Good playback (while it still worked), acceptable feature set.

Intermittent freezes, long-term reliability is poor

This was my first DVD player. I bought it because I have a Philips CD changer that's superb. I wish I could say the same about this unit. It has always frozen intermittently during play, but I thought that was normal. We had it almost two years before it gave up the ghost. It just quit reading discs.

Judging from all of the reviews I've seen, DVD player reliability is a major problem. When I spend $200+ for a piece of gear, I want it to last longer than that. 2 years is unacceptable, although by today's standards I guess that's really good. In 1984 I bought my parents a Panasonic VHS player. It died just last month, after about 17 years of excellent performance.

From what I've read on the Web, Panasonic has pretty high marks, so I went and bought an DVD-RP56U. I hope it lasts longer than two years.

NOTE TO DVD MANUFACTURERS: Make the units more reliable! Consumers should not have to replace the unit each year (or every few months -- read this site for starters). Can you make one that lasts five years before pooping out? That would be a start.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic DVD-RP56U (can't say anything yet because I just bought it).

Decent picture quality for the price.

Bad remote, cannot change screen aspect or make other changes without stopping the movie and restarting it again.

I have not had any problems with my 825, and I use it
as a DVD player and CD player. It's a great player for
a DVD beginner, but I find myself wanting more features
after having used it for a couple of years.

I just bought a GE 1101P for my sister, and since it is
loaded with features, including the ability to play MP3s, for $129, I thought I would give her my 825 instead.
But after testing them back to back several times, the
825 provides a better picture. The 1101P displays colors
that are slightly washed out, and the darker scenes
don't come through as well. I love the 1101P's remote.

The 825 remote is terrible. Instead of growing to like
it, I have grown to hate it more and more. I dread picking
it up. :)

Similar Products Used:

GE 1101P

I could be way off on the price, cannot remember. I bought this x-mas present in 99 and have had very little problems with my own DVDs and CDs have had problems with renetals skipping, hanging and sometimes the machine makes funny noices and I have to restart it and fiddle with it. Most of the skipping and hanging issues were resolved by cleaning the cds. I have noticed that it can be noise at times and the remote drives me nuts because one of the buttons falls out if I am not careful and it has always bothered me that so many things now require the remote to use them fully. I have also never done the firmware upgrade on the system. Overall I an happy with it I enjoy the sound I get though the optic connection once I went in and turned the feature on. Up until now the sytem has seen about 4-6 hrs of use a week.

Similar Products Used:

None

Picture Quality, Sound,

Stopped working!

I talked my wife into getting this DVD player, worked fine for about a year, then half of our DVD's wouldn't play. Philips sent us an update disk, didn't fix anything. Called to have it fixed, they do not make replacement parts for this model. No authorized repair centers can get parts and Phillips wants $124 to replace the player.

We decided to get the Toshiba SD-2200, do not buy the Philips. All the bad reviews are true! We were luckier than others in that ours lasted almost two years before breaking.

Similar Products Used:

This was our first DVD

Inexpensive is the only thing good I can say about this product.

IT QUITS PLAYING CERTAIN TYPES OF DVD'S WITHIN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF USE.

I experienced the same problem that is described in all of these reviews, after a while, it quits playing certain types of DVD's. What I find interesting is that Philips customer service gives the impression that they have never heard of anything like this happening with one of their DVD players. It has been like pulling teeth to get Philips to stand behind their warranty. More trouble than it is worth!

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVP S360

This player has dual, discrete lasers, something that is very rare at its price point. The picture quality is good, but the sound quality (if you want your DVD player to do double duty as your primary CD player) is awesome! Very detailed and open soundstage. I felt it was better than the Sony that everyone raves about. Unfortunatle, Philips has a ways to go to beat Sony, or many others, on build quality, style and features. For instance, one has to push the main power switch just so to get it to go on.

Well, I'm test driving a Phillips 825 for the past week, and here are my thoughts:
Video: It's not too bad, DVDs look like the way they are supposed to look.
I don't have a 16x9 TV set, just a 4:3 modest 46" big screen TV.

Sound: The Analog audio outputs sound too low versus the sound level from
the AC-3 output. It will pass DD/AC-3 and dts bitstream, but I was not
able to test the dts portion since my receiver doesn't support dts, and
I don't want it.

Notes:
1. Don't much care for the tiny remote, the button layout is cramped, and
the fast forward and fast reverse buttons are the menu left/right buttons
which I thought was goofy, plus the FF/FR speed was 4x and 32x. I think
if you hold down the skip forward or skip backward buttons, they also mimic
the FF/FR buttons, but that's a pain. The AC-3 signal would drop out for a
second coming out of a FF or FR scan of the DVD, that was annoying.

2. The unit will play audio CD-Rs. If made correctly, it should also
play VCDs on CD-Rs. The surface color of the CD-Rs didn't seem to make
any difference, and that's probably due to its dual discrete laser pickups.
If you have lots of CDs on CD-Rs, then maybe this is the player for you,
but you will inherit some of the quirks that come with this player since
DVD players with dual laser pickups are becoming a thing of the past on
entry level DVD models.

3. Layer change performance was average. The video would freeze for a
second and then once the player found the next layer, the audio would take
another second or two to re-sync itself to the video, sometimes if the
volume was loud, audio pops were produced, and this didn't sound good
for the speakers. I wasn't impressed with the audio dropouts at the
layer changes. I also use a PC-DVD with a decoder card, and rarely see
any layer changes or audio dropouts during layer changes, I'm spoiled
in that area.

4. Otherwise, normal DVD playback is solid and quiet.

I'd advise buying one of these machines at a Circuit City or Best Buy
or Target (supposedly also you to use it for 90 days before you lose the ability to return electronic items, hmm...) and testing it out for a week or two, and if you don't like it, take it back, otherwise, you may find that it suits your needs regardless of its shortcomings. Hope this helps.

Oh, regarding the power switch that the earlier reviewer noted: Once you press in the power button once, you should use the power button on the remote control to turn the DVD player on and off. When the DVD player is in the off mode, pressing the door open/close button will turn on the DVD player automatically.

This is the first DVD player I have owned. I compared it to the Sony's and the Toshiba's and could not tell a difference. The main thing that drove me to buy this one is the features for the price. I got mine at Bestbuy for $300 with 5 free DVD's and 8 free rentals at Flix and 13 free rentals at Hollywood Video it should give me plenty of movies to try out. This unit has optical (which I use) and coaxal outs.

This unit replaces the $700 Yamaha DVD-C900 I bought that didn't work. The DVD825 hasn't given me any troubles. Picture looks good, sound is excellent through digital coax, and my Marantz RC-2000MKII operates the unit right out of the box(Marantz subsidiary of Philips). It looks kind of cheap but it works the way it's supposed to. That's somewhat of a rarity among the DVD players currently on the market, especially at $300 with 6 free DVD's and 8 free rentals.

I'm updating my review of June 19. Since trying this unit, I have checked out other Philips DVD 825 players, and they did not have the sticky power switch like this one did. The design of the power switch seems to be of the older style, that actually pushes in and out. Perhaps this is more electrically sound, I don't know. I'm sure there will be many posts explaining this from people who seem to think this is a forum and love to correct other's comments. As one reviewer stated, I know that you can turn the unit on and off from the remote. However, I was commenting not on how to use this player, but how I felt about the overall build quality, and how this sticky switch which in my humble opinion didn't work the way it should, contributed to that assessment of overall quality. For the value this player has at its price point, I give it four stars. It is a good unit.