Harman Kardon DVD 31 Progressive-Scan DVD Player

I have had this for a month now and am slightly disappointed in it. I bought this to replace my XBox, which had the sharpest image I had ever seen in a DVD player (with the added Monster component cables and on an Sony HDTV). My first buy was a $60 Panasonic with Philips component cables, which was nowhere close to the XBox. I had to take it back and decided to spend more to get DVD 31. While the image quality is better than the under $100 Progressive DVD players, this is nowhere as clear and sharp as the XBox. I bought the best Monster cables I could get, thinking image would improve (DVD 31 comes with an S-Video cable), but - while there is a small improvement - it still is not crystal clear. Weird thing is that I had better quality with my XBox - which it is impossible to have had a better DVD player. I thought it is in the cables, but it turns out XBox still is better. Either that or the combination XBox / Sony HD works better. One other thing that does not work too great is the remote control. I never imagined I would see a poor design for a remote, but this is exactly that. Text is gray on a gray background, so it is impossible to see. It has too many buttons - really, do we need different buttons for On and Off? You have 2 special buttons for playing pics, instead of just using arrows! Spent half an hour to figure out which one is the MENU button: it is called OSD (On -Screen Display?)! You cannot access the MENU at any time! Basic functions are mixed up on a radial menu, that has both useful and useless buttons mixed together. It looks to me like they could cut the size of this remote in half and still keep all the functions. These complaints aside, I would say this DVD player is still worth buying, because of all the options it packs. And unless you experienced better quality before, most likely you will like this DVD player, because the image is definitely better than average. If you have an HDTV, I would recomment getting the Monster cables though, for a quality improvement worth the investment. Read more

Pathetic excuse for a DVD player. Cannot read many DVD discs. Very picky when burning your own dvd. Remote control is pathetic. You must be directly in front of player in order to even have a possibility of the player receiving the signal from the remote. I would sell mine, however my conscience will not allow me to!!!! Read more

The DVD player has done a great job. We have had no problems with it at all. Read more

worked fine Read more

I have been a loyal HK customer for years now. but i am a little let down in this device. i have the new NIN Downward Spiral DVD-audio disc and it has trouble playing. i took the disc to a friends and put it in his pioneer and it worked perfectly. i cant seem to get an answer out of hk as to weather this is just my unit or all of them. Read more

Pro's: Beautiful picture, beautiful color, flawless sound--has built in Wolfson audio processors! If you don't mind not having HD upconversion, this is a fantastic DVD player. Built in DTS and Dolby decoding processors are the best I've heard on any DVD player yet; even over Denon. The closest I've seen comparable to this DVD player for the same price is the Toshiba S 5970. This one even plays SACD's and HDCD's, which it's predecessor the HK DVD22 did not. Only wish Harman would come out with an upconverter DVD player--it would blow everything else on the market away! Con's: No HD upconversion--even though the picture is virtually flawless. HK has reported numerous issues w the DVD22 player's digital optical outputs (which is why they're phasing it out), which were supposedly corrected with this model--I have not had to return this one yet. Read more

The above review pretty much sums it up, but one correction. This player is not compatible with SACD's and I found that to be the player's only weakness. But if you have an HDTV, you may want to opt for a player with the DVI output to get the 1080i. Read more

Let me begin by saying, while this player does NOT offer HD upconversion, it outperforms the Sony and Samsung upconverting HD players. I carefully compared the three models on my Hitachi 51 RPTV, and found this to clearly be the best. Picture quality its stunningly superb, suprising deep color and incredible sharpness. I saw absolutely NO benefit from using a high-quality DVI connector as opposed to high-quality component cables. The player also offers DVD-Audio which is phenomenal when set up to a higher end sound system. And finally, in my opinion, this unit is the best looking DVD player I've seen on the market. The only flaw I've come accross is with the remote, which lacks volume buttons, and although lighted, it's still hard to make out which button is which in the dark. Read more