Grundig is a well known manufacturer of Consumer Electronics equipment and has been producing players for many formats. Being at the forefront of technology, it was among the first manufactures to support the Nero Digital format. We test their first Nero Digital compatible player, the GDP-3550.

- Grundig GDP-3550

The Grundig GDP-3550 is a high level DVD player, supporting playback of Nero Digital and DivX coded discs. Its main features are:

• Digital DVD player, slim line cabinet 43 mm high.
• Playback of DVD video, S-VCD, DVD-ROM, JPEG-Pictures, Kodak Picture CDs, Audio CD's, MP3 -, WMA-, DivX- and Nero Digital-CDs.
• Picture Viewer: allows you to view your JPEG pictures directly on your display
• The digital audio formats, Dolby Digital AC-3, PCM, MP3, WMA and DTS are supported and can be output via Digital Audio out coaxial and optical
• Progressive scan. Especially for good picture quality on flat panel displays
• Economical and environmentally friendly, thanks to low-power standby operation with a power consumption of less than 3 Watts.
• System remote control TP 81 D including basic remote functions for Grundig TV's

The main chipset comes from ESS (ES6698 Vibrato II) and is quite powerful:

• Single-chip DVD processor
• Mpeg4 Advanced Simple Profile at full screen (D1)
• High quality progressive scan
• Integrated NTSC/PAL encoder with Pixel-adaptive de-interlacer and five video DACs.
• Supports DVD-Video, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, SVCD, VCD, CD-ROM, CD-R/RW and CD-DA.
• DivX Home Theater quality video at full screen.
• Up to 7.1 channel audio DAC.
• Macrovision protected, NTSC/PAL interlaced video.
• JPEG digital photo support (Kodak Picture CD and FujiFilm FujiColor CD).
• MPE and Windows Media Audio (WMA).
• Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic, and Pro Logic II.
• DTS surround
• S/PDIF digital audio input and output.
• MPEG AAC and Multichannel.
• SRS TruSurround and TruSurround XT.
• Professional karaoke with full scoring scheme

- Full specifications

Looking at the specs and compared with the newer GDP-3560/3570, the only differences we can see are that GDP-3560 supports HDMI output and upscaling up to 1080p, while the GDP-3570 supports Card Reader/Edit function.