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 enlarge | Brand: Philips
Category: CE
List Price: $279.99
Buy New: $206.35
You Save: $73.64 (26%)
New (8) from $206.35
Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 631
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: Yes
Native Resolution: 10.2
Display Size: 10.2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 10.6 x 1.2
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: PET1030/37
Model: PET1030/37
UPC: 609585128965
EAN: 0609585128965
ASIN: B000RSNPTI
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Value for money February 15, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I bought the Philips PET 1030 player in December 2007 to keep my son & wife occupied during a long days drive to Atlanta from New Jersey.
The player was excellent and my son enjoyed all the movies he had got for the trip. There was never a power problem as one of the accessories is a car charger and he didn't use the seat support preferring to put the player on his knees. Except for an annoying parental lock which kept popping up for PG-13 movies and the password not mentioned anywhere in the manuals - though it wasn't tough to break down the factory set password. (Hint: 9999 will unlock the player). Usage other than while traveling - hard to say as the player has not been touched since the trip to Atlanta.
 Picture quality is a winner February 10, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
After reading reviews of portable dvd players for all brands, I was getting ready to accept the fact that portable dvd player picture quality was just about the same for all brands and that quality had a long way to go. Compared to picture quality of a pc/laptop, that might be true, but for a portable, Philips quality is hands down the best on the market. I bought a Panasonic and the colors and sharpness were unimpressive...text looked horrible, so I sent it back. Then I went to a store to demo Sony, Toshiba, etc. and they were about the same quality as Panasonic. Then I purchased a Philips on ebay since I ended up getting a good price on it as it was used, an older 10" version of the PET1030, and the difference was like night and day. But the battery clipped onto the rear of the unit, making it to deep and unwieldy...plus the plastic battery pack clip mechanism looked to fragile, like it would eventually break. So I opted to return it and purchase this one, as the battery is internal. Yes, I will need to have it serviced in order to change the battery eventually, but I don't mind as a unit with smaller dimensions was more important to me. This unit is very stylish and look fantastic. Plus it comes with a remote that the kids can use while in the car. The unit has pretty good sound for a portable, and is loud enough for adequate level of hearing amongst road noise while in travel. The chapter marker icon issue that other reviews have mentioned indeed is true, but the firmware update available on the Philips website solves the problem. You'll just need to be able to burn a CD with the correct format (see Philips website for instructions) and follow their directions and the chapter icons issue is solved. I purchased the Philips travel/car mount case that is supposed to hold the 10" size, and although it fits, it is a tight fit. The case that comes with unit is fine for transporting the unit and does mount to the headrest of a front car seat, but it doesn't mount between seats, which is what I require as I have two kids. It took a bit of work to finally land the best unit, so save yourself the time and go with this unit, you'll be glad you did. The picture quality and color is the best you'll find as of Feb. 9, 2008.
 Unacceptable flaws - I returned it January 12, 2008
16 out of 22 found this review helpful
I normally don't write reviews for online retail sites, since I feel that the retailers should compensate people who add useful content to their web sites, however for this DVD player I've made an exception.
I returned this player to Amazon the day after receiving it due to one fatal flaw, and multiple bad usability concerns. I was so surprised at some of the flaws that I got out my old Toshiba SD-P1500 portable DVD player, manufactured Oct. 2001, to see if I was simply remembering the past through rose-colored glasses and similar flaws were present in the Toshiba. Nope.
- The fatal flaw is that the Philips player is noisy. I can deal with stepper motor noise during a chapter seek, but this player makes highly noticeable stepper motor thrashing noises even during regular playback. A steady-state quiet whirring of the player motor would be fine, but this is stepper motor or speed control noise, and it's not whirring, it's more like clunking. It makes me worry for the overall mechanical design of the playback system. On startup it's much worse - it sounds like the stepper motor is trying to shake itself apart. I purchased this portable player for home personal use where I sit near the player and watch the DVD using the internal speakers on the DVD player, so the noise is very conspicuous, particularly during quiet sections of a film. People using headphones, or using the player for car playback, presumably won't notice because good headphones will likely block the player noise, and in a car there's so much background noise anyway that it will drown out any DVD player noise.
When I compared the Philips to my old Toshiba, I found that the Toshiba makes some noise during a chapter seek, but is fairly quiet during regular playback.
- Design flaw: control buttons located on screen panel rather than player base. Philips presumably thought this would be a great idea, to put the control buttons along the bottom of the screen. However the result of this design choice is that to press any button, you now have to press forward horizontally, against your screen -- the typical result is that the entire DVD unit tips over backwards, or just the screen tips backwards. By comparison, with a DVD player that has the buttons mounted on the base of the player, you push buttons DOWN, which doesn't tip your player over. I found that I had to immediately shift to using the remote for the Philips player rather than the control buttons on the player itself. It's rather ridiculous that I should have to find myself using the remote for a player that's sitting in my lap.
- Design flaw: color contrast of control button labels. Philips has chosen to use a dark blue font for the text labels on the control buttons, against a black plastic background. In dim light - such as the light level you're likely to choose when trying to watch a DVD - this text is completely unreadable. When I compare to my old Toshiba player, I see that Toshiba chose to use a high-contrast black text against a silver plastic background. Toshiba appears to understand design for usability, Philips doesn't.
- Design flaw: No power button on the remote. Others have complained about this and it's true. Every single remote control I own for my home stereo has a power button on the remote, so this is something that consumer electronics manufacturers have been doing for at least 10 years, but Philips didn't do it for this player. Ridiculous.
- Design flaw: overly aggressive magnetic clasp closure system. I find this player very difficult to open - it uses two fairly strong magnets and no physical clasp. So to open it, I have to use both hands and stick a thumbnail into the slot between the screen (upper half) and the base (lower half), then pry the pieces apart.
- Design flaw: unattractive cover over the DVD. For whatever reason, Philips chose to make the lid (the plastic piece that covers that DVD while playing) into a full-width 10" by 5.5" piece of plastic, even though they could have designed a lid only half that size. It's also completely smooth on top, with no design elements. The result is that it feels and moves like a piece of plastic that a junior high school student cut on the plastic cutting machine in shop class. It makes the player feel cheap, and when combined with some of the other flaws gives me an overall impression of lousy attention to consumer needs or usability.
- Design flaw: long startup delays. The Philips player suffers from the "creeping long boot time disease" which infected Microsoft a long time ago and now appears to have become acceptable in consumer electronics. The issue here is: how many seconds does it take after power-on for the player to display video played from the actual DVD? I tested this against my old Toshiba and found that for the same DVD, the Philips (manufactured in 2007) takes 21 seconds from power-on to start playing the DVD, while the Toshiba, manufactured in 2001, takes 9 seconds. This isn't progress, this is moving backwards, by over a factor of two.
- NOT a flaw, working just fine: screen pixel count. I've seen various reviews, particularly on Pricegrabber, complaining about how this unit shows images as "pixelated" or how it doesn't have a sufficiently high resolution. These reviewers are uninformed. DVD-Video resolution using the NTSC standard (as vs. PAL) is 720x480 pixels, and this player has a screen resolution of 800x480, so it's able to display every single pixel that's been encoded onto the DVD. A higher resolution on the DVD player screen won't help, since there's no additional pixel information available on the DVD -- 720x480 is as high as you get with non-highdef DVDs at NTSC, unless you play games with upconversion. My speculation is that the reviewers complaining about a "pixel" effect are used to watching movies on a CRT or other screen that provides some natural blurring - they're not accustomed to actually seeing down to the single-pixel resolution, so people perceive the quality as worse when actually the Philips is displaying exactly what it's supposed to. I found the picture quality to be excellent - definitely better than the quality on my aging Toshiba player from 2001, which only has half the screen resolution.
Conclusion: unacceptable for my needs, and contains a number of flaws that make me question whether Philips is doing proper usability or mechanical testing. I returned it, and plan to investigate Toshiba's 10" portable DVD player offering as an alternative.
Love it December 28, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I purchased this for my daughter for Christmas after reading Steve "Medical"'s review (thanks for all the information!). I also downloaded the firmware update from Philips to eliminate the chapter pop-up but for now, my daughter likes the pop-up. She and my wife like to know what chapter they're in so if they stop the movie to finish it later, they know exactly what chapter to play. Go figure. The picutre quality is great, sound is fine, very portable, reasonably quick charging and good battery life. It also feels well made.
If it has a fault it's that the battery pack is built in and should be changed by a service center when it finally no longer holds a charge. The older models (we own two others by Philips and packed them all over Europe last summer and LOVED them) have an "external" battery pack which I think is more user friendly, if bulkier.
I should also say the only complaint by my daughter is that it's awkward to open.
In all, I give this player 5 stars especially since Philips has the option to get rid of the chapter pop-up.
Almost Perfect! November 25, 2007
Pros: Excellent picture quality, great user interface
Cons: No hole for a security lock to prevent theft
The Philips PET1030 is a great playback device for both video and images. You can use a variety of media video DVDs audio CDs USB memory sticks SD cards and even feed a signal from another source (e.g. digital camera) to it or connect a bigger monitor or projector when needed. The picture quality is excellent. The audio is okay given the small built-in speakers you can connect external ones.
We bought this player for two reasons: (1) playing self-made documentations or slide shows at art exhibitions and galleries and (2) watching documentations or movies while exercising on a treadmill.
For (1) we use a laptop and save PowerPoint slides as JPGs and then use the Philips portable DVD player to run slide shows during public events. We also occasionally make 3-10 minutes documentation videos. The PET1030's USB interface plays the video and audio on DVD or on a USB memory stick without any issues. However when stored on a 1G SD card the audio track of the movie has very noticeable static. Therefore we will store our videos either on a USB stick or burn a DVD and use the SD card only for JPGs from our digital camera. At times we need to leave the player unattended during public events. The 1 4" screw hole on the back is great to connect the car mount kit but not a good solution to deter thieves. We wish the player had an oval hole like laptops in order to attach a Kensington cable lock.
For (2) we put the player on a shelf that is about two feed away from the exercise equipment. The image size and the loudness of the built-in speaker are more than adequate during typical home exercises.
Overall we love this player and are happily using it.
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