Good features, horrible quality

This was really cool. I was so excited to get this portable DVD player for the kids in the car. It's a good size/weight, and a HUGE feature list with LOTS of playback formats... especially Divx & Xvid!!! But ours broke in less than 1 week!

Luckily, 1 call to Phillips, and they had no problem replacing it. They asked us to mail in the DVD player (we paid shipping, $7), and about 2-3 weeks later, they sent an upgraded DCP850 to us (same thing, but with 8.5" screen). We'll see how the quality of the DCP850 compares later.

We have a built-in DVD player entertainment system in our Honday Odyssey, which is great, but there's no SD card or Divx/Xvid support in the Odyssey dvd player.

We tried the cheap dual-screen player from Best Buy, since we have 2 kids in our Civic 4-door. But, there were too many cables when trying to connect the 2 screens and power... there were just cables running everywhere.

So I like this form factor of the Phillips DCP750. I is a 'clamshell' dvd player like most others. A BONUS, is that the screen swivels/rotates (but only left), so you can't rotate it for one or the other child. Basically, the swivel is meant only to rotate it around and fold flat (like a TabletPC/PDA), so that the kids can't press any buttons. It's nice, but honestly, we never got a chance to use the swivel much.

We just used it sitting in between 2 booster seats in the back of a Civic, and the audio-out cable plugged into the car stereo (which is NICE). It also has 2 headphone jacks, so each child can listen on their own headphones if you like.

The speakers are adequate sound, even while driving, but we mainly used the audio-out to the car speakers.

The screen is ok, but not exactly the highest resolution. it's 480x234, but it looks a little better than that. For kids, and casual viewing, it works.

Ipod dock: This is REALLY cool if you have a classic Video ipod, but we don't... so instead, we just left the built-in remote-control there. Personally, there are too many buttons on the remote, and it's a little complicated for a 4 year old to figure out all the buttons. Even if you replaced the remote with a blank plastic plate, it would work fine with 'basic' controls, but Phillips doesn't provide a blank plate if you remove the remote, which isn't a big deal really, just cosmetically it looks 'empty' when the remote is removed.

SD card: I tried using a 1GB SD card, and it worked with no problem. But I tried an 8GB SDHC (high-capacity SD card, with different 'format' than a standard SD card), and it wouldn't read the card. :(

DVD discs: works perfect. It has a standard 5-way directional pad to navigate the menus, and standard Menu/Play/Rewind/Forward buttons.

Remote: Honestly, I never had a chance to use the remote, but it seems fairly capable.

Divx discs: This is a GREAT and unexpected feature. You can compress your DVDs to Divx on your PC, and then burn to DVD disc (in standard ISO filesystem), and it will show the filenames of the .avi files... just press play, and it plays the videos perfectly.

Main drawbacks:
-Auto-resume works, but only if you leave the power on. If you power off, walk into a store, and come back... the players loses it's position (this is the BIGGEST 'lacking' / design flaw). That's why we like the Odyssey built-in player, becuase it auto-resumes the DVD player with no problem, and the kids can resume where they left off.

-Quality: Obviously, breaking after 1 week is horrible quality. Our previous Phillips player broke after only a few months (which was replaced with this DCP750). Now we have the DCP850.... but haven't tried it yet.

Overall:
-This player has GREAT features, but make sure you get the extended store warranty, or keep track of your receipts for the manufacturer 1 year warrantly. Luckily, Phillips has already replaced 2 players, and they're pretty easy to deal with... and it's not "too much" of a hassle, other than trying to live without one in the car (yeah, yeah, I know... we don't NEED a dvd player in the car....).