Customer Reviews

Philips DCP850/37 8.5-Inch Portable DVD Player with iPod docking

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Okay, I thought this unit was going to be pretty cool; I thought highly of the Philips brand and thought this would be a quality product. I was wrong. I docked two Video iPods (30gig and 60gig) and this deck fried out their logic boards. Kaput. They worked fine before being docked, fried afterwards.

What to do?

First, I took the iPods to my local Apple (reseller) and they confirmed that the logic boards were toast. Any further diagnostics/repair would cost me $45 for each unit, but the tech acknowledged that the repair bill would likely be close to the replacement cost. Then I began my journey into Philip's customer service hell. "Nothing we can do." I was told. Finally, after close to an hour, a supervisor's supervisor told me that I should keep the deck and have it and the iPods examined by a technician together. (I was a little ticked that I was told to keep a defective deck, possibly past the time I'm allowed to return it, with no guarantee that it'll be resolved.) They would evaluate the claim then.

Fast forward to yesterday: an agent at Geek Squad examined the deck and iPods and concluded that the Philips deck caused the logic boards in my iPods to fail. I explained the situation to him and he was nice enough to write a letter to Philips explaining his findings. I was also told that there have been others have been returned to the store. Slam dunk, right?

Wrong. According to Philips, this still isn't good enough. "There is nothing we can do." I told the rep that I knew he had the authority to authorize a repair and he agreed, saying he did but wouldn't.

I would stay away from all Philips products.

I've got a large number of movies that I've converted using the Cucusoft version 2 and 6 software. Naturally, the way the movie is created makes a difference on quality. You will notice something similar when using the AppleTV using the same content.

It's a pain that the Audio and contrast controls are POTS on the side of the player as opposed to having them electronic and available on the remote.

For someone that takes dozens and dozens of movies on travel, and gets tired of watching them on just the video iPod, it's really great! I'm generally happy with this purchase.

I'm a little concerned about the rating where the video iPods boards got fried..... Would like to hear more about that issue when information is available.

I should note that originally, even after following the directions, the video did not transfer to the screen. It took a little playing around but it finally worked and I don't know what was different...didn't really do anything different except install/uninstall/install/uninstall the iPod video. Perhaps there was something weird about the connector when you first get it out of the box.

Also, regarding the battery. When playing DVDs, you get almost 2.5 hours on the internal battery. Presumably over time this will go down. When playing something on the iPod to this device the time goes up to about 5 hours. Since the iPod does some of the work on it's battery and some ofthe work is done by the internal battery on the DVD player.

Which brings meto another issue.... The battery is INTERNAL. And cannot be removed without taking the thing apart. That means when the battery goes the whole thing is toast. Most of these devices that I've owned had a removable and easily replaced battery. Not in this case.

This is really Apple's fault, as apparently with the new iPods (Classic, Touch) they require some special apple licensed chip in the video output path to support video output. Apparently this product (and perhaps others) aren't properly licensed or something, so they don't work with the latest iPods. Kind of a problem.

Consider this a first look. I'll update with more details later. This unit has a lot of potential. My experience so far:

Pros
+ Nice industrial design
+ Swivel feature is solid
+ Convenient remote
+ iPod docking (30/60/80 Gig video iPods) / SD Card reader (not tested)
+ Dial controls for screen brightness and volume instead of push buttons. (You can change the volume on your kid's video without looking.)

Cons
- Screen resolution. If you're used to watching movies on your laptop computer, you will be disappointed with this and every other ~8" screen out there. It's not the size so much, it's the lack of resolution, meaning you can see the pixels if you watching movies with this sitting on your lap. To get into the $200 price range, they skimp on the screen. I'm one of those folks who would pay extra for a hi-res 8" screen, but I can't find one yet. I repeat: these screens are NOT laptop-quality screens. Please go to a store and look at several models before you order online.
- Battery life. Rated at 2.5 hours. That's 1 movie on an airplane ride. We bought this for the car, so it's not a big deal for us. Just keep it in mind depending on your intended usage.
- iPod dock. Some of this may be a limitation of the iPod. I'm not sure. Here's what works for music: play/pause music, track back/forward, fast forward/reverse. What doesn't work: displaying the track list on the screen and navigating the menus. I'm not sure why someone would play music through this, though. For photos: starting/stopping the slide show, photo forward/back. I didn't test videos, but I would guess the same controls as music would work.
- The "manual" (really just a big sheet with several languages). It's everything we've come to expect from electronic manufacturers. There is no useful content for tweaking video settings, ipod limitations stated above, etc. The only thing you need to know is that TV Out must be set to On in your iPod for the photos / videos to work. Other than that, just experiment with the buttons.

Bottom line, these portables are all pretty low-end at this screen size. If you crave resolution, some of the manufacturers seem to put higher res screens in the bigger screen models. But then, it's not really a portable at that point, is it? It's really more of a small laptop.

I've seen this unit on sale at many super-stores for $149 and it is definitely worth it. I originally had the Sonic Impact video 55. That unit had a pretty good picture and AWESOME sound. The problem though, was that it was cheaply made. The video screen failed on me on 3 units!!! Good thing I had an extended warranty at the local super-store where I bought it. On the 3rd try, the salesman ask if I wanted to exchange it for another model. Now I have the Philips and couldn't be more happy with it. What I like is that it plays Divx files, AVI files, SVCD, MP4, MP3 and cds. Usually, I would download a movie from the internet (veoh.com) and convert it to my video ipod using CucSoft. This was a pain to do. Now, I can just copy my Avi's and burn them to a cheap CD and play it on my Philips DVD player, saving space on my iPod. I use the video iPod to watch podcasts on the Philip's bigger screen. On video quality, the quality of the iPod video is as can be expected. They are compressed videos after all. Still, pretty good picture, about the same in quality as the Sonic Impact Video 55. Sometimes the Sonic Impact would looked washed out to me. DVD quality is very good to me. I fired up the Rocky Balboa DVD and the Justice League series I got from Amazon and both look very rich....better than the videos from the iPod, which is understandable. The Rocky Balboa DVD is about 5 gigs and I can compress it to fit the video iPod and it would only be about 700 megs. Because of this, the ipod videos aren't as sharp.
The only negative I give of this unit is the speakers. They sound tinny. Watching movies, it is okay for what it is, but I was spoiled with the Sonic Impacts deep bass and LOUD speakers. I even used it solely as a music player at a picnic. With the Philips, playing music on it is like playing music through a cheap FM/AM radio. I haven't tried the headphones yet, though.
Another note: I've copied lots of movies from Veoh.com and burned them to a DVD and played it on my Philips and outputed it to my 55 inch television. Awesome! Good quality and free stuff. You can't beat that!

I got this a few hours ago and am extremely happy with the purchase. But I understood what I was getting:

- Sub $200 Portable DVD player - My Magnavox went out on me after about two years and this was the replacement. The picture quality is a bit better than the old Magnavox and it has much better features. I wasn't expecting HDTV quality with this, and it doesn't have that, but for a low-end portable player, this is great.


- iPod Player - I plugged in my 80G iPod and had NO problems whatsoever. Again, it is not HDTV picture quality, but it is a lot better than the little iPod screen for watching in bed or on a plane. My first try was Star Wars III and I was thrilled with the opening battle sequence.


This product will serve several purposes great: car entertainment for the kid for long drives, and airplane entertainment for the kid or me for long plane trips. In either case I can either use DVDs or the iPod, which is a nice choice since I now have the option to not haul DVDs on trips.

For less than $180 (and no tax or shipping for Amazon Prime) this was a great deal.

I bought this at a local retail store and returned it two days later.

The promised screen size of 8.5 inches is not entirely true. The long screen actually stretches the image and constrains the proportions -- so basically everything looks "fatter" than it should. You can push a button to adjust the screen size (so everything looks like it's in proportion) but then you're only using about two-thirds of the screen. (Maybe there are some newer DVDs that have the right aspect ratio to take advantage of this screen, but I didn't have any -- and the letterbox movies I own looked really bad ... only used about one-third of the screen) I tried the "Zoom" option to try to utilize more of the screen, but it left the "2x" or "4x" icon on the screen at all times.

The picture itself was pretty bad -- for both DVD and iPod playback.

Worst of all was the volume, or lack thereof. The speakers' top volume is barely audible over road noise if you're using the unit while riding in a vehicle. It's better if you use the two headphone jacks but (and this is the part I can't believe) you can actually hear the mechanical noise of the DVD drive THROUGH the headphones. It's really annoying if you're listening to a movie that has a lot of low talking or silence.

I've bought other Philips products before and have enjoyed them, so this was a bit of surprise. This also was my first portable DVD player, so maybe some of my criticisms are criticisms of the whole genre.

I bought this unit from a local box store after having a bad experience with a different unit bought online from another site.

First off, this Phillips player looks sharp. From the finish that looks like an ipod to the quality of the picture on the screen. The player is white on the top and bottom, black on the inside, so it will look good and match either color Ipod Video player. The screen is sharp with good color and contrast. The higher quality the file played, the better the picture is.

It plays everything it says it does, except I don't have an MMC card to try, although I did use a 4GB SD card. Dvd+R, dvd-r, SD cards, iPod. On the DVD's and SD card I was able to play DVD format, DivX, and MP4 formats. It picked everything up and worked exactly as advertised.

I cannot state battery life yet though. As I use it this week, I will take notes and update.

I am so far extremely satisfied with this player.

I have been very interested in a portable DVD player for a long time. Especially one that dock a video iPod. Great.
After reading all the positive reviews on the Phillips DCP750 & DCP850 I wanted one but held back and went to Best Buy to see it person.
I liked everything about this one, lacking some features as stated in the reviews but you could live without the minor ones.
The killer for me was the Screen brightness. I tested 7 to 10 movies trailers on each Portable DVD player and the Phillips was the darkest and hardest to see. The Panasonic LS91 had the best looking and the most adjustment for brightness but it isn't a iPod docking one and the reviews say it has it's problems.

If the Phillips DCP850 had a better brightness to where you could view a movie in more detail (in other words normal) I would have walked out with one.

I suggest you check this one out in the store for your viewing pleasure and if you like it but it. I wasn't happy with the sceen brightness. You want to see what is happening in a movie don't you?

Thanks
Alan

There is a way to make the iPod Classic 160 gb work with the Philips line of Portable DVDs with iPod docking but its awkward and requires the purchase of Apple's Composite AV Cable ($50). Apple installed in the 6th generation iPods what amounts to an electronic lock. When you set the player up to send out video externally it will ask you to "Please Connect Video Accessory". It's looking for the sixth generation Apple Composite AV Cable plug. Somewhere embedded in the plug's configuration is the key to the lock that the player is looking for. Once you insert this plug the movie you have selected will begin to play and all you have to do then is remove the cable and insert the unit into the dock and you should see your video displayed. As i said before, this is an awkward work around and should you go back to the main menu to select a different movie you will have to perform these steps again. For those of you (like me) who were stuck with one of these units, this work around just might make you feel a little better about your purchase. Good Luck!!!!