Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3628 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Philips
• Model: PET716/05
• Released on: 2007-11-20

Manufacturer's Description

Play DVD, DVD+/-R and DVD+/-RW, (S)VCD, DivX® & MPEG4 movies

With DivX® support, you are able to enjoy DivX® encoded videos in the comfort of your living room. The DivX® media format is an MPEG4-based video compression technology that enables you to save large files like movies, trailers and music videos on media like CD-R/RW, memory cards and DVD-video. DivX® CDs can be played back on selected DVD players, DVD Recorders and Home Theatre Systems.

Plays MP3-CD, CD and CD-RW music

MP3 is a revolutionary compression technology by which large digital music files can be made up to 10 times smaller without radically degrading their audio quality. A singe CD can store up to 10 hours of music.

Share JPEG image files with Picture CD

Multi-format playability allows you to view images on the go and play most disc formats for maximum disc compatibility and viewing pleasure.

7" TFT colour LCD display for high quality viewing

Enjoy movies in 16:9 widescreen format

Built-in quality stereo speaker

Up to 2-hours playback with rechargeable battery*

Car adaptor and handy remote control included

Simple and easy operation

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

At least one intolerable flaw.
I bought one of these from Richer Sounds in London.

Good points: whilst the screen is of low-resolution it's not as harsh or blocky as many similar screens on budget machines. The player handles the vast majority of DivX files without complaint, though it refuses to play HD files.

Bad points: I initially found it unbelievable that this player can't correctly play 4:3 (non-widescreen) DVDs - it will only play them at 16:9. Philips support then actually confirmed the fact: so if you have any 4:3 DVDs they will only play stretched out across widescreen, with everyone and everything looking fat. Note that this problem does not affect DivX playback: the LCD aspect ratio of DivX is selected according to the TV ratio chosen in the player setup.

A secondary problem with this player is that whilst it is capable of showing DivX subtitles, several functions on the remote tend to lead to the subtitles vanishing. Only re-loading the disc recovers them, but fast-forwarding to the point you were at in the footage risks them vanishing again. Final irritation: when you start play, the time elapsed is always superimposed on the screen. You have to press a button on the remote twice to clear the timing from the screen - which may seem trivial but rapidly becomes tiresome.

Conclusion: this hardware could have made a potentially good budget machine, but here is coupled with with firmware which Philips should be ashamed of. The 4:3 DVD fault is so limiting that I suspect a case could be argued that the model is not fit for the purpose for which it is sold.