On Nov. 25, I purchased a "cheap" replacement for my Panasonic combo recorder, which I had to ship off for warranty service. I bought the highly rated Insignia NS-UPDVD player.

CONCERN: On every DVD disc I've played, I've had audio "dropouts," brief pauses in the sound. The dropouts occur about once every 5-10 minutes for only about one-to-two seconds of silence each dropout.

I've had at least 15-20 discs in the player, and the dropouts seem to happen with every one of them. If I back up and replay the brief dropped-out section, then the sound is always there the second time.

The player is connected to the TV via an HDMI cable. (By the way, there is no HDMI setting in the dvd player's setup menu, so I selected the COMPONENT setting for use with the HDMI cable. The only other setting choice is S-VIDEO.)

QUESTION: Do I have a defective dvd player? Defective HDMI cable? Defective discs? (I can't see how ALL the discs could be defective, even if they do come from the library.)

Well-seeing as it's an Insignia-which to be quite frank have well deserved reputations as being junk-its probally the player.

Well-seeing as it's an Insignia-which to be quite frank have well deserved reputations as being junk-its probably the player.

Well, don't laugh, but I relied on _Consumer Reports_, which recommended this model as only one of three basic players it did recommend. The other recommended players cost two-to-three times as much--and I really only wanted an inexpensive basic player. (My "real" player is a Panasonic recorder.)

Here is what CR said about the Insignia model: "This DVD player from Insignia [NS-UPDVD]--Best Buy's house brand--is a very good overall performer that's very easy to use, offered at a low price."

A search of this forum shows virtually nothing about this Insignia player. So what's a feller to do? I tried to inform myself before buying.

So . . . I'm returning the unit today and hoping for a refund (not a replacement).

Consumer Reports is not a well-respected for AV recommendations. They do better with appliances and not AV equipments. I'd return the Insignia and get a Pioneer or Sony upconverting player. If you want cheap, go with Phillips 5990 or 5992 at Costco ($40).

Bagging on his choice of brands is hardly appropriate considering I just read a thread about the latest,greatest and highest rated player on this board, the Oppo is having the identical problems. Welcome to the wonderful world of HDMI handshake problems.

Bagging on his choice of brands is hardly appropriate considering I just read a thread about the latest, greatest and highest rated player on this board, the Oppo is having the identical problems. Welcome to the wonderful world of HDMI handshake problems.

Hmmm . . . "HDMI handshake problems," huh?

Could it be that neither the Panasonic DVD recorder (DMR-EZ47V), nor the Insignia DVD player is at fault here, but my HDMI cable from Monoprice? I used the same HDMI cable to connect each of them to the Panasonic TV set.

I had "freezing" problems and other issues with the Panasonic DVD recorder and audio dropout problems with the Insignia DVD player. After about seven months of problems with the recorder, one Panasonic tech support guy posited that the HDMI cable might be a problem, but I dismissed that theory then.

Panasonic just replaced the recorder board and updated the firmware, etc. When the repaired DVD recorder returned last week, I immediately began to have the previous freezing problems again despite their having replaced the guts of the unit.

QUESTION: So, now should I suspect the HDMI cable could be at fault since TWO DVD units have had problems when connected by that cable, albeit not the same problems?

Most of my hdmi cables come from Monoprice and I've never had any problems with them-it could be a bad cable-take another one and try it-problem goes away-bad cable.

On Nov. 25, I purchased a "cheap" replacement for my Panasonic combo recorder, which I had to ship off for warranty service. I bought the highly rated Insignia NS-UPDVD player.

CONCERN: On every DVD disc I've played, I've had audio "dropouts," brief pauses in the sound. The dropouts occur about once every 5-10 minutes for only about one-to-two seconds of silence each dropout.

I've had at least 15-20 discs in the player, and the dropouts seem to happen with every one of them. If I back up and replay the brief dropped-out section, then the sound is always there the second time.

The player is connected to the TV via an HDMI cable. (By the way, there is no HDMI setting in the dvd player's setup menu, so I selected the COMPONENT setting for use with the HDMI cable. The only other setting choice is S-VIDEO.)

QUESTION: Do I have a defective dvd player? Defective HDMI cable? Defective discs? (I can't see how ALL the discs could be defective, even if they do come from the library.)

Any idea if this actually upconverts to 1080i over component like it claims?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8637898&type=product&id=1194054059178