If you aren't feeling the credit crunch, Pioneer's £600 BDP-LX71 is an excellent Blu-ray player with superb picture and sound quality. It has wonderfully simple menu systems that are a breeze to configure and we love the connectivity options. If money is

Picture and sound quality; styling is symmetrical and lovely; great selection of outputs including 7.1 audio

It's quite big; expensive; no internal DTS-HD decoding, only pass-through

The BDP-LX71 screams quality and at £600 we should hope so, too. It's an excellent player with superb picture and sound quality. It has wonderfully simple menu systems that are a breeze to configure and we love the connectivity options. If money is no obj

The Samsung BD-P1500 is dirt cheap at around £170, and it has a certain charm with its rounded edges and bold controls. A good choice of features and the ability to play 1080/24p pictures effortlessly on your TV make the P1500 a promising option for peopl

Price; features; ease of use; user interface

Soft picture and some de-interlacing artefacts; no DTS-HD decoding built-in

Admittedly the BD-P1500 is noisy at first, and it is quite a chunky player. But it's actually very simple to use, is spry in its operation and can chuck a 1080/24p picture on your TV like the best of them. Considering the price, we seriously think th...

Styling; picture and sound quality

Could be cheaper

Quite simply, this is one of the most sensibly priced and best-performing Blu-ray players on the market. With the BD35, Panasonic is proving that stand-alone players can offer decent performance and other advantages such as lower power consumption, nearly...

First things first -- we love this DVD player for ignoring DVD region coding. But that isn't all it does: the Oppo DV-980H does just about everything else, too, including producing 1080p pictures. It may be expensive, but for what you're getting...

Picture and sound quality; fantastic array of features; styling; ease of use

Expensive; ugly menu systems

This DVD player offers everything, including amazing picture and sound quality, features left, right and centre, and a delightful style that will look great in your expensive AV setup. Although this player is expensive by Sainsbury's standards, it&ap...

If you're looking to make the most of your DVD collection but you aren't up for a Blu-ray player, this Toshiba upscaling DVD player may be a good bet. Play with the three different upscaling modes to find your ideal picture, but watch out for so...

Picture quality; sound; holds its own against other upscaling players

It's expensive for a DVD player; a pain to use with certain TVs

This is a decent upscaling DVD player that can breathe extra life into your DVD collection. The problem is, it's rather a pain to use at times, and if you own a 32-inch 1080p Philips TV you're going to be bang out of luck with it

Despite all the awful shopping channels, there's a wealth of great TV to record on Freeview. For maximum flexibility you'll want a DVD recorder and PVR with plenty of storage space, and that can record cable or satellite from a number of inputs....

Picture quality; 250GB storage capacity; ease of use

GuidePlus+ is a pain; no included HDMI cable makes us grumpy; Freeview tuner very bad at picking up a signal

Overall a good machine, but it has some problems, and we'd suggest you check the strength of the Freeview signal in your area before you invest. Otherwise its performance and value for money make it worthy of your time

LG's demurely named DP391B deserves a more conspicuous moniker -- it's easily one of the best portable DVD players we've ever seen. With a glorious screen, handy kickstand and tonnes of features, including DivX playback and photo display, i...

Design; picture quality is stunning; plenty of features to keep you occupied on long journeys

Sound is miles too quiet from the built-in speakers, and a little too low via headphones; battery can't be replaced by user; reflective screen

A great portable DVD player that has enough features to keep almost anyone happy -- if we could change one thing, we'd increase the battery capacity, which isn't enough for very long plane journeys

The Panasonic DMR-EX88 comes with a high-end price tag, but its features are certainly up to scratch. A Freeview recorder PVR with a massive 400GB hard drive and a DVD recorder built in, it will also play Xvid and DivX files and upscale your DVDs. That sh...

Picture and sound quality; huge number of useful features; fairly easy to use

Only one tuner; slightly too expensive; LP and EP picture modes are pretty grim quality

A sturdy performer that will do virtually everything you could ever want a DVD player, recorder and PVR to do. The DivX and XviD playback from disc or USB is a really nice addition that improves the machine over previous iterations

With its twisty-turny, 9-inch screen, the Toshiba SD-P91S is a great portable DVD player for when you're stuffed into cattle class. It's a large, widescreen player that supports lots of video files and has a USB port for easy access. It'll...

Great battery life; impressive sound; great connectivity options; convenient; plays a good selection of video files

Built-in screen isn't very good quality; too large; ugly menus

If Toshiba SD-P91S had spent more time on the screen, this would have been a great product well worth your cash. It's a shame that an otherwise decent machine has been let down by the single most important component

The Philips DVDR5520H's main attraction is its built-in Freeview PVR. DVD and support for downloaded Internet material is also available. It looks sleek and attractive and has excellent connectivity, and a very well laid out electronic programme guide. Pi...

Picture and sound quality; design

Menus are quite slow at times and rather annoying

Not a bad all-rounder. We like the picture and sound quality and there are enough features to justify the asking price, but we were annoyed by how the menu system operated at times