Philips DVD-763SA
Value For Money
Philips DVD-763SA
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User Reviews
Value For Money
Bought This On E-bay For £95.00, So Was Defi
Bought this on E-bay for £95.00, so was definite value for money, not sure how much these were/are retail. Has played virtually everything I've thrown at it. VCD,SVCD,DVD-R, DVD-RW and of course normal DVD. Intergrates well into my existing Matchline III hardware, namely the TV 32PW9616 and Video VR-830. I still use my SCAN SC-2000 DVD player for the occasional disk this unit won't play, which is hidden inside a cabinet. Pixelation is non-existant, which the SCAN was prone to.
Bought mine in June 2002 for £230. Good picture, and Dark Side Of The Moon sounds awsome in multi-channel SACD. Prone to throwing wobblies and locking up / not responding to commands when playing DVDs. Sometimes get sharp bursts of noise breaking through when navigating discs. Discs come out of the player quite warm, too. Haven't looked into fixing it as I've now got a "better" universal player (Arcam). However, I'm not getting rid yet as the Arcam plays multi-channel SACDs in two-channel only (silly - hope they bring out a firmware upgrade), and also has problems with some DVDs which the Philips doesn't.
My Philips DVD763SA has recently started misbehaving BIG TIME.
It just won't play some discs at all - it sounds as though it's about to, then it just whirrs, makes a sound like it's thinking about it again, and so on for about a minute, before it finally ejects the disc - most annoying when watching a movie that's spread over a couple of discs, or when you want to watch one film after another. Funny things is, it only seems to be happening with region 2 discs and a couple of SACD's, not normal CD's and region 1 movies.
Does anybody out there reading this have a solution or having similar problems?
I bought one in June 2002 when they first came out, for £230. Have you still got your 763SA, if so, are you having any problems playing normal DVDs? Mine regularly locks into fast-forward, and stops responding to many commands. It can be stopped, but goes back into fast-forward on pressing Play again, needing a 3-pin reset to put things right. Philips wouldn't tell me if there was maybe a firmware update, and quoted £120+VAT just to look at it! I for one won't be bothering them, as I could buy a reasonable player for that. (Perhaps that's how Philips planned it?)
Value For Money
If You Are An Ardent Music Listener But Does Not H
If you are an ardent music listener but does not have the big bucks to buy an expensive set, then the Philips DVD763SA is the solution. Finally here is a product that does not tear away your pocket, but still offers the best of the best - Super Audio CD playback. The PHILIPS DVD763 SA is a beautiful deck. To enjoy SACD you must have multi channel audio connectors plugged into your receiver. I have a Philips receiver (the FR series) which is SACD prepared.
Connecting the player was a breeze. The player started up with the typical Philips blue wallpaper. Read my CD in approx 11 seconds (could be improved?) and gave a nice on screen menu to choose favorite tracks. Direct digit key press is also possible to go to your track.
Then I played the super-bit DVD 'Fifth Element', connected the deck to a Philips TV via SCART. The picture was crisp, colors vibrant. The black levels seemed to be exact though it did not have any PLUGE correction available. I changed the receiver to choose my coaxial digital output for Dolby digital tracks and lo !!! The sound effects were really pronounced. Looks like the deck contains some decent DSD/PCM DACs.
Then for the final surprise... my 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood' disc. RELAX - track 1 - was superb. Almost transformed me into the centre of the happening. No wonder the world unanimously voted for SACD. I had another experience earlier with DVD-Audio at one of my friend's place. To be honest, DVD-A sucks !! My budget SACD player would simply LICK the 899Euro DVD-A player clean out of competition.
All in all, excellent value for money. The first step towards high-resolution music. Go grab it before it's all over....
The answer is no, and the answer will always be no. Digital-out is not permitted, to assuage the piracy concerns of the record companies.
DVD-Audio players provide digital outs without concerns about piracy, and some of the cheaper full-format players convert SACD to PCM 24bit/96KHz (or worse, 16bit/48KHz) for output. The problem with digital output from SACD is a more technical one.
With audio encoded in DSD, conversion to PCM would damage fidelity. In fact, it would be better to mix/master in PCM and transfer to MLP-encoded DVD-A than to have an SACD output via PCM decoded by your receiver, as SACD also colors the audio. The choice to avoid PCM conversion is a concious one with regards to quality, not content protection. High-end DSD hardware handles digital transfer, and newer studio sample-rate converters handle PCM-DSD conversion.
Don't write DVD-A off as lacking in quality unless you listened to the disc on a real DVD-A player, as DVD-A discs include a lossy Dolby Digital track for DVD-Video player compatibility.
A previous reviewer asks:
I was dissapointed as SACD only plays from analogue outputs, not digital.-Are there any players that use digital out for SACD's?
The answer is no, and the answer will always be no. Digital-out is not permitted, to assuage the piracy concerns of the record companies.
I have just purchased the same unit. It keeps pausing for one to two seconds on DVD playback. Some disks don't play at all and leave "disk error" in the OSD. SAcd's jump all over the place and skip tracks until finally "disk error" message. Is this common with SACD players?
I was dissapointed as SACD only plays from analogue outputs, not digital.-Are there any players that use digital out for SACD's?
The scart connection out does not send a switching voltage to the receiving device. I run my DVD into my Satalite and then to a video. When I power up my old DVD player the Satalite box automatically switches the DVD to the output. The Philips doesn't so I'm stuck with the problem of swapping cables around! What a pain! I am returning this unit but would like to know if there are any other SACD players out there that not only can play all formats but use a digital output for SACD's and can switch via scart control.
Your wisdom and knowledge will be more than welcome.
Many thanks in advance.
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