Good sound and video -- a nice machine for the price when I bought it (4/99)

Cheesy remote, flawed DTS output (at least without upgrade), must be powered off when changing from CD to DVD play (otherwise DVDs freeze up)

Just an update to a review I posted a few months back, noting a new and significant flaw I discovered when I finally decided to upgrade to a DTS receiver (Pioneer Elite VSX-35TX). While the Phillips would play Warner Brothers DTS disks fine (Interview with a Vampire, Twister, Lethal Weapon), other DTS titles (e.g., Gladiator, T2, Fantasia) output to the receiver with a horrible distorted hum and sound as if running through some sort of modulator. I suspect that there is a need to upgrade the machine, but unfortunately, Phillips provides little/no help when it comes to upgrading (strange, since this was one of the big selling points for the 825). Anyway, just to make sure the problem wasn't with the receiver, I picked up a small Sony player and the DTS sound is fine, so now I'm in the market to replace my Phillips (but not with this cheap little Sony 360).

Good basic player. Has both coaxial and optical outs.

Annoying ticking sound when playing CD's. Sometimes pauses during layer changes

Good value at 150 bucks. Cannot pause movie to access menu.
I don't feel I made a bad decision in buying it and it was my first machine so I had the same giddy feeling I got when I fired up my first CD player in 1985. The blue light indicator is also very cool. Could not discern any improvement at all with S-Video so I run the composite video to my TV and it looks fantastic. I really only use the Philips for movies since the clicks when playing CD's makes me a little nuts. I opted for the Panasonic for its silent CD operation and use the Philips with my other TV.

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Panasonic A-115

Price
Aesthetics
Ease of Use (except remote)

Remote
Power Switch (read summary)

To be honest, what really got my attention with this unit was price. I paid less than $200 for this unit 6 months ago (when other comparable units were selling for $240+). I also liked the fact that the controls on the unit itself were simple and easy to use (which helps with the aesthetics). I have had no functionality problems at all.

There are only three problems I have with this player:
1. The remote is VERY hard to work in the dark. It is not easy to differentiate between the buttons at all (which leads to the second problem)
2. If you press the stop button on the remote more than once...the disc tray opens!!! Now this doesn't seem like it would too bad of a thing but I have my player in a cabinet with a glass door. When the disc tray opens with the door shut, it hits the door!!! Now you may say to yourself "Well, don't press the button twice!!!", but with the small size of the buttons and being unable to tell the difference between the buttons...it becomes unavoidable.
3. This last 'problem' is a small one really. I don't like the fact that the on/off switch is not 'electronic'. If you turn the unit off by hand, you cannot turn it on with the remote. Not a big problem but sometimes an annoying one.
All in all, this is a great player for the money at the time (now players are selling for under $200 everywhere). If Phillips were to revamp the remote....I would rate this a full point higher!!!

Low Price; plays DVDs, VCDs, Music CDs, and CDRs

Crappy Remote, No Dolby Digital Decoder

Not a bad player for the price. Had the dual laser so it is one of only 2 players on the market to be able to play CDRs. This is a must feature for anyone with a burner who wants to play thier homemade CDS.

The remote is small and not very well laid out. It only has 2 fast foward features, x4 and like x30.

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Toshibe 2109

Played good at first.

It stopped being able to read half of the DVD's I have.

It stopped being able to read half of the DVD's I have about 9 months after I bought it. I spins noisely a couple of times then ejects the disk. I upgraded the firmware to 9.23 and it still breaks. I have seen a couple of poeple say they had problems after they played a CD and I am 80% sure these problems started after I played a CD in mine for the first time. And its not my DVD's. I keep them clean and pristine.

price!! optical "dts" output, s-video, and several composite av outputs

kind of noisey, no componant video out.

This is my first dvd player and is definitly a step ahead of vhs. the noise that everyone keeps talking about is not that bad, it only occurs when you first load a movie or cd after that i didn't notice any. i can't compare the picture or sound quality to any other but i can tell you that the picturesound on this (with the right receiver) is pretty good. the remote is kind of small and hard to use. decent entry level dvd, not the best one out there but pretty good.

LOW PRICE

Noisy; plastic build, picture quality not great compared to Sony, etc.

It's ok for the price - not a great buy.

Don't bother spinning cds in this thing. It makes too much disc noise and is not very dynamic.

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JVC, Panasonic, Sony

good picture, good sound, good price

remote

i bought a samsung709 player it mess up my dvd's so i took it back and got the philips and the picture is better so is the sound. this is a great enrty level player.

picture quality, audio CD sound, ability to play seriously scratched CD's is astounding

no zoom,

Hooked this 825 up to my aging NEC 2770S monitor with the S-video cable, put in my first dvd and I was very impressed with the detail and textures that are NOT visible with standard vcr's or cable TV. Color's were vivid and always in the right place, I payed no attention to the start of the movie because I was astonished. I immeadiately searched this site's reviews for a 36" monitor and settled for the Toshiba cz36v51 with S-video and component video hookups. I've tried both the Panasonic120u and Toshiba1200 with $75.00 monster component video cables and found the dvd825 a better choice for video EVEN THOUGH the 825 is limited with a S-video(the gold plated S-video cable only cost me $4.00) or composite connection. I arrived at this conclusion by watching for certain video artifacts like closley spaced vertical lines (like vennetion(spelling??)blinds) while the camera is moving sideways and when comming in closer to the action on all these players. I could'nt believe the Philips rendered no artifacts through a S-video connector while the other two dvd players did! no matter what connection I used- composite, S-video, or component-video. I'm keeping this dvd-825 and three months(almost) have gone by now without any problems. I've watched all the poblematic dvd's posted on this site without problems too. The manufacture date on the back of the player says December 1999, firmware is 9.21 991102 P5. I'm keeping the Toshiba sd-1200 too because of it's ablility to zoom, this zoom works very good especially when I want to veiw an originally letterboxed dvd full screen size on my 4.3 ratio monitor, hey it can happen! The 825's ability to play my badly scratched audio CDs is another strong point worthy to mention, the worst ones only resulted in an occasional pop once in a while and only near the end of the CD while the other players skipped and locked up dead and required some heavy button pushing that only ended up in ejecting the disk because all the tracks were unplayable, these disks are ones that I have not been able to play in five-six years because no cd player I tried them on (including my $850.00 Yamaha)could play them. Yeah the transport grinds for a split second when loading a disk, so what? Thats the only noise I can observe other than the battery operated quartz clock hanging on the wall above my entertainment center I can hear the second hand moving, and thats it, I didn't hear the disk spinning and yes the movie was moving with volume turned all the way down. I use the analog outputs to my aged Prologic reciever and it sounds Super, much better than HiFi Stereo from a VCR. I'm waiting for my Dobly Digital and DTS reciever to arrive, I feel that I won't be disappointed. Very very satisfied I am I am. Thanks to all that have written reviews here, it helped me to make difficult purchases easier.

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yamaha cdv-1000,panasonic dvd-120u,toshiba sd-1200

attractive looking, dual laser, compact

no component outputs, doesn't play all VCDs

Got this DVD player at BestBuy for $189 (returned model) for my dad. He would primarily watch VCDs on it. Read a bunch of reviews saying how there were problems with the remote (no power switch) and how the unit was noisy. Well, my remote had a power switch and the unit was actually pretty quiet. Also, did not have any problems with matrix, aliens, or other DVDs that I owned. However, my dad could not play all his VCDs on this unit. On some of the VCDs, some tracks would play but the other tracks wouldn't. Figured it wasn't a problem with this particular unit, but a problem with the line. Back to the store it goes.

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Toshiba 2108?