richer Sounds replaced with another, and recommended the Accoustic Solutions 651. This was had bad LipSync problems and you have to keep goind into DVD setup to choose between 2 channel (down scart) and digital to decoder. As the kids use this, it is a major pain. Anyway, I returned it and took home a Cambridge Audio DVD53. Richer Sounds have great customer service!!! The DVD is a different class. From it's color setup menus to it's Windows style navigation of photo (jpg) CD's and MP3's. Superb !! The Audio is very good, even from MP3 and it plays VCD's and SVCD's. Picture is also first rate. After 2 years of having Cyberhome (which was also good, but not as polished and died after a year), this looks like an excellent bit of kit. It is also built solid and feels like a £250+ piece of kit.

Bought this Cambridge Audio DVD53 DVD player after taking a multi award winning Cyberhome unit home only to find it was truly horrid...bass notes like banging a big bit of bamboo..yuk.
Anyway returned the Cyberhome unit and bought the Cambridge audio 53 player home...opened the box...oooh very nice...plugged it all in and no more Bamboo, doesnt like SVCD's very much but I guess that can be fixed with a bios update. plays cd's as good as my home cd deck...now all I need is a decent AV receiver to go with it...

Perhaps there are some build issues but I have had no signs of this with the unit I bought...

Bottom line: would I buy another...YES! end of story.


Ray.

I spent quite a while looking for a DVD player and didn't want the spend the eqivalent of a small cars worth of cash, and this is the player that has it all. Seriousy - the only thing this model won't do is progressive scan. It has outputs for component video, Scart, RGB, S-Video, Coaxial and Optical Digital as well as being able to NTSC-Pal convert. Although the manual says it wont play VCD it will (I watched one last night). It has so many other features too. Looks wise it is a slimline silver effort and the remote is one of these thin small efforts, which uses a watch-type lithium battery (which is even supplied) and has a glow in the dark keypad.

Picture quality is good, crisp and well saturated and the sound quality also impresses me. I got rid of my CD player when I bought this and dont regret that decision.

The only flaw I have found so far is that when a disc is loaded it takes a second or so for the player to decide what disc type it is and what it has to do with it, but at £119 I can't complain. Sorry if this a)long & b)very praiseworthy but I can't find a problem with the machine.