Customer Reviews

No Disk Resume
In general this seems like the perfect portable DVD player. It has a great screen and it looks like a laptop (very sleek). However, it is missing the ONLY feature I look for on a portable DVD player. It does not have disk resume. This means that if you pause a movie and walk away for more than five minutes you have to start the movie from the beginning and fast forward through the chapters to find the place you were at. Also, if you walk away for more than 15 minutes the system completely shuts down and you have to turn it on and restart everything again. Since I am busy and I like to be able to pause what I am watching and come back to it later, this particular product defeats the purpose for having this type of DVD player for me. Therefore, I regrettably have to return the system. [Posted by Spamiclese's wife.]

It just doesn’t get any better than this,
After going thru several Portable DVD/MP3 players, I knew I had to get this portable Philips PET 1030 10.2″ high resolution portable LCD DVD player to compliment my audio visual center, and for the road.

One of my main reasons for selecting this portable over the others in or in excess of its price line was its full support of compressed MPEG4 files and full DVD support of burned MP3 files… The PET 1030 plays almost all Xvid/Divx files with a few exceptions of extremely high resolution definition MPEG4 which were encoded above its chip resolution capability.

Played MPEG4 movies on 4 Gig Corsair Flash Voyager USB2.0 drive and movies played perfectly and without any stuttering, which is sometimes common in other units. Also attached one of my Free Agent 350 Gig external HD’s to the USB 2.0 input and the Philips 1030 played movies perfectly, although I surely would burn out this fine unit if I tried to run the hundreds of MPEG4 movies on the external. Didn’t try to play anything using the SD/MMC memory card slot, or play SVCD’s or VCD’s, External output coaxial and standard jack to TV work well, as does the CAM video input.

All non commercially made MPEG4 subtitles worked flawlessly and were bright and easy to see.

The functional capability of this and future Philips replacement units could pose a major financial headache to Hollywood if future Internet savvy users download more media then they buy commercially. Unit does heat up somewhat after two hours on the right back side as expected, but with only one half of the heat of a laptop with a low heat profile…

To my amazement, this unit plays MPEG2 and MPEG4 right up to the rated 800 (w) x480 (H) x3 if the source media was encoded at higher rates. Unfortunately, I have found other manufacturers to exaggerate or use devious display resolution rating schemes. Tested too many other brand portable DVD players rated at up to 720 or 800 which turned out to be only 480 in display at best in resolution capability.

Up to 32x fast forward and 4x zoom and reverse speed. No carrying case provided, but came with a sturdy plastic travel pouch which will do in a pinch. Came with DC 12V 20A power supply, car mounting kit, car cigarette outlet adapter, s-video cable and AV cable.

Brightness is outstanding. Battery life was over 4 hours. The sound quality for audio CD’s, MP3’s was better than any IPOD I have ever used. Also supports WMA. I tend to burn 40 or 50 hours of MP3’s at 320 bitrate on a single DVD, and this unit plays all my audio files perfectly. It played my 4 and 8 Gig DVD’s filled with MP3’s effortlessly and with outstanding audio fidelity. Supports MP3 ID3V MP3 tagging, and long file name (I think 14 or more characters) and even indicates date MP3 file created, and size of each folder. Philips is truly ahead of any other company in this regard.

Twin Stereo speakers are a bit better than most portables, but if you want outstanding sound quality you should use a good set of earphones. I was even amazed at the quality of Stereo Dolby 2.0 sound from those Xvid/Divx files which were ripped to Dolby.

Commercial DVD’s have sharp and crisp full 720 resolution, and JPEG’s which are high definition are so clear they jump out at you. They can be previewed in thumbs and viewed in full unit resolution. Actually never have seen better MPEG4 or JPG support in most standalone DVD players, including the 3 other Philips I own.

The remote does everything except individual playback at one frame at a time. It will only pause, do A-B repeat, fast forward/backward/next. Zoom is great along with pan. This unit has the most intuitive audio video remote control I have used in the last 7 years. Very easy to switch between 16:9 and 4:3 or reduce or zoom screen size to make non commercial videos fit screen perfectly.

The only thing I can say negative about this unit is that I wish I could buy five or six as gifts for all my friends who are really missing out on what a well engineered full featured portable DVD player is all about.

So so
Bulky, no back light on controls makes it very difficult to navigate in a dark room. Screen resolution is standard fare so it does not look very sharp due to the large size.
Sound is ok. Various inputs ok as well. Memory card reader a plus.
Not as portable as it looks in the picture.

excellent quality for good price
I bought this DVD player recently for my doughter. I find it really cool - large LCD with excellent brightness and contrast, a lot of supported formats - DVD, DivX, MP3. In case of DivX it also supports subtitles (however, it cannot display nation specific characters).
I was also surprised by variety of inputs - you can either play from dvd, SD card, or external USB storage (I haven’t tried this one though).
One more nice feature - it is very easy to get rid of DVD region block - I brought some DVD’s from Europe and I’m able to play them.

Love It
I have used other dvd players and they were ‘ok’. So far I love this one and no problems. The picture is the best I have seen/used, yet. I hate seeing movies on a 21 inch old tv 10 feet away and we can not afford a new large flat screen. I put this on my lap and it is ‘almost’ as good as at the movies. It is the best picture I have seen yet and the sound is great!
I am very happy with it. I also bought the Targus DVD001 13 Portable DVD Player Case. (the case holds it well, pockets for all your things and it holds 20 dvd’s also.) I use ear buds sometimes and between the very good ear buds and the sound, Anything higher the 1 is to loud. I hope to have this, and be happy with it, for a very long time.