Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVD750VR Progressive-Scan DVD-VCR Combo

I have to write a review since I felt one of the previous 2 reviews was a bit sweeping regarding ALL DVD players made by Philips. I bought this unit to replace an old VCR. I have only used it for a week, so my impressions may change in the future.
First: one of the prior reviews warned me about the remote control, so I expected problems. And that's why I only gave this product a 3 out of 5: the labels on the controller were hard to read, and the keys were not very intuitive, so I had to play with the keys a lot. In addition, the first-time set up did not work for me. But I was able to get into the setup menus later, so it was a minor annoyance at best.
Second, this is what I liked about this unit: it played a 2 hours long DVD movie with no problems. It also played a commercial Karaoke VCD with no problems. When I got to the page in the manual that claimed this player could read directories and JPEG files, I remembered that I had a CD-R containing a backup of my digital pictures. To my delight, the unit displayed all the pictures in the backup directory that I had burned on my Windows PC. There was a delay of a few seconds between photos, just like a slide show. The picture quality was superb, thanks to the JPEG format. Some dark photos showed up just fine on the TV screen. In addition, I happened to have a computer-made DVD (in DVD+RW format) of some old videos taken via a camcorder. The Philips played this DVD just fine, thank you. So I can view my computer-made DVDs on my TV now. Unfortunately, the Philips cannot improve on the quality of the videos taken: I was painfully aware of the jerkiness in these home videos!
Finally, some of you may not know, but you cannot play something in the DVD section and be able to record that show to the VCR section at the same time. To do that, you'll have to connect the signal to yet another VCR deck.

This unit, like much Philips gear, uses a remote protocol that is impossible for most "learning" or even programmable remote controls to emulate. (This maybe purposeful on Philips' part as they try to promote their own Pronto brand of home-theater remotes.)

Even though the picture quality was pretty good with this unit, I ultimately returned it because of the remote incompatibility. To be honest, it didn't really even respond to its own remote control very reliably; Philips' way of multiplexing the functionality of the VCR and DVD on the same remote was quite clumsy. It responds slowly, and you never quite know what "mode" it's in, partly because of the few front-panel indicators, and partly because of the poor on-screen status displays.

Another downside was that, on the VCR side, this unit is incapable of setting its own clock based on the time signal sent out by many PBS stations; in this day and age ALL VCRs should have this "autochron" feature instead of forcing you to watch a blinking 12:00 after a power outage.

When I first got this player, everything worked great, and the picture was very crisp. Now a year later, the DVD player is starting to act up. I was watching a movie and all of the sudden the dvd froze and I heard this clicking sound. I tried to fast foward and then rewind it, but it wouldn't budge. It got to the point that it would not allow me to eject the dvd or turn the player off. Finally I had to unplug it for awhile, and then was able to get the dvd out. I thought it might be just that dvd, but then I was watching another one and it did the same thing. A friend of mine has the Phillips DVP620VR and has experienced the same problem, and its now to the point that it won't play some dvd's at all. I would not recommend this player for long term use.

Took some trial and error, but finally got it connected to my plasma tv. What I planned to use this for was for straightforward playback only. No trying to tape things while playing on DVD, no taping of broadcasts, and no fancy editing. Just pushing play.

The biggest surprise is that only original DVD-ROMs seem to play back without any issues. Almost all of my DVD+R's (recorded on the Philips DVDR985 no less) start to skip about 20 minutes into the film. I noticed that the same films on DVD+RW seem to play without any skips.

The skips look like simple jumps of a split second at first. Then the image suddenly freezes up in a multi-cascade manner. At first it happened when I was jumping ahead a chapter or two and when fast-forwarding. When I wanted to watch a movie straight through it did it again.

It must be something with this model. The same DVD+R discs play fine on my other Philips, on my Sony player, and on my computer.

Can't seem to find an answer as to why it skips so bad on DVD+Rs.

I just recently reveived my new unit and ran through the basics of use as a DVD player, a VCR and recording from one of my home made DVD's(Made on aPhilips DVD recorder) and evrything worked just fine. Picture and sound quality excellent and I am pleased with the ease of using the unit. I noted in prior reviews a comment that the unit would not play back a DVD made on aPhilips DVD recorder. I thought I had the same problem until I discovered that the DVD+R disc that I was attempting to play back had NOT BEEN FINALIZED. When I finalized the disc on the Rceorder it played back flawlessly on the 750VR.
In sum, as of now, I am very pleased with my purchase.