Philips PET716/05 - 7inch Portable DVD Player

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Customer Reviews:

• 
  2008-05-29
  By Mr. Robert J. Fawcett, London, UK
  I bought one of these from Richer Sounds in London.
  
  Good points: whilst the screen is of low-resolution it's not as harsh or blocky as many similar screens on budget machines. The player handles the vast majority of DivX files without complaint, though it refuses to play HD files.
  
  Bad points: I initially found it unbelievable that this player can't correctly play 4:3 (non-widescreen) DVDs - it will only play them at 16:9. Philips support then actually confirmed the fact: so if you have any 4:3 DVDs they will only play stretched out across widescreen, with everyone and everything looking fat. Note that this problem does not affect DivX playback: the LCD aspect ratio of DivX is selected according to the TV ratio chosen in the player setup.
  
  A secondary problem with this player is that whilst it is capable of showing DivX subtitles, several functions on the remote tend to lead to the subtitles vanishing. Only re-loading the disc recovers them, but fast-forwarding to the point you were at in the footage risks them vanishing again. Final irritation: when you start play, the time elapsed is always superimposed on the screen. You have to press a button on the remote twice to clear the timing from the screen - which may seem trivial but rapidly becomes tiresome.
  
  Conclusion: this hardware could have made a potentially good budget machine, but here is coupled with with firmware which Philips should be ashamed of. The 4:3 DVD fault is so limiting that I suspect a case could be argued that the model is not fit for the purpose for which it is sold.