If you want a DVD player that fits your sense of style, and your sense of style says "Shiny things!" a lot, then the DVD-XV10 could be a perfect match.

Panasonic's DVD-XV10 is likely to sell for one reason, and one reason alone: the design. It's exceptionally shiny and exceptionally thin. Panasonic claim that at 52mm high, it's the world's slimmest DVD player; we suspect that (excluding certain ultra portable notebooks) they're right.

The polished design did annoy us in one respect. In order to maintain its mirror-like status, there are no front-facing controls; all of the control buttons rest on the front top edge. In our test environment we had the DVD-XV10 in a TV cabinet, and thus couldn't actually see the labels for the top-facing buttons.

The DVD-XV10 boasts of having "Advanced Virtual Surround Sound" (AVSS), a method of simulating true Dolby Digital 5.1 channel sound on a two speaker setup. We were dubious about this claim; 5.1 channel sound is excellent because it uses multiple sound channels and speakers to create an entire enveloping sound environment. In our tests AVSS did create something of this effect, but it was extremely dependent on what title we played through the system. We certainly wouldn't recommend AVSS as a reason to pick up the DVD-XV10; if 5.1 channel sound is what you want, invest in a decoder and speaker system capable of handling it, not something that attempts to fake it.

More impressive on the audio front are features designed to enhance bass tones and particularly dialogue. The DVD-XV10 will send an enhanced audio signal to a separate subwoofer (if you have one) to enhance bass if a rumbling floor floats your boat. Dialogue enhancement sends a boosted signal to the centre channel speaker to enhance dialogue over other noisy channels. Again we found the usefulness of this varied widely from disc to disc; on some DVDs it worked very well, while on others we were extremely hard pressed to spot any difference at all.

The final enhancement tool in the DVD-XV10's arsenal is what it dubs "Cinema Mode". This adjusts onscreen brightness in order to (theoretically) lessen glare and provide a more 'cinema like' experience. Like the other enhancement features of the XV10, this is highly variable depending on your screen setup and lighting conditions, not to mention the brightness level of your DVD of choice. For some discs we could just about see what Panasonic's on about, but for the most part we left this off as it had a tendency to make certain movies appear very dark and muddy.

The DVD-XV10 offers a 'zoom' feature for 16:9 widescreen movies to render them as though they were 4:3 pan and scan titles. Not only does this remove the entire point of purchasing widescreen titles and take away a good chunk of the viewable image, but like many of the DVD-XV10's other features, it doesn't work on every widescreen title. We struggled to find a single widescreen title where this function operated properly.

The DVD-XV10 can also be used as a sound system. It supports CD Audio and MP3 playback through a simple interface. We were unimpressed by its random function; where a normal CD player would allow you to jump inbetween playback modes on the fly, randomisation can only be set prior to pressing play.

Leaving aside the additional functions, the DVD-XV10 does an excellent job of DVD playback. DVD, CD, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-R all worked within our test unit without any problems whatsoever. It has a reasonable but not entirely exciting remote that will still inevitably be lost somewhere behind the couch and an onscreen display that tends towards the minimalist. This means you've got a slight learning curve but less onscreen disruption once you know what you're doing. One nice feature is the Quick Replay function that jumps back seven seconds from any point, so if you miss a line of dialogue you can quickly catch up without annoying fellow watchers.

Panasonic DVD-XV10
Company: Panasonic Australia
Price: AU$799
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 132 600

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