Fri, 02 Mar 2007 02:20:00
Philips DCP850 Portable DVD with DivX and iPod dock
I was looking forward to this player ever since I saw it mentioned on iLounge. I’ve been saving money here and there just to buy it. When I read it was available at bestBuy.com I jumped on it. I’m only half-satisfied. If you are thinking of buying this because of the iPod compatibility, don’t. It is utterly and completely useless.
When playing a DVD, the screen on the DCP850 is very nice. I’d say that you would have to spend a lot more to get a better screen on a portable DVD player. If you dropped $400 on an 8.5” player, you’d surely get better but for $200 this is great. When playing back DivX files from either the memory card slot or a burned DVD, it’s clear and the color is good. Sharpness can be adjusted via the menu. When playing video via the AV input - again, very nice. Not a plasma screen, but then, it’s a $200 portable player isn’t it?
Unfortunately, when playing from the iPod dock, it’s horrifying. It’s simply awful. The only way it could be worse is if it didn’t work at all. Color is washed out and over-bright. No amount of fiddling with the settings makes a difference. It’s unwatchable.
I tried to get some video so I could show the difference, but it just didn’t work out, so I tried to illustrate the difference with photos. All taken under the exact same conditions, resized and saved together to avoid jpeg quality affecting the results. The first example is an episode of Star Trek. The top image is the file played out of the ipod through an AV cable and into the AV Input of the DCP850. The bottom is straight through the built-in dock. Now, the photo is a little fuzzy, but you can clearly see the color difference. In person it’s huge. Detail is lost with the dock, it’s washed out, light colors disappear in a haze of white...it’s simply unwatchable.
The second example is Batman, the 1960s TV show. I picked this one because of the bright bold colors of the heroes contrasted with the somewhat uniformly gray office, outdoor scene and of course the mayor. You can see how the view through the window just disappears in the second image, and the faces are almost completely white. Colors are faded and dull as well. Again, this effect is much more pronounced in person.
Now, these are low-quality files to begin with, designed to be viewed on the iPod’s little 320x 240 screen. I gotta tell you, they look pretty amazing and colorful on that little screen. I only hope that someday someone sources DVD player screens from wherever those iPod LCDs are built!
The last example has three different views from a pause of the Batman Beyond animated film. Again, the photo quality for all three views is the same - the differences you are seeing are because of the varying degrees of quality of the paused video. The top image is a regular DivX file. The middle is the iPod playing back through the AV In cable and the bottom is the iPod playing back through the DCP85’s built-in dock. I created the iPod video file and the DivX file from the same source, using the same bitrates and actually the same encoder, they just have different wrappers on them. As you can see, playing anything back through the AV input lowers the quality a bit, and using the dock simply ruins it. This example is even more obvious in person - for some reason my camera gave all three more blue tone than they really have, but it’s uniform to all three. The built-in dock is just terrible.
Other than that - which is the main selling point, really - this player is pretty good. The screen swivels and folds back to form a tablet style, or you can use it normally. It takes SD cards and reads my MMC cards from my phone as long as they are in an SD adapter. It plays all the burned DVDs I have thrown at it - +R, -R and RW in both formats. It plays MP3s as well, and allegedly plays DivX Video On Demand files, but I don’t have any to test.
I have played files encoded with DivX 3, 5 and 6.5 flawlessly. It also reads the proper English soundtracks to DivX or DVD movies with multiple language tracks - or, if they are properly created, alternate languages if you change that setting in the Audio Settings menu.
Lastly, the unit is compact thanks to the internal battery. You lose some life with this. Philips 8.5” players with the big external battery last as long as 6 hours, maybe more if you were only running the screen and not the drive (for example watching video via the AV Input). This player goes about 2.5 hours on a charge. Since the power input is 9 volts, my thought for travel was to buy a battery pack designed to fit into the power socket, I’ve seen 6 hour packs that are about the size of a pack of cigarettes and cost around $30. I’m sure you could build one for a few dollars in parts if you were so inclined.
I plan to keep the player - it wouldn’t be worth the small amount of money I would save to return it, and have to pay shipping on a non-iPod version. Plus, I don’t think the 8.5” non-iPod models can take SD cards, and the SD functioality will be VERY useful for me. The main selling point of the DCP850 was the iPod dock, though, and that is pretty much useless. Well, not totally useless. The remote control fits in there. So there’s that...you won’t lose it!
The controls are different from most players due to the big ol’ iPod dock taking up the space where they normally put them, but unlike previous Philips models, this one has a dedicated monitor button to easily switch between 16:9 and 4:3 ratios. Very handy. It also has a dedicated button for choosing the source.
The thing I dislike the most about this player? I can’t find a way to stop the timer from showing up without hitting the “Display” button on the remote. Oh, and that the remote isn’t backlit. Also that like most iPod docks, you can’t control the iPod in any way from the remote, but that’s not Philips’ fault.
It’s sort of worth the money. If they made this exact model without the iPod dock, I’d be all over it, but the current 8.6” model has an external battery and doesn’t take SD cards. So I’m sticking with this one. You might not want to get involved with this thing if you’re looking for a portable screen for your iPod. If you;re looking for a pretty cool portable DVD/DivX player, this might fit the bill.
Technical specs:
Display screen type : LCD TFT
LCD panel type : Anti-glare polarizer
Diagonal screen size (inch) : 8.5 inch
Resolution : 480(w)x234(H)x3(RGB)
Brightness : 200 cd/m²
Contrast ratio (typical) : 250:1
Effective viewing area : 187.2x105.3mm
Pixel pitch : 0.13 (W) x 0.245 (H)
Response time (typical) : 30 msPod compatibility
Compatible with : iPod with video
Multimedia Applications
Memory Card Access : SD/MMC card slot
Video Playback
Playback Media : DVD, DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, SVCD, Video CD, CD, CD-R/CD-RW, MP3-CD, Picture CD
Disc Playback Modes : OSD, A-B Repeat, Disc Menu, Fast Backward, Fast Forward, Repeat, Shuffle Play, Slow Backward, Slow Forward, Zoom
Video disc playback system : NTSC
Audio Playback
Compression format : Dolby Digital, MP3
Playback Media : CD, MP3-CD, CD-R, CD-RW
File systems supported : ISO-9660, Jolliet
MP3 bit rates : 32 - 320 kbps
Sound
Output Power : 300mW RMS(built-in speakers)
Signal to noise ratio : >80dB(earphone), >62dB(built-in speakers)
Output power (RMS) : 10mW RMS(earphone)
Connectivity
DC in : 9V
AV input : Composite (CVBS) x1
AV output : Composite (CVBS) x1
Headphone jack : 3.5mm Stereo Headphone x 2
Posted by JimK at 02:20 AM on March 02, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology)
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Comments:
#2 Posted by JimK 
on 03/02 at 08:54 PM -
If I’m ripping myself or re-encoding from a large file, I go as large as the iPod will allow, which is about the limits you stated. However, when you download someone else’s encodes you take what you can get… :)
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#1 Posted by Noblebrown
on 03/02 at 01:24 PM -
What did you use to format the iPod videos? Personally, I don’t do anything less than 640x480 H.264, usually at 1.5Mbps unless it’s a cartoon and can take a lower bitrate without lowering the quality by much. H.264 > MPEG4.