Every single DVD player out there supports composite video output. It's a little yellow (usually) RCA jack on the back of the player. You can connect this directly to your television and start watching DVD instantly. Of course, you must have a television with a composite video input jack at the very minimum.

Widely recognised as the most economical and most convienient way to connect your DVD player to your television. Not all TV's have s-video input, and you must check this before considering using this type of connection. It provides a better quality picture than composite connection because it seperates the color and brightness portions of the signal into seperate signals. You will probably need to purchase an s-video cable if you want to use this - the player usually only come with composite connection cables.

Now, this seperates the video signal from the DVD player to the television into three (sometimes four) discrete signals which allow for even greater picture quality. This style of connection is becoming more popular, however not very many 'average' television provide this type of connectivity. It is widely regarded as providing the best quality picture available from DVD at the moment.

This is another standard feature of all DVD players. You can simply take these stereo output jacks and plug them into your stereo television or into a stero amplifier. If you have dolby prologic surround in your amplifier, you will get prologic sound from appropriate DVD's.

All DVD players in Australia have either coaxial or optical digital audio outputs. This enables you to transfer the digital audio signal from the player to an external decoder such as an integrated amplifier/decoder and acheive up to 6 channels of discrete sound.

The new kid on the block for discrete audio on DVD's is DTS. They came along late in the DVD game, and as such, not all DVD players are required to recognise their audio track. Most of the new release players support DTS-output, but some of the older established players do not. In any case, you still need an external DTS decoder to listen to the DTS audio - no DVD players yet have built-in DTS decoders. Software support for DTS is limited but growing with around 20 titles now availble in the USA and none in Australia.

Some players have built-in 6 channels decoders. This means that they have 6 RCA jacks on the back. One each for left/right/centre/subwoofer/rear-right/rear-left. You can take these outputs and plug them directly into you amplifier if it accepts sufficient inputs. Amplifiers that do so are commonly referred to as 'Digital Ready' amplifiers and they are becoming more and more common.

Nearly all DVD players have the ability to play Video CD discs. While in the years gonne past VCDs were traditionally used to store Hollywood films they are now increasingly used for Home Movie making. You can now edit your home movies recorded on your digital video recorder and then captured into a home PC, edit them as MPEG 1 format (VCD) or SVCD and then burn them to a blank CD-R for playing them back in your DVD player. If you have a Video CD collection then VCD compatibility in your player is something you should consider when purchasing.

Some players in Australia are modified by the manufacturer to be able to play discs from any region in the world, other players must be modified 'after-sales' to gain this feature. If you plan to buy DVD's from Europe or the USA, you must take this into consideration when purchasing.

All DVD players can play audio CD's. It's a part of the DVD spec that the player is able to understand the linear PCM track of audio CD. Some players have high-quality audio DAC's, some have average DAC's. If you are very picky about your CD quality, this needs to be a consideration when purchasing.