And, whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the DVD795SA stands ready to deliver the full potential of your DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.

The DVD795SA also performs 3:2 pulldown detection. DVD mastering introduces a common distortion when adjusting 24 frames-per-second movies to 30 fps video; reverse 3:2 pulldown digitally corrects this distortion, removing the redundant information to display a film-frame-accurate picture.

Component-video outputs (selectable for 480p/480i) help minimize digital and line-scan artifacts on compatible advanced televisions, while composite- and S-video outputs bring compatibility with nearly any television. Choose from NTSC or PAL video output, depending on your television (and your discs). Parallel video outputs let you route the player's 3 outputs to 3 different televisions simultaneously.

As an anti-piracy measure, the DVD795SA (like all other SACD players) performs its own decoding of SACD signals, passing high-resolution analog, not digital, audio to your integrated amplifier or surround receiver. This means you'll need an audio/video receiver with multichannel analog-audio inputs to appreciate multichannel SACD releases. Built-in SACD bass management helps you tailor the output level of the ".1" LFE (low-frequency effects) channel to your system, as an appropriate level may differ from the output level appropriate for Dolby Digital and DTS surround mixes. The unit also decodes Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround-sound formats.

If you're not planning to use the SACD capability for multichannel programming, both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel signals can also be routed through the player's digital-audio outputs (one each of RCA coaxial and Toslink optical) for a simpler connection to a compatible AV receiver. Please note that MP3 sound is only available from the stereo analog-audio outputs and not from the digital-audio outs.

IntelliPlay is great for managing your disc viewing and listening. If, for instance, you have two movies loaded but want to listen to three audio discs sequentially, you don't have to remove the DVDs to avoid mixing them up with your music. Just play a CD first after powering up the device. With IntelliPlay on, the player focuses on the type of disc that plays first. (You may also turn this feature off.)

Favorite Track Selection (FTS) lets you play your favorite tracks in the order you select. A program can contain up to 100 tracks from Super Audio CDs, audio CDs, MP3 (files on CD-R or CD-RW), video CDs, or super video CDs.

Other playback options include 5-disc resume, which lets you pick-up where you left off on your 5 most recently viewed DVDs, enhanced parental control (with 120-disc lockout), Philips 3-D Surround Sound (which simulates 5-channel surround from 2-channel sources), and picture zoom for magnification of select moving or still images.

What's in the Box
DVD/SACD player, remote control, batteries, user's manual, warranty information, and a stereo analog audio interconnect/composite-video cable.