As noted, picture quality is where you really see a difference--the Philips PET1002 offers one of the sharpest, highest-resolution displays on a portable DVD player. We were impressed with the images, though our review unit did have a single dead pixel in the lower-right corner of the screen. After setting both the brightness and the color at about their midway points, we achieved a sharp picture with fairly accurate, well-saturated colors and only minimal noise. Watching the Along Came Polly DVD, we could make out the detail in both Alec Baldwin's and Ben Stiller's black tuxedo jackets in the opening sequence, in which Baldwin's character congratulates Stiller's on his marriage in classic fashion ("Mazel, mazel!"). In general, we found that scenes from this and other movies look significantly more three-dimensional than they do with your standard, budget, portable DVD player. Sound quality is also decent, though the maximum volume could be a tad louder.
If we have one gripe, it's that the player's drive mechanism was noisy when we first fired up a DVD--we could hear the thing chugging. It gets even noisier when it tries to spin up a hard-to-read mixed media disc--though once it gets going, it does quiet down. It also takes a while for some larger JPEG images to load.
All in all, the Philips PET1002 improves upon an already impressive large-screen portable DVD player. Its somewhat hefty weight and equally sizable price tag will deter many shoppers, but if you're in the market for a premium portable DVD player with a great picture and strong battery life, the PET1002 certainly fits the bill.
What You'll Pay
- Set Price Alert
