Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips PET741B/37 Portable DVD Player with 7-Inch LCD, Black

I was looking for simplicity in a portable DVD Player without any extras. This model is great for viewing my DVD's and playing my CD's at home and in the car. It is easy to use, has a great picture and sound, charger and car adapter included at a low, affordable price. Great product, you won't regret it!

As we have frequent car trips of 2 hours to visit family on weekends, we picked up this DVD player for our 20 month old toddler. Our trips are now happy trips. This is a perfect size, the picture and sound are great. It easily plugs into any TV where we stay to view movies on a standard size TV for the family.

Most importantly it works well and our trips are now comfortable for everyone and she no longer minds the time it takes to get there. The battery does last two hours but we just plug it in to the included car adapter and we don't worry about it.

This player is so easy to run you don't really need the instructions.

Great Buy.

Granted, not everyone is going to end up with a defective battery (mine, after only 2 charges, was limited to 30 minutes of playing time), but there are other issues as well. The power button is extremely small and difficult to manage, the cover for the DVD feels particularly flimsy, and the volume wheel on the side is downright inconvenient - and very outdated. It's very light, but presumably, that's because the battery isn't as substantial. For the extra $10 or so, the 7" Sony - which includes a remote control as well, great if you have kids, and MUCH better battery life and controls - is a large improvement.

PROS: This player is affordable and easy to use. The 7" screen is adequate for personal viewing. For group viewing the unit has a composite NTSC video output for connection to larger TVs. This unit played every kind of disc I could locate in my library: CDs, MP3 CDs, VCDs (NTSC & PAL), DVDs (NTSC & PAL).

CONS: It's easy to accidentally push the "Open" button, but taping the cover down solves this problem. The volume could be a bit higher, but earphones or outboard amplified speakers solves this problem. While the unit has a "Disc Menu" button, it lacks a "Title Menu" button - which is important for some DVDs. I don't know of a work-around for this, unless you want to re-author your DVDs.

All-in-all I'm pleased with my purchase.

This is the first portable dvd player I've owned so I don't have any precise comparisons, and I've only had it a month so I can't say much about durability, but so far it works great. Operation is easy and intuitive, the sound is good, and the picture is crisp and plenty bright. My only complaint is pretty minor: it is too easy to accidentally hit the "open" button on the side of the machine.