Since the birth of audio and visual products Philips have been a name at the forefront of technology. First in on the birth of video, first in on the birth of DVD; but while in other countries Philips have remained all powerful, due to sourcing of components, in the UK the brand have lost their crown.

We are all familiar with outsourcing, this is where jobs and production lines have been shifted overseas in order to make production cheaper. In the UK production of the framework for TV's, DVD's, and similar products has stayed within the UK; however the components used within the products have been shifted to Turkey. While too many countries this article will have little importance to those in the UK, and numerous E.U. countries please read on.

My income now is drawn in by writing movie reviews, much to my wife's disgust as a result every room in our house has a DVD player allowing me to write as and where I need to. A recent windfall through such writing caused me to make a number of purchases a percentage of those were Philips products.

On trial here are the Philips DVP 3120 a standard DVD player, Philips DVD-R 3480 a DVD recorder, and finally a Philips PET 707 a portable DVD/TV player purchased allowing me to watch movies in the garden, train, or strangely to some the bath (though this would be a significant distance from water). Now my lifestyle might read as being rather strange as you read on, but please understand in order to make a suitable living reviewing movies I need to produce approximately 200 movie reviews a month, so sometimes my references might seem a little extreme, but time commitments mean that I am always seeking out an opportunity to watch movies.

The Philips DVP 3120 is a low budget stand alone player roughly 25 GBP about 48 USD. The great thing about the product is that it is easily hacked to become multi-region allowing for use of DVD's from other countries to be played. Searching the internet will find the code to crack the region coding in seconds, however even with this crack you cannot access Region 1 Columbia discs which have an enhanced encoding format called RCE. The player is fairly okay and very robust looking, but the picture quality is not so hot, occasionally blurring occurs on high speed action and it's a complex process at times trying to access the menu's. In recent weeks I have noted a slight electrical burning smell coming from the player, but nothing has happened beyond this.

The Philips DVD-R 3480

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