Too cool to miss

Author's Rating:

Pros: unique features, design, compatibility, quality, reliability, remote control

Cons: limited output options, 110V power supply only, hard to find

The Bottom Line: 
This is perfect player for the bedroom or to take with you everywhere you go. Its unique features and design make it stand out from the rest.

Author's Review
I am so happy to see that this model is finally listed on Epinions. I love this site, and always use it before I buy something, but sometimes I get really frustrated because some very popular items are not even listed for reviewing. To me this Philips DVD player is the most serious omission so far. I’ve had it for about a year now, and ever since I bought I’ve been very anxious to share my excitement with other people, but until now I only had a chance to do so in my reviews of other players.

I got it from Target for about $50 and for the price I think every one should get it, even if you have 5 other players. Unfortunately I don’t think this model is available at too many retailers anymore, which is a shame. By the way do not buy this from Overstock – the only online retailer listed on Epinions. This store has a terrible customer service, really shady policies, and most of the products, including this player are refurbished, and in pretty bad shape. On top of that the price they are asking for is $20 more than what I paid for it brand new at Target. Overstock is the worst online retailer ever. Also there is an error in the specifications published by Epinions for this model. The site says that it has built in Dolby Digital decoder, which it does not.

Now the pros:

1. Functionality, design, features. Pretty much every DVD player these days is loaded with features, but a few of them have the right combination of user friendliness, ease of navigation, and thoughtful design. This player has just that. Despite its small size – it’s the smallest, non-portable model I’ve ever seen – it is big in performance and functionality. The remote control is very well designed, uncluttered, and really easy to use in dark, which is essential to me. It does not glow in the dark, or have any back lighting, but the buttons are large, well spaced, and its size and shape fit perfectly in your hand.
2. Media support. This player supports pretty much every main Disc format, except for DVD-audio, SACD, or DVD-RAM. I tried DVD, CD, Picture CD, and some Video clips burned in Real Video format and they all worked flawlessly.
3. Progressive scan mode. I admit I didn’t care about this feature, I am using this player in my bedroom on an analog TV, but you must agree – in a package this small at this price this is an advanced feature. It even has the 2:3 pull down processing essential to good de-interlacing. I haven’t tried the progressive scan mode so I cannot comment on its performance, but judging by the rest of the player I doubt it will disappoint.
4. Some unique but incredible features I love. By design this player gives you one very important feature that I’ve learned to appreciate – you can open and take out the disc any time you like. The lid opens manually so you can force the disc to stop whenever you want. If you’ve noticed a lot of discs contain coding, that prohibits most players to eject them until you see all the FBI warnings, and sometimes even previews. This is extremely irritating. That coding, however, cannot affect the forceful interruption this player is capable of. The same coding can also make you wait for all these warning, and previews, and little annoying animations, and menus, and God only knows what else, but this player has a very cool feature called “smart play”, when you load the disc, if you press and hold the next chapter button on the remote, it skips all the waiting and cues the laser directly to the beginning of your movie. Way cool! The player also has a 5 disc resume feature; it remembers the place you left off the last 5 discs you watched, so if you press play while the disc is loading it will cue to the right spot. This feature is a must, and a lot of players out there, especially in this price range don’t have it.
5. Size, size, size. Who says size doesn’t matter? Well they are wrong. This is the smallest and lightest non-portable DVD player I’ve seen. If you’ve had any experience with portable, and actually even full sized players, you may have noticed that they run quite hot, and some would even shut down eventually from over heating (there were some tiny Koss models that looked pretty cool, that did that). This player keeps its cool even after all night work. I know because I usually fall asleep while watching it and it keeps spinning all night long. In the morning when I touch it, feels just as cool as when I turned it on.
6. Extensive audio and video set up. In the menus you can tweak and play with audio and video settings as long as you like. Most of those are better left alone, but some are quite useful, especially one – the Dynamic range suppression. If you have a Dolby Digital receiver you probably know what that is – it keeps the sound lever within a certain range, so the volume doesn’t exceed a certain level. Now the trick here is that with most receivers this only works with Dolby Digital material, and only if this function is encoded in the disc. As far as DVD players I’ve only seen this feature on models with built in DD decoders, and again it only works with discs encoded with that option. The Philips DVP 320, however, applies this feature to every disc, and every sound format you use, and also has an option to select different level of suppression.
7. World wide compatibility. By default this player is capable of handling both NTSC and PAL color formats, which are the 2 most common formats used in the world. Out of the box here in the US it is set as a region 1 player, but changing that is simple. Open the lid, press 9,9,9,9,0 on the remote control, and you have a region free player. Now you can play discs from anywhere on the world (give of course your monitor supports both NTSC, and PAL systems, otherwise you might end up with a black and white picture).
8. Cool design and funky colors. I guess that’s a matter of personal taste here, but this player does stand out from the crowd. It’s available in several different colors – orange, blue, and silver – mine is orange.
9. Picture quality. Of course even the best designed player with the coolest features would not be worth it without a good picture quality. It’s true that most DVD players offer a good picture, but many out there, especially cheap ones, have some really annoying problems to watch out for – most notably picture and sound out of synch (very characteristic of APEX and Fisher models – BEWARE!); picture freezing and breaking up into squares – this could often be due to damaged discs, but some players handle it much better than others; too long pauses between layer changes could also be irritating – unless you have two, three hundred bucks for a high end player, you’ll most probably have to deal with this problem, but on this model the pause is really minimal. After a year of use I am happy to report that I haven’t had any of the above mentioned problems, or any other ones to think of.
Now I need to mention a couple of minor things that could have been different, but are definitely not worth calling “cons”. First are the output options, which are somewhat limited. The player has only composite and component video outputs, and analog and coaxial digital outputs. Make sure your receiver has the coaxial digital input, which most do, but say you have a satellite receiver with a coaxial only output and your receiver only has one input, which is very common, you’ll have to switch the cables all the time. Give its tiny size the omission of an optical output is a reasonable trade off to be expected, but including it would have made the player even better. The more important omission here is the lack of an S-video output. Many older TV’s only have composite and S-video inputs, and the S-video provides a significant improvement in image quality, especially on monitors 27” and larger, and if you are using a projections TV and even more so a front projector, you must never use the composite connection. Again, though, I would chose to have a component output only, rather than an S-video output (which is often the best connection available on many cheap players) any day. The last feature I believe has been overlooked on this player is the power supply. The unit runs only on 110V. Given its tiny size and world wide compatibility, this player could have been the perfect match for a 12V power supply with various adapters, for in-car or international use.

In conclusion I would like to say that when it comes to electronics I am a big fan of full sized, state of the art equipment, and rarely get satisfied with portables, but this player has completely won me over with its incredible features, thoughtful design, compatibility, and so far reliability. I think that it is the perfect unit to keep in your bedroom, or take with you when you travel, and every DVD enthusiast should get one “just because”!