Customer Reviews

Philips DVD727 Progressive-Scan DVD Player

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I replaced my older Pioneer DVD player with this one and trust me guys, it's awesome. And I definitely don't mean that it's just awesome for this price. Plays every single DVD and even the clumsiest of VCDs that even my PC wouldn't even read. As a test drive, I copied a single .dat video file on a slow CD-RW and this baby played it oh-so-smoothly. In short, being packed with features like built-in picture and sound controls, 32x FF, optical out, 5 disc resume, and DTS render this model a "must-go-for". I got mine from Singapore a month back and my DVD viewing habits have gone from bad to worse eversince.

This unit plays EVERYTHING.. including VCD/SVCD/Raw MPEG/MP3/WMA files off of RECORDED DVD's and CD's. This is the best thing about this unit. I could not find any other player that would do this. Skipping from file to file and scanning thru files is a breeze, even with 100+ VCD files on a single DVD-R disc.

The PAL->NTSC and back conversion on the fly is also flawless!

Picture quality on DVD's is very very good.. much better than expected for a [the price] DVD player. Menu and remote are easy to use as well.

Only complaint is the coaxial digital audio output has to be switched back and forth to get audio from DVD's or regular mpeg audio files.. but using the Optical output doesn't have this problem.

This unit appears to be made from the same Chinese manufacturer that used to make the old Apex units (AD-600a), although I could be wrong on that.

Either way, it's a great "Plays Everything" unit that doesn't seem to sacrifice video quality.

Highly Recommended!

Brilliant machine. Just bought mine off amazon. Plays all DVDs (both PAL and NTSC).

To play all region DVDs do the following:

Eject DVD, then using remote, press 9, 9, 9, 9, 0 (very slowly). You will change the player to play all DVDs (all regions).

I am orgianly from Europe and have a 1 year old daughter. I was looking at several DVD Players, so I could play for her some Children DVD's in our native language as well as other languages.
This is the BEST buy!!! The quality, features and picture are excellent. And the ultimate Bonus, it plays any DVD from anywhere in the world.
Region free hack is simple:
Just open the tray , press 9999 and 0 from the remote with pauses between every digit. You will see Region 0 on the screen and you are all set to play any DVD from any region!!!
You don't even need a special TV. Just connect it and your are set to go.

This puppy can oversample at a 4X rate -meaning it can read ahead of the data stream and anticipate/correct variances before you are even aware there was a problem. Add to everything else written here about its features. I just burn plain ole MPEGS and this baby has no issues. Nice internal volume and picture settings for special tweaking. All region hack capable. And LORDY they even include BOTH optical and coax audio out-a simple necessity which the Panasonic chowderheads apparently neglected in rushing to promote their soon to be outdated DVD-RAM format. As the long-time tech leader in Europe with its inherent multiple, incompatible formats, Philips has always demonstrated a technical flexibility with media - it plays DVD+R/RW also.

WARNING! Do NOT use the Philips upgrade disc (found at their website)with their earlier models as this effectively froze my beautiful 724 player and I have read others also having this happen to theirs. On the bright side, Philips is exchanging this despite being almost a year old! I am impressed-so far.

I ordered it Sunday, it arrived Friday (same week)by standard shipping. I had it hooked up via Digital Coax and 3-Component video in less than 10 minutes. Picture and Sound are great! I set it to Region 0 (i.e it plays DVDs from Europe and Asia. Even the ones that don't say "All Regions". I have a bunch of German DVDs). The Region 0 setting is not described in the manual.
Open the tray, type 9 9 9 9 0 slowly on the remote. Then it played the DVDs no problem.
The start-up time (on to playing the picture) is a litte longer than my previous player, but not very annoying.
Overall I love it!

I bought this DVD player in January and died (video disappered) 6 months later. It's a known issue that vidoe will disapper if some random keys are entered through the remote control. Luckly, I can recover the video by resetting to factory default. Here's how to make that work.

Here's the sequence to reset to the default-

press Stop tiwce (to make sure it's not playing any disc)
press System Menu
Press "Right Arrow" key 3 tiems
Press "Ok"
Press "Down Arrow" key 4 times
Press "Right Arrow" key once
Press "Ok"

Good Luck -

This was initially the best DVD player I've ever owned, supurb
picture and sound and it played absolutely ANYTHING you threw at it. Every region disc, DVD-+R/RW, MP3's/CD-R's you name it.

It was playing fine until the 29th day when I attempted to fast forward to the next chapter, as I did the screen went blank. I spent three hours of my Thanksgiving evening trying to get the picture back - no such luck. The audio was no affected however. I don't know what happened, but it appeared as if the video portion just dissappeared and what good is a DVD player without a picture?

I wrote to Amazon and they sent out a replacement within eleven hours, great customer service!
Let's hope this one stands the test of time!

I, too, just managed to snag one of these from Amazon for $69 plus tax ($76 total; I live in Seattle so I get dinged for sales tax) after they had been out of stock for a short while. I read all of the user reviews here and concluded the naysayers were just part of the unfortunate 5-10% of consumer electronics buyers who suffer a defective item. (QA does need improvement, but statistics show most defective items were damaged in shipping.) All other reviews were very positive so I took the plunge.

Best $76 I've spent in a loooong time.

One of my favorite films ever is "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin," which is a 1978 Hong Kong kung fu flick that is available to U.S. buyers only as an import (unless you want a crappy quality, dubbed version from an unauthorized U.S. distributor). I absolutely *had* to have the fully-restored-from-the-master, uncut, region 3 release in the original Mandarin and Cantonese. Picked it up from HKFlix.com, crossed my fingers and ordered the Philips DVD727 from Amazon and waited.

The DVD arrived Wednesday and the player arrived from Amazon yesterday (Friday), five days before Amazon's estimated arrival date. Everything was in brand new condition. I excitedly unpacked everything and connected the player to my recently purchased Toshiba 30" widescreen HD-ready TV, turned on the Philips DVD727, applied the region-free hack, popped in the disc, and Hallelujah!... kung fu goodness! =)

I tested another disc or two as well and the picture quality provided by this player is fantastic, in my opinion, and I'm currently using the composite video output, connected to the front of my TV until I can get my old player out of the cramped enclosure and use the component video connectors. So I expect the picture will only get even better. I also like the sleek design, and the fast forward and reverse searches are the best I've seen on any DVD player so far, although I don't review players for a living so maybe I'm just easily impressed. There are five different search speeds, and there is no annoying pause when going from play mode to search; it responds immediately.

Another nice touch: you can adjust the volume output of the player itself. For those of us who don't have (nor care to have) surround sound setups, one of the most frustrating things about DVDs is that the dialogue is centered and therefore often reproduced at a lower level than the rest of the sound (especially compared to explosions and soundtracks) when presented in plain old stereo. My girlfriend and I constantly play with the TV volume when using other players, boosting it during quiet passages with dialogue and dropping it in other places to avoid going deaf. It's been hard to find a comfortable setting that can accommodate both, but the Philips DVD727 allows you to boost the audio output volume as it leaves the player. As a result, we've been able to leave the volume a bit lower on the TV, save our sanity, and still hear all the dialogue.

Some people have expressed displeasure with the remote, whether in function or appearance. I disagree, and actually like the remote quite a lot. I have found it a bit easy to accidentally hit the previous/next chapter buttons when I meant to hit reverse or fast forward search, but I chalk that up to my still being used to my old player's remote, and that will pass with time.

The only drawback I've found, if you can call it that, is that the zoom out feature could provide more options. It would be super nice to finely control zoom out to account for overscan, and reclaim the parts of the original picture that you normally don't get to see. (See http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/infoID.27/qx/info.htm for an explanation of this phenomenon.) But this is a very minor criticism; most players don't have this capability. In fact, most players don't offer a zoom out option at all.

This one's a keeper.

I can't imagine asking for anything more than this, unless you're a really serious video/audiophile. I've had no problems with the player, it looks great on my little 19" tube-tv, sounds great channeled through my little shelf stereo system. And from what I've heard, it's a fine compliment to the newest in plasma tv technology and digital surround home theater audio. Sure, for the advertised features you could pay less, but you know what that would mean? A pointless gamble on some lousy Apex, Norcent, or Cyberhome machine when you could wait another week or two, pay $$ or $$ more, and get an inarguably reliable, stable machine that will not be made obselete for some time indeed.