Price, dual lasers, ease of setup.

A glitch here and there, chintzy remote.

I've been using my Phillips 825DVD for over a year now and have been very satisfied. Setup was simple, picture is good and sound is excellent. My only complaint is with a small technical glitch, I assume in the dual laser system. If I listen to a CD and then switch over to DVD, I get freezes, pauses, etc., etc. The simple workaround is to power off and then power on again -- after that, everything works fine. Out of roughly 500 DVDs I have tried to play on this machine, only 2 have given me problems, and in both cases the problems were solved when I returned the DVD in question to the retailer and received a replacement. In other words, the problems were with the disk, not with the player.

As a number of others have pointed out, the remote on this is a bit of a joke, but it contains all the basic controls I need, and with the big mother remotes for my TV, receiver, and rarely used VCR, it's rather nice to have a small, light remote. And though it's very light, it also feels sturdy, though not solid -- if I dropped this one and the $100 remote that came with my Sony receiver, I'd bet on the Phillips to survive.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba 2109

low price ($179.00)

What's that TICKING sound?
Noisy transport
Edges fuzzy; especially in dark scenes

Not too thrilled with this entry level unit; sound on cds is marred by awful, low-level ticking.

Picture is ok, that's all...all dvds are pretty good in this respect

Similar Products Used:

Sony
JVC
Konka