Samsung
I learned something weird about Samsung: it had an HD-supporting model called HD860, but that's been discontinued. It cost over Rs 5000 anyway, so let’s forget that for a minute, and focus on its most common player – The P172. This one retails for Rs 3200, best price.
The P172 has a modern futuristic design, with a black chassis and a metallic silver strip on the front panel that exposes the buttons. The DVD tray is centrally located in the black region, with a camouflaged eject button. This supports DivX, DTS, but has no HDMI and USB.
These things are factored into the price, however, and performance is not bad – though artifacts are present, even in the progressive output. The image we saw was normal 576i (PAL) so resolution-wise we were getting all the lines but still something was lacking in the detail.
There are other Samsung models out there, such as the DVD P460, but with no real difference in the specs and features.
Sony
Sony has two major units in the market, the NS57P and the NS76H. The latter costs Rs 5900 (I know it’s above our limit) and was actually out of stock when I inquired. So I guess it's selling well. The H in the name stands for HDMI (or HD at a pinch), and guess what? You get a free HDMI cable with every purchase.
The NS57P doesn’t support High-Def upscaling, but at Rs 2900 would have been quite a good buy if it weren't for one major blow – no DivX. The NS76H chassis is shiny aluminum all over, with a black tray and display frame on the front. Buttons are body-colored, giving a uniform look. It looks simple and trim, but lacks a certain snazz the others had.
The player performs quite well, with probably the best progressive scan output of the lot. We watched film, animation, and video sources with different field cadences, and all worked very well. The response of the drive was particularly prompt.
Overall I like this player. It's nice and neat, so long as can live without the 'jazz factor'. Performance was good too.
philips DVP 6565 - can it play multi regiod DVDs 
