Operation:
When you first turn on the unit, you get a bright white Go Video screen, with the mode listed in the lower left corner. Like most modern DVD players, when you select any function (change modes, eject, press play, change volume) the display will change to show you what you are doing. When I first turned the unit on, the screen was extremely blurry, and was just about unusable. I was tempted to return the unit, but in the time it took for me to go to the other room to get a DVD, the screen adjusted and became clear. It took about five minutes for it to adjust to perfection. With all subsequent uses there was no adjustment period necessary. I even disconnected the unit for several days then tried it again; still no adjustment was necessary.
I wanted to check out the DVD playback first. I selected the title "Masters of Horror: Imprint DVD". I was surprised that the unit displayed the wide screen movie using the whole screen. No black bars, as I was expecting. Playback was smooth and crystal clear, and I have to admit I was impressed by the quality of the screen. The first picture shows the menu of the DVD while it was transitioning to another scene, while the second picture is of a scene in the movie while paused.
 
Configuring the FM tuner was very simple. You have 40 available presets which should be more than enough for any major metropolitan area. You can use the "Tun-Up" and "Tun-Dn" buttons to scroll through the presets. To change the station for the presets, use the "Ad-Dn" and "Ad-Up" buttons to manually tune in a station. The frequency increases/decreases by .1 at a time. The large display will give you the current FM and AM preset along with the associated station. The mini-display provides you a view of the radio type (FM/AM), the preset number, and the station frequency.
 
In my area, I do not get antenna television reception. Everybody has cable or satellite, and I ran a simple RCA A/V cable from my satellite receiver to the unit for testing purposes. Each channel was crystal clear (as I tried to represent in the above right image).
Finally, we have the setup options, where only two of the functions have user configurable settings. The DVD playback allows you to select default language, and aspect ratio. While the TV setup menu allows you to choose the TV input type, frequency, fine tuning, execute an auto search, and skip specific channels.
 
On a purely subjective note, I found the audio quality to be pretty good. There was no distortion, feedback, or pops on any volume settings up to 30. At 31 and 32 there was a little distortion, but it was still acceptable. The volume is capable of going fairly high, and I was able to hear it outside my house and across the street (approximately 50 feet, through several walls). Even at setting 1, it is loud enough that I can hear it over the drone of three computers in the same room. Obviously a small system like this will not stand up to an audiophile's scrutiny.
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