Well, after reading all the reviews on mouthshut about the Philips DVD player DVP 320, I decided to go ahead and buy it. It’s been a great buy for the features it offers at such a low price. To put it in simple terms, I’ll discuss the features as:
Player’s ability:
This player can play almost any disc! Seriously, I was a bit skeptical about this claim. But when I did manage to play some of my old CDs which refused to play on my Comp’s 32x Samsung drive, I was plain thrilled. Ditto goes for my friend who’s also bought the same player and tried out some scratched VCD which worked just fine. Besides DVD it plays mp3, audio, VCD and even Photo CD. So this is a great treat.
As of the DVD, you’ll get all the features of storing bookmarks, subtitles in different languages, zoom, parental control (censorship) and password protecting the disc. Although there’s no progressive scan available on this model its no big deal for the superb picture quality that the player produces and the ability to set picture and sound settings (Smart Picture).
The player I got was predefined for region 3 and 4 DVD discs. (DVD’s come with a region lock that prevents DVDs from different regions to play across, or you need a region free player.) The Philips DVP 320 has the ability to support region free disc also. But the best part is there’s a simple hack to make your player region-free. Once you have set up the player, turn it on and open the lid with out any disc loaded. On the remote press: 9 9 9 9 0. You’ll see Region 0 displayed on the TV. That’s it, now shut the lid and restart the player. Your player can now play discs from any region! One thing, the player does not support DivX or AVI (these need codecs that are not embedded into the player’s software and neither can one hack it.)
Connection:
The player supports both normal video and audio (left/right) besides coaxial (digital) sound and component video. The coaxial port can be used for 5.1 speaker support but will need a matching device to decode the signal. Component-out (Y, Pr, Pb) cables are not provided along with the product package. As of connecting the device detailed description is available on the manual as well as the Philips website ( http://www.philips.co.in).
Design:
The player is pretty compact though not as small as it looks on advertisements. Yet it’s extremely light to carry around. The disc is loaded on top with a flip-open lid. Great when there’s a power failure and you can still take the disc out. Although I do like the flip-top lid design, there’s a minor design flaw. Due to the slight curvature of the lid, the sides don’t shut tight with the disc basin, meaning that there’s a little gap on the edges when the lid is closed. This can result in dust getting in and damaging the lens, so you got to be careful and keep the top covered when not using the player. As a precaution, when you turn off the player to pack it, allow a disc to be just read. This causes the lens to move center-ward and remain there, much away from the edge to collect any dust.
In India there’s only one colour that’s available (silver over white) while two other colors are available in Europe (orange and blue). The remote is slim and handy with large buttons. Only hitch is that it runs on a coin-shaped cell (3V – CR2032 type). Hence you’re likely to run out of power pretty soon and also because of the low power capacity, the remote needs to be pointed towards the player to be properly operated. The front Led blinks upon receiving a signal, so that’s a reliable indicator. The User Interface of OSD is very neat and intuitive. It’s a breeze to set up the player and get started. It could easily read the file names of mp3s and also folder structure. Haven’t tried a Mac-CD to see if there’s any difference in performance.
So far, I am quite impressed with the features and the built. Philips is likely to replace this model with their newer models soon, so grab one immediately. This model is made in Hong Kong (China).
Finally the price, I got the player for Rs3900.00 (90 bucks less from the official price as me and my friend both bought from the same shop, which incidentally is a authorized Philips dealer:-)