Review on 📀 Philips DVD711AT DVD Player: Enhance Home Entertainment with Advanced Features by Eric Nelson

I bought this player to replace my DVD-ROM drive which was hopelessly erratic when playing DVDs. The benefit of the Philips DVD711 is that it hasn't rejected any of my DVDs yet. This is a great value player with great sound and lots of options for a player of its value. However, the system has its drawbacks, albeit minor ones. It shows no sign of DVD-R support, a format that Revain says it's compatible with but never mentions in the manual. Also, the player seems to be tied to the remote control. If you lose the remote or it breaks, you will lose access to the on screen menu and navigation options as there are no navigation or menu buttons on the player itself. Don't be fooled by the apparent forward/rewind dial on the front panel. Accessing frames, zoom and other advanced features means working with the sometimes cryptic hierarchical OSD menu system. If the track has multiple views, a semi-transparent rectangle on the screen will indicate which view you are currently viewing. The only problem is that it can't be turned off and, like a Borg cube, invades the screen space ready to record your movie. That's a bit crude, of course, but you might think that the main purpose of a DVD player is to provide consistently high-quality DVD playback. This isn't user error, the manual specifically states "The corner icon will remain displayed until several corners become unavailable." These are relatively minor issues, however. Few DVDs contain titles with different viewing angles, DVD-R hasn't become popular yet, and most of us try to keep remote controls where they can be found. If you're looking for a cheap DVD player that gets the job done, this is a good buy.