A Royal Philips product for Indian peasants!
Decades before, the name Philips meant quality household products.Well,
not anymore, if their DVD 5695K is considered as an example.
I had a Philips 626 DVD player
(https://mouthshut.com/review/Philips_DVD_625K-136683-1.html) which
was on its last run.So I shopped around for a substitute.
Initially I chose a Samsung, which I traded in within 3 days since it
had virtually no user operated optional features such as audio &
video adjustments.
I chose a Philips DVP 5695K/94 since it showed the same sort of
features like the Philips 626.
Okay, to be fair, it has got Divx playback facility.
But that is about
all that it has got extra.
VCD & DVD playback is terrible, the movie keeps
getting stuck constantly, even when playing original discs.
What it also does not have is quality audio output.
Where older playerss had
good(read quality) sound output, this one has the sound quality worse than one of
those cheap cassette players that are sold on the roadside.
It is claimed that this player will play any audio format such as LPCM,
Audio CD, MP3, WMA etc.
But, rightfully no claims are made on the quality of
the output when playing these formats, which is very very poor.
MP3 discs quit playing midway.Audio
Discs seem to be competing for the’hop-skip-jump’ competition for the
Olympics!
And worst of all.it has no disc loading tray! Only the slit type of
loader that you find on car audios.
What is wrong with this, you might ask.You experience the answer at
11.00pm when unsuccessfully trying to somehow get Disc One out so that
you can play Disc Two.
You will need to carry the player to the one and only Service Center in
town, an ordeal any consumer can do without. An ordeal that you will
have to endure constantly, because the player in my experience develops
’Constipation’ at least thrice a week.
Or, you can do what I have started doing.
When I purchased this piece of
junk, I had already kissed Rs.4.9k goodbye.
I didn’t need to waste anymore time and energy on carting it to the
Service Center twice or thrice a week.
Plus, the repair under warranty would be the biggest joke, since the guys at the
service center would have no clue about the insides of this player, as it is not made in India, probably China.
I don’t think the
service guys have gone to China to get trained in servicing this
player.
So I made it a’Do- It-Yourself’ job. All you need is a Philips head
screwdriver.Remove the screws that hold the cover, remove the cover,
loosen your stuck disc carefully with a tooth pick or lollipop stick, hold the player front panel facing downwards and bang it hard on a table edge till the disc comes
out.
While doing this I hope and pray that the player will break in two so that I
would be justified in shopping around for another player within the
span of 3 months.
But, other than succeeding in putting some deep dents onto
the front panel, I have not succeeded so far.
Since I have had the cover off this player, I wish to share another
surprising discovery with you.
For a Philips DVD player which is claimed
to have so many playback features, the circuitry of this player is
surprisingly small.
A TV remote control seems to have more circuits inside than this, when you consider what each is capable of doing by way of functions. The explanation that things have been minaturised would be lame since the quality should not get minaturised also in the bargain.
Philips
must be moved to shame selling pieces of junk like this because I don’t
see the name Philips anywhere on any of the components inside, while as a few
years back every thing used to have’Philips’ printed on it, ensuring
you of a quality product.
So, what is the lesson learned from all this?
*Never trust the brand name as
a sign of quality.
Test the equipment physically before buying.
Updated on November 14th 08.
Last month, I solved the problem of the Philips player very easily.
I purchased a’Delhi’ assembled player. Cost? only Rs.2300/-. It plays all formats, plus it has a built in amplifier, so speakers can be connected directly.
It works very well, in fact better than what I had expected from the Philips player.
The Philips is gathering dust on the shelf while I figure out how to get rid of it.
Any takers here at 50% of the purchase price(2400)?