Philips Blu-ray Disc Player BDP7200
The Philips Blu-ray Disc Player BDP7200 is a great Blu-ray player at an even greater price for your home entertainment needs to go high definition.
Ease of Use, Performance: 18/25
Look & Feel: 20/25
Features 18/25
How much I enjoy 18/25
Total: 74/100
The Philips Blu-ray player is a very mismatched product with its great looks and even better picture quality but there are some things that degrade the score so here goes. The Philips Blu-ray Player model number BDP7200 is a great looking Blu-ray disc player with some good features.
The Philips BDP 7200 is a full 1080P Blu-ray and DVD player that also plays CD’s and DivX movies as well as the Blu-ray and regular DVD’s. The BDP7200 has the 1.1 Profile so you get the picture in picture features on Blu-ray discs that contain that as well as the Dolby Digital audio for great sounding movies and music.
The player also views pictures you have on CD so if you want to show presentations for the holidays or special occasions you can get out those CD’s filled to the brim with pictures of the family. One thing I don’t like about the picture viewing is it starts each page with the up folder highlighted so if you accidentally press the button it will go back up one folder in the usual folder tree that your disc uses just like a computers.
If you do go back and forth in pictures or on any of the menu’s you better be patient, the Philips player does take awhile, especially with Blu-ray discs. I found this to be the most annoying feature of the Philips player, the wait for things to happen. When navigating menus or trying to play a disc you have to wait for the disc to load and wait for the menus to load and each talks a while.
Just how long depends on what you’re doing but from a door open and closing door to load and play a Blu-ray movie it took me about a minute and a half to get to the movie menu. The load time and time it takes for loading or whatever it does internally is about a minute and thirty seconds for every movie I tried and navigating menus takes several seconds to go to each page or menu item. During movies going from one menu or page to another takes several seconds to a half a minute depending and this is just not good.
As a comparison I loaded the same movie on a PlayStation 3 and was up to the main menu of the movie with the play option in 50 seconds while the Philip BDP7200 took a minute and 30 seconds. While this may not sound like a lot of time it is when you pop that movie in to sit back and watch the film or just navigating menus where you want to quickly move from one to the next.
Menu navigating is equally annoying with pauses and such that take 5 to 10 seconds at times that I have not seen while using other DVD players or the PS3. This is just one of the annoying things but is the most disturbing factor of the Philips player; the cost however may offset this if you are in the market for a Blu-ray player and are looking for a bargain.
The Philips BDP7200 is going for about $220 to $250 currently and is in the same price range as the other inexpensive Blu-ray players currently on the market. For this price you get a full Blu-ray and DVD player with really good picture and audio quality in one package.
I have told you about the annoying thing with the Philips player now to the good stuff; it is full 1080p and Profile 1.1 compliant so you get the full image quality and really good features of the profile. Profile 1.1 means it is picture in picture compatible so movies that have the feature can be viewed like extra content and specials showing how movies are made while the main film is being played.
The down side of only being Profile 1.1 and not 2.0 is that you do not have BD live because the player does not have an Ethernet connection for connecting to the internet. BD Live is a feature that allows Blu-ray movies to download content from the internet so you can get additional features for movies directly from websites on the internet.
This feature is also nice if you want to upgrade the firmware on the Blu-ray player but not one that is necessary in my book, it’s nice having the extra’s available but not necessary. I like the additional features in many movies but if you just want the movie and a few extras the regular features that are on the disc are plentiful.
The Philips Blu-ray player is a great quality player and I could not tell any difference between the PS3 and the Philips player in quality. Using a Westinghouse 19” LCD TV, I know not the biggest but it does get 1080p picture, I watched plenty of movies and Blu-ray discs over the last three weeks.
The picture quality is great with Blu-ray discs and really good while viewing DVD’s and regular definition movies as well as pictures from CD’s or DVD’s. I was really impressed with the quality of images when using the player as a picture viewer except for the menu configuration.
The Philips BDP7200 has an HDMI output as well as composite, component and regular video out with digital, digital optical, 5.1 channel surround and regular 2 channel audio output. You have plenty of connection options with the Philips BDP7200, in fact every one that would be possible.
The remote is easy to use, takes regular AA batteries and is fairly well laid out with no real problems, I have seen better remotes as well as many much worse. The remote does have the four color buttons used on the menus of Blu-ray discs so you have navigation through the menu systems on the most current Blu-ray movies.
The Philips Blu-ray player does a great job of playing Blu-ray movies and works equally well for regular movies and even those family pictures you want to show off. The only problem I see with the Philips BDP7200 is the slow speed navigating menus and playing the movies, other than that it is a good quality Blu-ray player.
The menus and other pages not a part of the Blu-ray or other movies are not in high definition so they look pretty plain and are worded kind of oddly. The Disc Tray is your play movie or go to the movie and there are other oddly worded menu choices but with the manual you can figure things out.
Other than a few negatives the Philips Blu-ray player is pretty good and has great video and audio quality and you get that for the low cost. For the price the Philips BDP7200 is a great quality player with only a few minor detractions but on overall great quality Blu-ray player.