Blue Ray Players

Philips BDP7200 has been closely priced when compared with Playstation 3, which make this blu ray disc player open for comparison with PS3. Being a standalone blu ray player, Philips BDP7200 is reasonably been priced and feature excellent profile when it comes to high definition performance and sound quality. At the time of launch, this player had lesser price but soon the price graph heaped. The price has precisely came close to PS3 creating a tough competition by offering a reliable and a standalone blu ray player to multifunctional PS3.

When a decision comes to purchase Philips BDP7200 Blue Ray Player that has same price of PS3, normally the user would expect many features in this blu ray player similar to PS3. But this player is not up to the mark and still some drawbacks pull it from being a better alternative to PS3. What made this happen? Will this Blu ray player can pull the users who mostly feel better with multifunctional PS3?  Let us discuss it in detail to reveal Philips BDP7200 status.

Design:

Philips BDP7200 Blu-ray DVD Player has really tried to be different, which could be seen on layout design of this player. This blu ray player has rounded edge finish and not sticking to the same old box type design, which you would have seen in many blu ray disc players. The upper casing is made with durable plastic material and comes with dark grey colour. The front portion has a darker faceplate with glossy black and all the control buttons and display units are nicely designed with equal spacing.
On the right side of the faceplate you can find intuitive forward/backward chapter buttons. Surprisingly it also includes resolution toggle button that lets you to choose desired resolution and this feature would offer great help when remote control is missing. Next to the chapter button you can see LED display and Philip logo, which are prominently been placed. The left side of the faceplate is filled with disc tray along with on and off button.

Remote Control of BDP7200:

The remote control has normal button layout design and provides quick and interactive operating methods. It needs some improvement by closely placing the similar operative buttons like Top menu button near directional pads. The Top menu button is not close to direction pads and it make the task of switching back to standard set up menu little difficult. But the direction pad is nicely placed at the top along with useful buttons like pop up and back button.

This remote control has a separate rocker button to control the channel and volume of your TV. It is bad to see that fast forward and rewind buttons are not placed close to stop pause and play buttons. It really annoys the user when playing and controlling a blu ray movie on the large screen and need to search for fast forward and rewind buttons. It is an infra red remote control and backside is fully finished with finger proof glossy touch and it comes with durable faceplate.

Features:

Audio Features:
Though, Philips BDP7200 Blu-ray HD DVD Player has been reasonably priced it does not posses the most expected feature of on-board decoding of high resolution audio soundtracks. This drawback is compromised with the capabilities of providing the high resolution soundtrack to compatible receiver through bit-stream format. High resolution soundtrack formats like DTS-HD master audio and Dolby TrueHD cannot be decoded in this player and this has become a major factor in deciding the better standalone blu ray disc player.

Even the close competitors have this on-board decoding facility. But you can take advantage of receiving full high resolution soundtracks through bit-format for that you need separate and compatible receiver. The receiver should posses DTS-HD Master and Dolby TrueHD decoding facility.

Connectivity:
This BDP7200 1080p blu ray player from Philips has all the necessary connectivity features, which is needed to play high resolution blu ray movies mainly through HDMI output. This HDMI output plays an important role that transform multichannel audio and 1080p high resolution blu ray movies. It also features composite video output and component video output, which is used for analog video that helps to output DVDs in 480p and Blu-ray Discs in 1080i. Coaxial and digital audio output would be comprehensively used for audio outputs and you can also find dedicated 5.1 analog outputs.

More importantly Ethernet port is not there and this DVD player is not Blu ray profile 2.0 that is widely used for internet contents like BD live. But it has blu ray profile 1.0 and gives picture-in-picture feature, which can be used in some blu ray movies for on screen commentary. With the absence of Ethernet port you cannot enjoy internet enabled features and it is not an issue if you don’t want to connect this player with the internet. But keep in mind that all latest standalone blu ray disc players have blu ray profile 2.0 and BD Live compatibility.

Ease of Use:
Philips BDP7200 Full HD 1080p Blu-ray DVD Player provides many audio and video options, which enable you to make more out of its features. This includes the video options such as 1080p, HDMI, 720p, 1080i and 480p. This is further accentuated with video menus that give an interactive setting like de-interlacing, reduction, Black Level and Deep Colour. This DVD player has wide range of supports like DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW, Divx VOD content, CD-R/-RW, CD, WMA (non-DRM), MP3 and JPEG playback. It is a Divx certified blu ray player. You can connect other Philips related product with this player using EasyLink HDMI-CEC facility, which gives you greater control over other products and you can also customise slide shows with JPEG images.

Performance:

There are no issues when showing full resolution blu ray movies in 1080p mode at 24 frames per second and you cannot find even single inappropriate image de-interlacing on the wide screen. When the mode is changing to 1080p at 60 frames per second, some image inaccuracy could be seen and you cannot find smooth transition of frames. These 60 frames per second in 1080p is the most commonly used mode and the image inaccuracy is very common issue with less priced blu ray disc players. When this player convert from 1080p mode at 24 frames per second to frequently used 1080p mode at 60 frames per second the 1080i mode of deinterlacing make the image on the wide screen inaccurate with jagged lines.

This issue can be solved if your HDTV has proper 1080i de-interlacing facility and excellent video quality. Your HDTV must fully handle the processing without any image inconsistency. But most of the HDTV does not have proper 1080p deinterlacing facility and does not accept full 1080p/24 frame per second signals in this case you have to stick with normal video quality. The loading time is little lesser when compared with other branded blu ray disc player but better than similarly priced standalone DVD players. Its DVD performance is good and Philips BDP7200 with DVD Video Upscaling does its job without any issues but when you go in detail then you would see some inconsistency in image display, which is not a major concern.

Warranty:

Philips BDP7200 Blu-ray DVD Player has one year warranty.

Verdict:

Philips BDP7200 is reasonably priced and suitable for budget users. Though with some minor drawbacks, this player gives good quality of DVD and blu ray performance with perfect mix of audio performance at lesser price range.

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Philips BDP7200 Blu Ray Disc Player – Technical Specification Table

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