Philips HTS6120 Theater System

First, you cannot change parental settings while a disc is in the player. I had to call customer support to find out why I couldn't get the password turned off. Turning the password off for EVERY dvd disc you put in gets old fast.

Second, the player is very loud when reading the disc. There is a whirring noise that is quite noticeable to me which I have not noticed with other players. Its like you can hear the motor spinning the disc or something - quite annoying.

Third, if you would like to listen to radio whatsoever half of your stations will not come in clearly. Stations that are local and come in loud and clear on every other radio for even miles away are pure static on this thing. Some stations come in clearly, but others don't. My boombox from 1988 picks up radio better than this thing does.

Fourth, player skips during dvd playback. For commercially pressed discs, I have noticed it skip during the switchover between layers on a disc. For home burned discs it will often skip and hang several times - it doesn't matter whether it is a single or dual layer disc.

Finally, hope that you don't need support on this product. The one time I called customer support they couldn't wait to get me off the line, encouraging me to use the slower online assistance instead. When I have tried to use the online assistance part the website has been down and returns an error before I can actually get any help with the aforementioned complaints.

PROS: I will include a short list of pros since it is not entirely useless. It plays audio and mp3s very well. Of course you have to close off the player in a cabinet so that the sound of the disc spinning doesn't detract from the music and then you can't use the remote control. It has been nice though to play dvds full of audio tracks on it. These don't seem to skip like the video tracks do.

This particular model is the MCD700/37 which I received as a Christmas present. I was not aware of all the shortcomings it had until later and am currently in the process of trying to get something done about it.