DVD Player Quality - Any Difference ?

In a home-theatre system, does DVD player play the important part in producing
good & clear sound ? (when playing movies). I know receiver and speakers do play
the key part in delivering good & clean sound. To me, DVD player just reads data from
disc and passes it to receiver where all sound dolby & processing are going to be processed.

So, if I use a cheap DVD player (from China) versus the expensive one (ie : Yamaha / Pionner) does it make any overall sound difference ? Thanks

I thnk you are essentially right about the sound, but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy the cheapest DVD player because certainly there are other issues at stake, like reliability, picture delivery, etc. that are worth spending "some" money on. I got a JVC (certainly not high end) 8-disc player for about $149 or so. It's not a lot of money, nor is it the cheapest, and it's been reliable, no complaints. I guess my long winded point is that you should be able to find a happy medium between Walmart ultra-cheap and ridiculously expensive player that you'll find reliable along with sound picture quality.

Agree with paul_pci post.

Extremely cheap brand DVD players tend to cut corners which may also include the transport system (delivering digital bits from disc to the output). Since digital bits are time synchronized, you may want o spend little extra to make sure digital bits are transported to the output on time.