Page 1 of Anyone Have a reason not to buy a Philips 711?

Hi,

I`m looking to buy my first DVD player (I have Max £200 to spend), I am thinking off the Philips 711, as it is buy a major manufacturer, Firm ware upgradeable and Hackable for all regions.

All the Reviews I have seen say its an OK player but nothing special but before I take the plunge I thought I would just check if anyone had any horror stories etc or advice to pick a different player.

I would be most grateful for your opinions, as I don`t want to waste my money on a poor player.

Thanks

Steve

Hi Steve, I have just had a quick look around for info on this player posted by users and I could not find a single bad word posted about it. (This makes me suspicious, but that’s just who I am)

I also could not find any firmware updates or talk of firmware update on the Philips site. Are you sure it can be done?

The RRP for this player is £350, but http://www.richersounds.co.uk is doing them for £180

The firmware can be updated, but you are right it doesn`t seam to be available on the Phillips site, I do have bookmarks to sites that have the firmware but they are on my work computer.

Like you I have not found a bad word about the player, other than it’s just an average player with no extra bits like mp3 etc, but I just want DVD.

Thanks for looking

BTW its £175.07 at www.dabs.com

Steve

steve,
i have the 711,performance is very good,both picture and audio.
it can be hacked for multiregion,your tv will need to accept an ntsc signal
for region 1 though, most new ones do i believe. the only problem i have had is in playing the extras on the t2 ue. it will freeze on certain menus.
it is however firmware upgradeable as i received an upgrade cdr disc direct from philips. i contacted philips asking whether this player suffers from branching problems, they e.mailed me back saying they are aware ot the problems and would send me the firmware upgrade. when i received
the disc i did the upgrade, region hack was not affected but it did not sovle the t2 ue problem
hope this helps
andy

i went to allders and they had it for £229.00 with an advert saying they will match any price, we told them richer sounds were selling for £179,and with some persuasion we got it for £179.00. we have had no problems with it at all and would recomand the phillips to anyone

Nope, I have had my 711 for a fortnight now and I am very pleased with it. Previous to this I had a Wharfedale 750s and a Toshiba SD100e, both of which were certainly inferior to this Philips player. I successfully carried out multi-region hack using the OneForAll remote (my tip is to buy one from Argos, then take it back for a refund once you have converted your player) and have had no problems with any disc (including RCE discs).
The picture is excellent, I can`t really comment on the sound as I don`t yet have a 5.1 audio set up, but I must mention how quiet the player is in operation - I don`t think I have come across a quieter machine in the sub £250 region. I would recommend the 711 without any hesitation.

This item was edited on Monday, 9th April 2001, 19:19

there are a few problems that i encured with this machine, it would not play blade,had it replaced with another on, did not make any difference. I ended up going for the Sony 725, great machine,they are now discontinued, so you may be able to pick up a bargain.


search.

I just reveived a Philips DVD701 from www.powerhouse-online.co.uk at £149.99 + £4 next day delivery. The case and the technical spec are the same as DVD711 apart from no S-video o/p, no Optical Digital o/p. This machine (711 as well) do not have the QUASI-PAL mode, NTSC DVD playback on a PAL TV will have B/W or distorted picture.

www.powerhouse-online.co.uk did the Philips 701 special offer £149.99 from 5 April, I still saw it last night but it gone this morning! Sorry if I disappointed you.