Philips PET1002

Pros: Excellent picture, ease of use; A/V & Component Outputs; Light-weight for its screen size

Cons: Remote required for full functionality; Noisy on start-up

Summary: I'm writing this specifically to refute the “1 out of 10” review, which must have been on a defective product (on clearance @ Target? Maybe a refurb or previous version of the same model?). This is my first portable DVD player, but I've done a good deal of research and looked at various models in BestBuy, Circuit City, Target, etc.

The manual is a big fold out, but who cares? It's informative and well printed. Also, the player looks and feels solidly built.

I started off playing Tombstone. The DVD fit just fine in the tray and locked firmly into place (make sure you press it all the way down to lock it in place or it will sound broken when the disc starts spinning). It is noisy when the DVD loads, but quiets down to a dull hum once it gets going (audible only in a quiet room with the volume muted, or one of those dramatic low-volume moments in a movie). The operating sound is comparable to an XBox.

The player’s speaker volume is just fine. I can understand some confusion since there are two independent volume controls – a wheel on the side and digital control via the remote. I could easily hear the movie one room over at max volume. If you’re playing this somewhere where you can’t hear at max volume, then you’re probably just being a jerk and adding to an already extremely loud environment. That’s why they invented headphones, which do in fact cancel out the player’s speakers. With two jacks (both of which work) you can buy two y-adapters for a few bucks at radio shack and plug in four sets of headphones.

Even from a few feet away, the picture is pretty excellent. I had to stick my face about a foot away from the screen before I could even notice the pixilation. In Tombstone, the black of Wyatt’s hat and duster is solid and deep. For any first-time buyers, bear in mind that you’ll have the black bars on top and bottom of the picture (large black bars with older DVDs) due to the aspect ratio, and trying to use the zoom feature to get a bigger picture on the screen doesn’t work too well.

If you plan on using the A/V output to watch on a TV screen you have to leave the player’s screen up, which is a little annoying. Also, if you use the component output (which only outputs video) it will cancel the speaker sound, so you’ll still have to use an audio-out device.

The biggest draw back is that you need the remote for full functionality. For example, to adjust digital volume, mute, zoom, put on auto-subtitles, and even access the player setup menu, you have to use the remote. This is a little annoying and could become a real problem if you lose or break it.

In terms of various disc formats, my college "computer graphics" final projects compilation on DVD-R ran just fine, as did a music CD-R. If you want music on the go, however, get an iPod.

I only bought this today, so I can’t attest to battery life, but hopefully this review was informative.