Rating: 
Summary: Nice combo, but only got 7 months use
Review: This is a nice combination of VCR and DVD and a great space saver. Unfortunately, 7 months after purchase, the DVD stopped opening and closing. Philips has a 91-day to 1-year warranty and will prorate the product for replacement. You send them the machine and a check and they send you a new one. Not good pricing on exchange, either.
Rating:
Summary: Great picture, incompatible remote; returned it
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great picture, incompatible remote; returned it
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out if you use home made DVDs
Review: 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.
| 
