By 

C. Chinn –

  

Okay, I thought this unit was going to be pretty cool; I thought highly of the Philips brand and thought this would be a quality product. I was wrong. I docked two Video iPods (30gig and 60gig) and this deck fried out their logic boards. Kaput. They worked fine before being docked, fried afterwards.

What to do?

First, I took the iPods to my local Apple (reseller) and they confirmed that the logic boards were toast. Any further diagnostics/repair would cost me $45 for each unit, but the tech acknowledged that the repair bill would likely be close to the replacement cost. Then I began my journey into Philip’s customer service hell. “Nothing we can do.” I was told. Finally, after close to an hour, a supervisor’s supervisor told me that I should keep the deck and have it and the iPods examined by a technician together. (I was a little ticked that I was told to keep a defective deck, possibly past the time I’m allowed to return it, with no guarantee that it’ll be resolved.) They would evaluate the claim then.

Fast forward to yesterday: an agent at Geek Squad examined the deck and iPods and concluded that the Philips deck caused the logic boards in my iPods to fail. I explained the situation to him and he was nice enough to write a letter to Philips explaining his findings. I was also told that there have been others have been returned to the store. Slam dunk, right?

Wrong. According to Philips, this still isn’t good enough. “There is nothing we can do.” I told the rep that I knew he had the authority to authorize a repair and he agreed, saying he did but wouldn’t.

I would stay away from all Philips products.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comments (4)

I’ve got a large number of movies that I’ve converted using the Cucusoft version 2 and 6 software. Naturally, the way the movie is created makes a difference on quality. You will notice something similar when using the AppleTV using the same content.

It’s a pain that the Audio and contrast controls are POTS on the side of the player as opposed to having them electronic and available on the remote.

For someone that takes dozens and dozens of movies on travel, and gets tired of watching them on just the video iPod, it’s really great! I’m generally happy with this purchase.

I’m a little concerned about the rating where the video iPods boards got fried….. Would like to hear more about that issue when information is available.

I should note that originally, even after following the directions, the video did not transfer to the screen. It took a little playing around but it finally worked and I don’t know what was different…didn’t really do anything different except install/uninstall/install/uninstall the iPod video. Perhaps there was something weird about the connector when you first get it out of the box.

Also, regarding the battery. When playing DVDs, you get almost 2.5 hours on the internal battery. Presumably over time this will go down. When playing something on the iPod to this device the time goes up to about 5 hours. Since the iPod does some of the work on it’s battery and some ofthe work is done by the internal battery on the DVD player.

Which brings meto another issue…. The battery is INTERNAL. And cannot be removed without taking the thing apart. That means when the battery goes the whole thing is toast. Most of these devices that I’ve owned had a removable and easily replaced battery. Not in this case.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment (1)

By 

Glenn Connery (Petaluma, CA USA) –

  

This is really Apple’s fault, as apparently with the new iPods (Classic, Touch) they require some special apple licensed chip in the video output path to support video output. Apparently this product (and perhaps others) aren’t properly licensed or something, so they don’t work with the latest iPods. Kind of a problem.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comments (2)