The DV-SL80U also offers resume play, picture zoom to magnify the current display by 2x or 4x, and direct search to locate the desired title, chapter, and track from either playback or stop mode. DVD-RW playback lets you watch rewritable DVD-RW discs (Video Recording mode), which frees you from the need to use write-once DVD-Rs when you intend to watch a disc on your DVD player.

Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the DV-SL80U is 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. Standard composite- and S-video outputs accommodate most other TVs.

The player sports a single set of stereo analog RCA jacks and a coaxial digital-audio output for routing both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround-sound signals to a full-featured audio/video receiver and multichannel speaker system for enveloping, state-of-the-art sound from your favorite movies.

A feature called Rapid Play spins a DVD at slightly faster or slightly slower than normal speed (approximately 1.3x to 0.8x normal speed) while maintaining normal pitch for the soundtrack. This feature works only with Dolby Digital-encoded DVDs. Resume play (DVD/CD) lets you resume playback from the point at which the player last stopped.

Other features include custom bookmarking (up to 10), random playback (CD and MP3 CD only), program play, repeat play, dynamic-range control for CD playback (great for making the music heard across the din of a party), a display dimmer, a screen saver, parental controls, and a bit-rate indicator so you can monitor the player's performance during instances of peak demand.