Philips MCD703 DVD Micro Shelf System

This unit has amazing quality sound. Out of all the units I have purchased, it has probably the clearest sound; helped in a large part by the Ribbon Tweeters. After having the unit for a few months, the Video Output stopped working, limiting the DVD player to only playing CDs. Not worth shipping to manufacturer for replacement, but I will keep it for playing CDs. Buy another product if you have the money!

Pretty and compact. Great. We have a very pretty and compact paperweight in the bedroom, now. After less than a year, must open and close the disc player several times to get it to recognize a dvd, if it will at all. The always-on blue light is so bright that we drape fabric or paper over it to be able to sleep. The sub-woofer is useless. Hook your iPod up and you can listen to your (muffled) music library, but you would be served better by a much smaller iPod dock for that. Just keep looking... We are... again.

Almost all my electronics are Philips but I didn't buy this model MCD703/37. I went for the MCD908/37. Of course, it 3X more expensive. Nonetheless, if this is your first shelf system or money is an issue, this is a great system for the price ($130 or less-tax, s&h included).

I brough this MCD703 11 months ago from Philips Employee Store since I work for the company. Price is really good for what the system offers. Defintely the system has a very attractive look (slim and compact with wood-finished speakers). I also agree the sound quality is pretty good for my case. It has many preset sound modes which users can choose to accomplish different room environments. For me, I put it in my bedroom and mainly use it as the home system for watching TV and DVD moives and maybe listening to some CDs once in a while. It also has two AUX input RCA connections for your Video Game Consoles, 2nd DVD players, Karaoke players,.... Also, the system is quite easy to program in general.

Now, let's get to the issues.
1. If you are using Component (Y Pb Pr) cables from its DVD player to your TV, after you connect everything for the first time, make sure go to the menu and change your DVD video output format to "Component" (Y Pb Pr). Otherwise, you will see your first DVD movie playing only in pink color on your screen and you might wonder what's going on.

2. However, the part that I hate the most is the DVD player itself! Ever since I bought it new, I realized the DVD player will often halt during play back. Almost every 5-10 minutes, it stops and kind of doing some processing. Then it might move on in some cases, but it could just halt like that. At first, I though it must be the disc is scratched. But these are brand new original DVD movies. I have tried many of them and they are all liked that. On the other hand, they can be played on my other $30 cheap DVD players and give me no problem. One thing funny is the problem don't show up if just playing music CDs. That's why I suspect it has something to do with the data processing of the progressive scan S/W of the DVD player. Anyway, I have called the customer service and have them replacing the units 3 times. Including my first unit from purchase, I am on the 4th units. Three of them were brand new from unopend retail boxes and one of them was obviously a refurb unit. Yet, this playback problem has been occurred on all 4 systems while they are just a week old - no exception. These 4 units were from variety of lot numbers based on their seial numbers and so they must made at different months of the year. Therefore, I pretty much conclude this is a design issue. But funny enough, when I searched on the web for other users' reviews, I can only found one other person talking about this problem. So just watch out if you are considering this system. Now I am approcahing end of the 1 year warranty and I guess I will just keep playing DVDs with my cheap player through the AUX connector.

3. Final comment about it is their customer exhange/repair policy is bad. I have to pick up everything in a box and mail it to them (even the only componet has problem is the DVD player). Since the whole system is quite heavy, it costed me around $35 to sent it from CA to AR. You need to pay for the S/H for the very first RMA (return). Then Philips will issue RMA sticker for the rest of the returns within warranty period. Then it normally takes 5-6 weeks to get it back in mail and so I have the units for 11 months, but 4 of those months were spent on waiting for the return to show up.

Hope this gives you some ideas. In conclusion, if you don't need to watch DVDs, this is a great choice for the money.

The main reason to buy this is to get all the features in a small package. The DVD player/amp really is compact. Although the top loading tray increases the space it needs in a bookshelf (vs. on top a table or dresser).

The speakers sound pretty good for their size, and I've heard (and own) a lot of speakers. Luckily they seem fairly accurate, and not boxy sounding.

But for $200 or so, you could put together a better system if you didn't need the compactness.

The sub will end up in storage or (if I can do what should be done) the trash. The speaker itself is among the cheapest made I've ever seen.

A few problems, though:
- There are no balance or tone (bass/treble) controls! So unless you can position them perfectly for your sitting position, you will have to live with unbalanced sound.
- The speaker wires are way too short.
- Philips. Hit or miss quality and poor support if things go wrong.

Surprise bonus: It seems to play mp3 DVDs (not just CDs), at least in an initial test it did - I didn't get all the way through. If so, that would let you put a lot of music on one disc.