Not as bad as they say

I recognize that there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with this product. I've had this product for about 3 weeks. The batteries supplied worked for 1 day. That was strange. Other than that, the TV Guardian works fantastic. This is the only product on the market, at the time of this review, that has both HDMI up-conversion and TV Guardian. Of course, TV Guardian doesn't work on all movies, but we've had very good success.

As far as quality, I kept my Sony HDMI up-converting DVD player because it is a clear winner in quality (I bought the RCA for the TV Guardian). But, my Sony also cost about 4 times more. The up-converted picture quality looks fantastic on my Panasonic 1080i HD TV. You do have to manually set your television's aspect ratio and resolution. (My TV can only support 1080i, and the screen went crazy when I set it on 1080p).

So, the DVD player isn't as bad as everyone says. In some ways it is a little complicating to set up, but it is do-able.

If something  more

Warranty is a joke. Broke after 6 months

I purchased this from Amazon 6 months ago. It broke last week. Since it is suppose to be under warranty I called RCA. They wanted to charge me a $50 service fee to have the DVD player switched out, which is almost the full price of the unit. Basically you really only have a warranty until 90 days, after that point you are forced to pay their "fee". They do not support their products whatsoever. I am now left with a very large paper weight. Save yourself the trouble and buy from a company that actually stands behind their products and offers a full warranty with no strings attached.

Piece of Junk

I have purchased 2 of these RCA285 units and both of them failed within a month. I took a loss on the first one but thank goodness I ordered the second one from Amazon and was able to return it and get an immediate refund. Amazon is wonderful, this player is horrible. Amazon should stop their losses and pull this item from inventory now. So please don't waste your money on this unit and buy another upconverting DVD player from another manufacturer.

Terrible dvd player...don't waste your time

Sure this player is inexpensive and is made by RCA (I guess a decent manufacturer???), but don't be fooled. This is a cheap piece of machinery. When I hooked the player up, I was able to play one movie. The picture was ok...definitely not great (even with the upscaling). After that movie though, no other dvds worked on the player. In fact, every film I tried to play ended up jamming the player and I had to unplug the system to release the disc. Thankfully, Amazon is refunding me my money. Don't waste your time with this player. Spend the extra $20 and go with another model.

great surprize

The DRC 285 is a good little upconvert. It upconverts to 480p 720p 1080i and 1080p. All the ouputs are active at once. The HDMI is the only one you can turn on and off. The componet outputs give a good picture but it is 480p. You can only upconvert through the HDMI output. Ive set mine to 1080i and was really impressed with the increased picture quality of standard dvd's. While Im not sure you are getting full blown HD, there is no doubt it looks alot better. The player menu is about as bare bones as it gets-only settings for picture ratio and setting the HDMI to how you want it. It does let you make adjustments on the fly as you watch a dvd. Another featue I liked is you can set the audio of the HDMI seperate from the digital outputs.{coax and optical} This way if your HD set cannot support a digital 5.1 signal you can set it to PCM and still get 5.1 for the other outputs to you home theater. THe player also has a USB 2.0 port on the front and a special menu that lets you rip your cd's  more