Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was originally looking at two other models of 7" portable DVD player, the Samsung DVD-L75 and the Toshiba SD-P1600. After looking at both at a local Best Buy store, I was dissapointed by their lack-luster (literally!) LCD screen. But thinking that there was no better choice available around the same price range, I still bought the Samsung since it was lighter in weight than the Toshiba and had a better button layout. When I got the Samsung L75 home, I was further put off by the inconvenient way to adjust the aspect ratio on it (I don't like images from my TV show DVDs being horizontally stretched out to fill the widescreen) - you have to get in layers of menus to do it, and it doesn't remember your preference for the next disc. The final straw was that it also randomly stops (not just skips) in the middle of a show, so I returned the Samsung L75... and am SO GLAD that I did! Because the next thing I found was this little gem of a Philips PET710, which is MUCH better in many ways. Pros of the Philips PET710: - best LCD screen amoung competitions - very good (and loud) speakers for the size - brushed aluminum casing, not cheap plastic - good user interface design (button layout and menu navigation) - can be made region-free (more on this below) Cons of the Philips PET710: - no AV input ports (for gaming/digital camera/iPod/etc.) - loud spin-up noise when loading a disc - battery life is adequate, but not as long as I'd like And here's the hack to turn the PET710 into a region-free DVD player: 1. power on 2. open the DVD tray cover from remote control: 3. press "setup" 4. navigate to the "preferences" page 5. press "OK" 6. key in "2" "5" "2" "3" "1" "5" 7. press the left arrow 8. press the down arrow 9. press "0" when region code is displayed 10. press "setup" again to exit I can confirm that this model works with home made DVD+R, DVD-R (although the "-" formats are not listed as compatible), VCD, SVCD (but doesn't seem to support SVCD subtitles), and MP3 CD. Have not tried DVD+RW or DVD-RW discs but they probably will work as well. Aside from being region free, it can also play both NTSC and PAL formats on its own LCD screen (but does not seem to be able to do conversions say if you want to play a European PAL DVD in the player and output to your North American NTSC TV set). [Added 12/6: In response to another reviewer's comment on the screen being "not a true 16:9" - it definitely is! You only need to take out a ruler to verify this. The actual LCD screen on this player measures 154 mm by 87 mm, which is compliant to the 16:9 ratio. The top and bottom filler black bands do still show up on some movies, because some movies are filmed in the 2.35:1 ratio, an "ultra-widescreen" if you will.]