Philips DVP 3100V

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Good
Sound Level	Good
Range of Features	Average
Durability	Satisfactory
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Plays large range
Disadvantages:	not multi regional

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

We bought the Philips DVP3100v DVD/VCR combi as it plays a large range of media types and has a 6 head VCR player with PAL I and PAL B/G which is suitable for UK and Australia. The DVD player does recognize my home movies in divX format (converted from wmv format - Windows Movie Maker files) and standard jpeg photos on CD-R discs - which is great. Unfortunately, we have not managed to make this machine multi-regional despite attempts at the more widely recommended hacks. However, the biggest problem has been the poor quality of VCR playback with some videos virtually unwatchable with flickering black screens enough to frustrate even our four year old. The manual tracking function doesn\'t help and now the Automatic Tracking doesn\'t seem to work (despite pressing \"0\" as the manual suggests). We have no problems with our 10 year old 2 head Panasonic VCR so it\'s not a problem with the tape. The menu system seems very primitive for the VCR so it would seem that they may have chosen to cut costs here and enhance the DVD player. The manual is very sparse and not well organized so that doesn\'t help with troubleshooting either. It is a shame as it\'s a nice looking machine and not too expensive but I wish now that we\'d just bought separate DVD and VCR players or chosen another brand.