Philips DCP951/37 9-Inch Portable DVD Player with iPod Docking by Philips
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Our Price: $248.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Philips DCP951/37 9-Inch Portable DVD Player with iPod Docking
Digital camera Review: Not bad
Summary: 3 Stars
The unit is pretty good for the most part. The only draw back to it is that the battery life is poor. You have to be near a power source when you want to watch a movie.
Another problem with the unit is that in the iPod mode when you select a video it doesn't play it the selected video. You have to scroll through whole thing.
Good quality vidoe and sound is ok. The headset or ear buds are the way to go when listening to something unless your alone in the quiet room.
For it's small draw backs it's still worth it. Hopefully they can improve on this idea and make it better!!
Digital camera Review: Perfect for the car
Summary: 4 Stars
We bought two of these for each of our children for car use only b/c we couldn't afford the $3000 DVD system for our new minivan. I was looking for a tablet DVD player with memory card slot. This fit the bill and for $99 per player, it was a great price. Comes with both car and home electric plugs, which makes portability on trips nice (car ride and hotel room, etc). I love the whole concept and the picture quality is good. The plastic casing does feel rather cheapy, but the performance hasn't suffered for that.
My only real complaint, and this may be more with the file type, is that if you are viewing a film from the memory card you can't get to a menu for the chapters (we used DivX format...the latest version of DivX on Mac, whatever that is...had no problem there). So if you have to turn it off or if the battery dies, you can only fast forward and hope you can find your spot. Otherwise, great purchase.
Also, for anyone looking for an excellent and discrete headrest tablet DVD holder, this one works beautifully: [...].
Digital camera Review: Performs exactly as expected!
Summary: 5 Stars
I agree with other reviewers, that the external sound is the weakest point of the product, but this product was not selected for great sound quality. Main criteria for choosing this product was to play DVDs from all over the world, both in NTSC and PAL format. And it works exactly as described. It can be made truly region-free but did need a bit of key-pressing with the remote to get the region 1 setting reset to play international DVDs (region 0). Bought this mainly for child's use while travelling on airplanes and in hotels, and it has stood up to less-than-careful treatment.Digital camera Review: Philips DCP951/37 9-Inch Portable DVD Player with iPod Docking
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought "Philips DCP951/37 9-Inch Portable DVD Player" because it is compact and occupies less space. And, it worked well while I was in travel. Extra features like iPod Docking is excellent for those who do not have iPod Jack in car audio/video system. But, there are three comfort-related things to mention in this system. 1) I could not find a cheaper bag for this player which can hold it in a vertical direction because all portable DVD players' bags are designed for those which open in V-shape. 2)Because it is compact so it is not self-supportive when you need to hold it in vertical direction specially if you want to watch movie at home while this player is out of its bag. 3) DVD is inserted from back which means you will have to dismount it from its bag to change the DVD.Digital camera Review: Philips has better models offered
Summary: 2 Stars
I love most of Philips' electronics products. I've got a Philips TV, DVD Players, a DVD Recorder (hard drive model), and Norelco razors and I love them all. On the other hand, this particular Philips product, the DCP951/37 player, has stunned me with dismay. I bought it on sale for $49.95 at BigLots a few weeks ago and still took it back. It wasn't marked refurb. It had all the indications of being new so I presume it was, in fact, new.
I had no intention of using the iPod dock. I don't have a iPod. The iPod tray is built to also store the remote control and it works nicely for that.
DivX in a portable intrigued me. On day 2, playing approximately the 3rd disc ever inserted, it stopped recognizing DivX files. The same DivX/XviD files on the same discs that played the day before now wouldn't work. If that was the only disappointment, I'd have RMA'd it to get another. It was only one of many shortcomings, however.
The sound emanating from its tiny speakers offers spectral quality that is okay for tiny speakers but the amplitude is too weak to be functional in any but the most quiet situations you could imagine. My hearing is quite good yet it was difficult to hear this player in the kitchen with water running and a few pans of food sizzling on the stove. Even a cheapie little hand-held portable radio can render audio louder than this Philips player. You'd have to consider it only for headphone use and maybe that's why they provided 2 headphone outputs. I never used headphones with this player so I can't report about the amplitude of the headphone outputs.
So, it wouldn't play DivX/XviD any more and I couldn't hear it unless I was in an extremely quiet environment, but I still thought I'd keep it for $49.95 if it would work as a picture frame. Well, it does work as a picture frame, but only if you manually set it's display ratio to 4:3 and suffer the small display area. It just isn't hardwired to adjust the display of a standard photographic JPEG file to its 16:9 display. It will display them, but, it cuts off people's heads and such. One thing I will say, however, is that it reads large sized high res low compression JPEG files very rapidly compared to other DVD players I've tried. I only used SD cards in it. I think it will also read other types.
Battery life was good. It claimed about 2 hours and I got a little over 2.5 hours. It's just enough power to watch most movies.
The display is crisp and colorful but a little too dark for most environments. I had to manually tweak it. In bright sunlight? Well, no LCD can really compete with sunrays so I won't even address that. It did well in a brightly lit kitchen and living room. Action revealed just a little smearing but I only noticed that when really looking for it.
As with many Philips products, it has a very short file name capability. It's limited to approximately 10 to 13 characters and the rest is purely truncated.
I never did try MP3's. Never got that far. The other problems made me pack it up and return it so I don't even know if it can do all sorts of VBR and I don't even know if it can do anything with an ID3.
Philips has other players in this price range. I'd pass up this one (even for $49.95) and look at others.
Philips gives a 1 year warranty on its products. That's outstanding in the field. That warranty period helps keep me loyal to the brand name.
By the way, in a Philips model number, the /37 indicates U.S.A.