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

• 8.5" LCD Swivel 16:9 screen
• iPod docking: play movies and recharge your iPod device
• Compatible with DVD+R/-R, CD-R/-RW, MP3, DivX
• SD card slot for movies and digital photos

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.

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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.

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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.

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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!