If (me and) a 5 year old can do it, anyone can! (Philips 14PV225)

Member Name: chrisandmark

Product:	Philips 14PV225
Date:	22/01/05 (269 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple to operate with a very easy set-up, Looks great

Disadvantages: Just minor niggles - small buttons on the remote control, tuning isn't fully automatic, clock doesn't change by itself like it's supposed to

Both our daughters have received a TV/VCR combi from their nan for their 5th birthday. This year was Alices turn so with a nanny provided budget of £150 we went shopping. It's one thing shopping for a TV but shopping for something that a 5 year old can use is something else entirely. We dismissed Hitachi and Sony combo's as way too complicated; there were too many buttons on the remote controls, the buttons on the front were too small. Then there were the practical concerns; the SCART lead issue that I don't understand and which Mark considers highly important...

So Mark went off to McDonalds in a huff and I got talking to the assistant in Comet. I was totally fed up so I outlined what I wanted from a combo and asked if she had anything. She walked straight to the Philips 14pv 225 (as I found out later) and said this sounded like it fit the bill. She had this same combo in her kitchen and when she said her 6 year old could operate it I was sold.

First impressions I loved it and so did Alice when she unwrapped it. The casing of the combo is a matt silver and looks really stylish. I could see why the woman in Comet had bought it for the kitchen because it is really good looking, it looks like a very 'adult' television for a 5 year old to have and does look a bit out of place next to the care bears and mess of your average childs bedroom. It's the simplicity of the combo that I went for, not the looks, but this is definitely a cut above your basic square black combo. It's streamlined, from the front of the screen to the back of the combo is much slimmer than the Sony TV/VCR we bought back in 2000 which is a hulk of a machine compared to this.

We'd bought a good indoor ariel and when her birthday came we set the combo up in her bedroom. If you're useless at setting video's to record and don't know your AV from your SCART then buy this combo. The brilliant instruction manual will talk you step by step through the set up which is all done through clear on-screen menu's. If a step on the menu gives you a wider choice than 'on' or 'off' a drop down menu will appear giving clear advice on which choice to go for. There's a SCART socket although the lead isn't included so if you want to run the sound through your speakers you'll need to buy a SCART lead.

The only niggle I've got with the set up of the combo is the automatic tuning isn't really automatic. When we were tuning BBC1 in we'd already stored Channel 4 and BBC1 kept trying to overwrite Channel 4 but Mark found that by manually tuning it he could get all the channels in the right place. Oh, and there's another niggle I've JUST noticed while I was playing with the combo tonight before I wrote this. The clock which is supposed to reset itself automatically when the clocks go forward or back doesn't do it. The clock on Alices combo is an hour wrong, this obviously isn't an issue for a 5 year old who can't even tell the time but it's irritating when it's supposed to work!

The picture quality was poor until we plugged this smart indoor ariel in, a few quick adjustments and we've got a really sharp picture. The colours are extremely sharp, even with the contrast turned down it seems very bright compared to Charlottes combo. The sound quality is excellent, there's no buzzing or humming with voices and music being crisp and sharp. Whether I'm watching TV or a video I can't fault this aspect of the combo at all. Alice loves Disney videos and the colours and music in these films are really brought out because the picture and sound are so sharp.

Ease of use. I worried about this. While Alice is bright, she's not technical minded at all, must take after her mother... I wasn't certain she could cope with working this elegant looking machine. I didn't have to worry, she had it more or less worked out the first time I showed her how to work the remote control and the buttons on the front of the combo only took her about a week to get her head round.

The remote control looks very crowded at first glance but really is simple to use, the buttons are split into 2 sections with the everyday buttons (channels, video controls, standby button etc.) at the top of the remote and the nasty 'techie' buttons at the bottom. The buttons are clearly marked with the important buttons such as standby and record embossed with little raised dots, presumably to make you think twice before pressing them. In my opinion the best thing about the remote is the record button being slightly apart from the rest of the video controls meaning little 5 year old hands aren't likely to record over anyones favourite video. If I had to give a bad point about the remote control it's the fact that the buttons are small and you have to press them quite hard for it to register, I don't mean force down but it seems like you're pressing them down a long way. Alice struggles sometimes and presses the wrong button when changing channel but in Philips defence this combo wasn't really made for kids so they didn't consider the fact that chubby little fingers aren't going to quite grasp the buttons. The volume controls are easy to use and gradual so you don't suddenly get a burst of sound if you press the 'up' button for too long. There's a basic not-hard-to-work-out child lock on the remote control which I've obviously not used as the combo belongs to a child but it wouldn't matter if I did use it because Alice sussed out within a week how to turn it on and off herself!

The buttons on the front of the combo itself are basically a select few taken from the 'important buttons' section on the remote control. Again these are clearly marked with the TV controls on one side and the video controls on the other, Alice tends to use the remote control when she's watching TV but the front control buttons to work the video.

The Fast Text function doesn't get used often but it's easy to access from a button on the remote control and is quick to load from page to page. One thing I was insistent about during our hunt for a combo for Alice was a blue screen function. When the kids have a late night they've always jumped into Charlottes bed and watched a video on her combo but when it finished the white noise always woke Alice up. Charlotte can sleep through anything but the jump from the end of the video to that horrible hissing would jolt Alice which kind of defeated the object of putting a video on to help them get to sleep. A blue screen function means the screen will go a silent blue whenever the video ends or if a channel goes off for some reason. Much nicer. Blue screen is automatic on this combo, as it is on the majority of new teles.

So, we're delighted. The Philips 14pv 225 is probably the best combo in it's price range, we paid £139 for it from Comet. You get the standard 12 month guarantee with optional 3 year warranty which we've taken out as you never know what might happen in Alices room! It might be feature packed but I'm not going to bore you with the technicalities, if you're after a smart looking machine which is simple to use while having a brilliant picture and sound then it's worth having a look at this one. If you want something you need a degree to understand then go for a Hitachi...

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