62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
Phillips Quality for a Great Price
I purchased this BluRay player this morning at a local retail store. The price was reasonable and it had the Phillips name. At first I thought it may have been a Funai with Phillips branding, but after a little net research I have found it is an authentic Phillips manufactured BluRay player.
The player itself is smaller than the cheaper boxes by about...
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Blu-ray Disc Player
This Blu-ray player picture is great colors are vivid and you can really tell the difference between Blu-ray and regular DVD's. This player upconvert other DVD's to almost blu-ray quality. The one draw back is that the start up time is slow it takes about 3 or 4 mins of loading before the menu screen is shown. Other than that the price is great, this is my first...
I purchased this BluRay player this morning at a local retail store. The price was reasonable and it had the Phillips name. At first I thought it may have been a Funai with Phillips branding, but after a little net research I have found it is an authentic Phillips manufactured BluRay player.
The player itself is smaller than the cheaper boxes by about 25%, which is nice as it fits snugly on my dresser with my flat screen HDTV. Out of box setup was a piece of cake, startup and BluRay setup was simple. Speaking of startup, it's quite sprightly, taking about 5 seconds to go from power on to BluRay ready mode. In other words, I can hit the power, take a BluRay disc from the case (in this instance it's "Wall-E"), and it's ready to go right in the tray. After that it's 2, maybe 3 seconds and we're off! I was impressed by it's response time right off the bat.
Now, as to the quality. Wow. BluRay really opens up the world of high definition and takes it to a totally different level. Before this player I had a DVD upconverter, and it looked fairly good on my HDTV. It of course plays at 1080p, but is perfect for any HDTV whether it be 720 or 1080. So back to the movie I used as an example: "Wall-E" on BluRay and in this player, was enough to take my breath away. Gorgeous colors, clear, crisp image and sharp, precision audio. To say I was impressed is an understatement.Everything just flowed together beautifully.
I removed Wall-E from the player and grabbed my "Finding Nemo" DVD. I wanted to see what it could do for regular DVDs. I put the disc in the drive and waited a few moments, and when the menu popped up, I was surprised. The quality was excellent. Obviously not BluRay quality, but far superior to my old DVD upconverter. Richer colors, great looking picture.
So, to sum it up:
* Smaller design than cheaper models
* Easy Setup
* Quick Startup and Load times
* Incredible picture quality
* Plays DVDs with far superior quality to DVD Upconverter
I give it 5 out of 5 stars, with a wholehearted recommendation.
This Phillips BluRay player gives you the most bang for your buck.
~J.W.
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Very nice and affordable blu ray player. Easy to setup from the quick start documentation. More complete details regarding features, remote control, internet connections, Secure Digital (SD) port, and firmware updates are detailed in an English instruction manual. Separate quick start and instruction manuals are included for French and Spanish. Also in the box are batteries for the remote control and a warranty registration card.
Note:
The best way to connect to your flat screen hdtv is with a high quality, high bandwidth hdmi cable, rated for 1.3 and category 2. Don't be conned by the $100 to $200 cables for sale at the electronics stores. The hdmi cables Amazon offers for under $10 from makers like Mediabridge and others exhibit wonderful quality and performance, and are identically rated to the more expensive store cables.
Overall impression:
Excellent. Performance is all you would expect from any blu ray player. Beautiful picture with magnificent color saturation and detail. Audio, channeled through the speakers of the hdtv and my seperate amplifier is as good as it gets. Standard DVDs are upconverted, and while audio and video can't approach blu ray quality, it's better than your old DVD player. Remember that the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) rule applies -- if your disk content is junk to begin with or is damaged from bad handling and/or storage, no player can make the output wonderful. Basic setup is quite efficient and easy from the Quick setup card. It took 10 minutes to set up, connect and begin testing this player with Blu ray and standard DVDs. The remote control arrangement of buttons for features is decent, and most will find it at least marginally better than remotes from prior generations of players.
Features:
The unit is low profile and pleasing to the eye. The front of the player has basic manual controls for on/off, stop/playback/fast forward/reverse, and disk access. A small window exhibits the current procedure the player is performing. The SD/MMC slot is easily accessible from the front of the player, so audio/video content from still and video cameras can be quickly viewed. If your video camera doesn't support SD, you can also edit sound and video on a computer that does support SD and transfer the output to SD. This extra burden is inconvenient to some, but remember, this is primarily a blu ray player.
The rear of the unit houses both cutting edge and legacy connectors. Input to the player from the internet permits updating firmware for future compatibility and blu ray live downloads if that interests you. Outputs include HDMI to your flat screen HDTV, fiber optic coaxial audio output to your digital amplifier if you have one, and the usual legacy RCA connectors for composite tv and audio, and analog audio output if you have an analog amplifier. This is nice if economics doesn't permit upgrading all your components to digital at the same time. You can gradually upgrade as individual circumstance permits.
It's amazing to see so much value in this Phillips player. Its size, features and options rival and outperform machines in the $500 to $1000 range from previous generations of Blu Ray players. After a week of enthusiastic use, it is a rock solid performer and no DVD, neither Blu Ray nor standard, exhibits any problems.
Highly recommended!
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This Blu-ray player picture is great colors are vivid and you can really tell the difference between Blu-ray and regular DVD's. This player upconvert other DVD's to almost blu-ray quality. The one draw back is that the start up time is slow it takes about 3 or 4 mins of loading before the menu screen is shown. Other than that the price is great, this is my first blu-ray so I'm not sure if this is normal for a blu-ray player.
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Unlike some other Blue-Ray players on the market this one seems to work well. I didn't have any problems playing any discs I tried, including recordable discs. Please note, however, the machine isn't region free, so it won't play foreign discs. As a bonus, it does play DivX files, but it does not play H264 files. Neither file type is a big deal to me, but some people might be curious about this.
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Incredible image. Fast, really HiRes... i also played with a samsung lcd 52" and sincronized each other. Looks better than other BR i used in the past. The only issue is that only play DVD's and CD's... do not accept CD-R.
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Excellent with newer discs. Discs created with Apple systems pre-Leopard aren't read. Other non DVD formats are variable. So, need to check formats from old systems.
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If you are hesitating, I would recommend that you go ahead and get this. The experience is better than the movie theater for me, because in the theater I am somewhat bothered by the flicker of the film. I do not have this problem with Blu-ray. I am watching the picture on a 42" LCD display. The result is gorgeous. I used the component RCA connector outputs. I have an HDMI cable, but when I saw the results with the component outputs, I did not bother to hook up the HDMI.
I watched the movie Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. It has a preview of the Wizard of Oz. I must say that this preview was not nearly as impressive. Clearly movie making technology has advanced in 80 years, and remastering that old Wizard of Oz in Blu-ray just can not bring it up to the best that Blu-ray has to offer.
I like also being able to play DivX DVDs/CDs, because I have a collection of them. Of course, the picture quality does not compare with Blu-Ray discs, but it is quite acceptable, especially if you don't have your nose right to the screen.
I don't have another Blu-ray player to compare to, but compared to DVD players, this one is a bit slow to load a disc or to skip to a new location. It seems to need to read in a lot of data before getting started. I would guess that the buffer for Blu-ray is much bigger than that needed for regular DVDs.
I have not tried the internet connection, so I can not comment on that.
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Even with an old TV and non-Blue Ray DVDs, there is a noticeable improvement in sound and clarity.
Set up was a snap. Once again, Amazon beat all the other sites at the time of purchase. I like the way they keep me informed of orders.
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To someone who wrote that the loading is slow, that's typical for blu ray players.
I just bought the player, and so far so good! I am happy that it can play divx movies since I have a bunch of it, and glad it's not going to waste.
HDMI is awesome to use, less components, audio and video is amazing! I highly recommend using it, So clear and sound is awesome. Even a regular dvd movie the picture is great. Even old movies aren't that grainy as a regular dvd player would show.
I was confused at first when putting a divx movie in, it doesn't start automatically, you have to enter disc tray for it to show the menu of the dvd.
I notice there's an ethernet cable outlet behind the player. I am not sure I can use it considering the modem is upstairs, and i'm downstairs! But for the price you pay which I got at clearance price of 118, I can't complain. Having it play divx is enough for me to bypass that technical issue.
It is light weighted, so that's a plus.
There is a promotion for purchasing which is you get a free divx movie if you register online, it's not worth the hassle. I couldn't even download the movie. And they only give you a few selections, not worth it. It took awhile to even find the VOD code. YOu can do a search online to show you how to download divx and burn it on a cd.
Yes cdr can be read by the player as well as a dvd+r
It's also quiet, so not that loud when playing.
I'd recommend this.
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