I've owned an S2500 for some months now. It's connected to a Pioneer 74Txvi via ilink for audio and component cables for video. Here are the interesting things I've noticed about it.
-- slow load time -- this appears to be due to its Phillips ancestry.
-- remote code weirdness -- I use the Pioneer's learning remote as the master for my system. Didn't work with the S2500 -- no codes. Then I realized, again, that the Yammy is really a *Phillips* at heart...and sure enough, the preprogrammed Philips DVD player codes in the Pioneer remote worked.
-- digital audio settings. One things that strikes me as odd is that the *digital* output is also affected by the *analog* audio setting. So if you set analog audio to 'stereo' rather than multichannel, ilink outputs a multichannel SACD or DVD-A as two-channel. I would have expected that when the player is used purely as a transport that none of the analog menu settings should affect it.
Just to be safe, in case this kind of foolishness involvs other analog out settings, I have all speaker settings to Large , subwoofer ON, distances and levels all the same, SACD direct ON...i.e., attempting to have as little processing as possible within the player, for audio.
-- analog audio settings. Out of curiousity (and to make portable files) I have occasionally digitally recorded hi-rez stereo sources from the analog L/R out of this and other players, and viewed the results with a .wav analyzer (Audition). From this I've learned: do not assume that the multichannel L/R and the 'dedicated' L/R output behave the same. The myriad analog audio settings (separate ones for CD/DVD and SACD, in the case of the S2500) have complex and different effects on the two 'stereo' outputs. This is definitely true of the S2500
-- region hacks -- they're out there on the web. And they work. ;> (I write 'they' because the two I have found have slightly different button sequences for entering the hack mode. The actual hack codes were the same.) My S2500 is now region-free.
-- firmware update . One was posted a few days ago to AV forum. It works too. To check firmware open the tray and press Menu on the remote. The second line in the displayed info has the firmware -- latest firmware ends in '58'. Mine was 54. The 58 updates' supposed to correct some DVD-A playback problems (and maybe other stuff, I don't know for sure) . Frankly I hadn't noticed any until this week, -- prior to that the 2500 played ever SACD, CD and DVD-A and CDR I threw at it -- when I got my UK import copy of David Bowie's 'Stage'. It's region free as a video, but I noticed that it simply would not output the surround channels of the multichannel DVD-A version, no matter how I fiddled with it. The DTS surround version worked fine. Remember, this is all using DACs in the receiver , not the player. Anyway, after I updated the firmware -- and then re-set all the Settings and Toolbar menu items to suit my system (the firmware update made the player think I was connecting to a 4:3 PAL TV, for example, rather than 16:4 NTSC)-- 'Stage' works perfectly in all modes.
The AVSforum thread of interest is:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=444693