Philips DCP951/37 9-Inch Portable DVD Player with Ipod Docking
From Philips
List Price: $199.99
Price: $186.94 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com
11 new or used available from $134.82
Average customer review: 
Customer Reviews
good buy
hi… what motivated me to buy this item was the ipod feature. I can connect any version ipod to the ipod touch and view or listen to the contents on the big screen. A very good buy.
Philips has better models offered
I love most of Philips’ electronics products. I’ve got a Philips TV, DVD Players, a DVD Recorder (hard drive model), and Norelco razors and I love them all. On the other hand, this particular Philips product, the DCP951/37 player, has stunned me with dismay. I bought it on sale for $49.95 at BigLots a few weeks ago and still took it back. It wasn’t marked refurb. It had all the indications of being new so I presume it was, in fact, new.
I had no intention of using the iPod dock. I don’t have a iPod. The iPod tray is built to also store the remote control and it works nicely for that.
DivX in a portable intrigued me. On day 2, playing approximately the 3rd disc ever inserted, it stopped recognizing DivX files. The same DivX/XviD files on the same discs that played the day before now wouldn’t work. If that was the only disappointment, I’d have RMA’d it to get another. It was only one of many shortcomings, however.
The sound emanating from its tiny speakers offers spectral quality that is okay for tiny speakers but the amplitude is too weak to be functional in any but the most quiet situations you could imagine. My hearing is quite good yet it was difficult to hear this player in the kitchen with water running and a few pans of food sizzling on the stove. Even a cheapie little hand-held portable radio can render audio louder than this Philips player. You’d have to consider it only for headphone use and maybe that’s why they provided 2 headphone outputs. I never used headphones with this player so I can’t report about the amplitude of the headphone outputs.
So, it wouldn’t play DivX/XviD any more and I couldn’t hear it unless I was in an extremely quiet environment, but I still thought I’d keep it for $49.95 if it would work as a picture frame. Well, it does work as a picture frame, but only if you manually set it’s display ratio to 4:3 and suffer the small display area. It just isn’t hardwired to adjust the display of a standard photographic JPEG file to its 16:9 display. It will display them, but, it cuts off people’s heads and such. One thing I will say, however, is that it reads large sized high res low compression JPEG files very rapidly compared to other DVD players I’ve tried. I only used SD cards in it. I think it will also read other types.
Battery life was good. It claimed about 2 hours and I got a little over 2.5 hours. It’s just enough power to watch most movies.
The display is crisp and colorful but a little too dark for most environments. I had to manually tweak it. In bright sunlight? Well, no LCD can really compete with sunrays so I won’t even address that. It did well in a brightly lit kitchen and living room. Action revealed just a little smearing but I only noticed that when really looking for it.
As with many Philips products, it has a very short file name capability. It’s limited to approximately 10 to 13 characters and the rest is purely truncated.
I never did try MP3’s. Never got that far. The other problems made me pack it up and return it so I don’t even know if it can do all sorts of VBR and I don’t even know if it can do anything with an ID3.
Philips has other players in this price range. I’d pass up this one (even for $49.95) and look at others.
Philips gives a 1 year warranty on its products. That’s outstanding in the field. That warranty period helps keep me loyal to the brand name.
By the way, in a Philips model number, the /37 indicates U.S.A.
flimsy and poorly constructed
phillips sent us this product as a replacement for the older model (which broke after just seven months) and i was immediately disappointed. the leg stand is VERY flimsy and does not allow you to angle the screen, the new design means the screen is always exposed and overall it felt like a cheap knockoff. now it’s been five months and the screen is now grainy. this is a terrible product. now i have to call their customer service AGAIN and hopefully get my money back this time. do not waste your money.
Tags: Philips DCP951/37 9-Inch Portable DVD Player with Ipod