A DVD Player/Receiver all in one unit - must be one of those crappy department store type units right? Well, with a typical THD figure of 0.09% and an output of 75 Watts (RMS from 20 - 20,000 Hz) into all 5 channels this is a serious bit of gear. How do I know? 'cause I now use one at home in my office/walking machine room (the walking machine belongs to my lovely wife and is the reason I now have an office rather than a Home Theatre room).

    I took home the Sherwood VR758 after a losing battle to keep my full size equipment, it was just a trial but has ended up being a permanent fixture due to it's better than expected performance. Let's look at the features -

• Dolby Digital and DTS Decoding with Dolby Pro-Logic II.

• Playback of DVD, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP-3.

• Progressive Scan Video Output.

• Component Video Output.

• 3 Digital inputs with 1 digital output plus a front digital input.

• On-screen display (composite and S-Video)

• Pre-Programmed remote (it handles my Panasonic VCR and TV)

• AM/FM Tuner with 30 pre-sets.

• Analogue By-pass for pure stereo sound on CD.

    All well and good but how does it SOUND? - Bloody good actually. I'm running it with my faithful Electrovoice MS-802 Monitors (an ugly 8" two way) and a Yamaha YST-SW320 subwoofer. As I sit at my computer and write all this rubbish, at least I can enjoy all my CD collection the way I like to hear it - accurately! The audio quality would be a small step above the basic Yamaha/Marantz/Onkyo's I've tested but not quite up there with Yamaha's Top Art range or the Marantz/Onkyo equivalents.

    Picture wise, it's pretty good. I've tested it on my 127cm HD rear projection set and the quality is up there with any $500 to $600 DVD player on the market. On my 68cm in the office it's as good as anything around (do people really think they can see any significant difference between good DVD players on a 68cm set?).

    So, it's easy to use, sounds great, has a good picture, what's the downside? Well, I guess the lack of upgradeability and a limited dynamic range in large rooms when using low sensitivity loudspeakers would be the only issues. I would suggest the VR758 to anybody who needs a simple to use, high quality A/V system where size and aesthetics are a factor. It is capable of driving any stereo or 5.1 speakers from a basic $499 Yamaha Sub/Sat system up to the Paradigm Studio range (around $3500). If I give the impression I like this little sucker, you're dead right. At a retail of $1499 it's pretty neat, at the current discount price of $999 it's an absolute bargain.