First off I just want to say thanks for the incredible wealth of information here. As for this new Magnavox 557 I'm glad Funai is continuing to produce these machines. I took a look at the new manual and noticed a few things though.
The new Aspect Ratio setting is something I've had on my Toshiba DR430. It sets the WS bit so that the widescreen recorded disc will play properly on 4:3 TV sets and 16:9 sets without manually setting the TV to Wide to stretch it to the proper ratio. It's a nice feature to have but it only works on DVD-R/-RW media and not DVD+R/+RW. Leaving the setting on Auto will automatically set the bit if the player is fed a widescreen signal and won't if it's fed a 4:3 signal.
I found a couple of things that might be troubling if I'm reading the manual correctly though. On page 42 it lists the available recording options as 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 hr instead of the previously available 1, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, and 6 hr options. Also on page 41 it lists DVD-R/-RW as the only recordable discs compatible with the unit. There's no mention of DVD+R/+RW discs making me think they dropped support for it. Just to double check I looked at the manual for the previous 53x model and it lists both + and - media as compatible.
