From: ralph@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Ralph Brandi)


I wrote this review up for the net a few years ago, and it largely
holds up.  The only thing I would add is that my concerns about the
keypad not holding up proved true, but I like the radio enough that
I don't want to part with it long enough to get it fixed....

=========

[From sometime in early 1991, I think]


I purchased my DC-777 from Universal Shortwave in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, 
back in January.  At the time, they said that they didn't have any in 
stock, but that the radios were at least in the country, and being 
modified so that MW channel spacing would be 10 kHz instead of the 
European 9 kHz.  Since they said they wouldn't charge my credit card 
until they shipped the radio (and even knew that this fairly common 
practice is illegal), I went ahead with the order.  The total cost 
was $399; Toward the end of January, I got a call from Universal 
saying that the radio was finally in, but that Philips had
discontinued the quick-release bracket.  They said they would take
$20 off the price of the radio if I was still interested.  Sounded
good to me.  Kudos to Universal for their openness, their honesty,
and their committment to customer satisfaction.

When I received the radio the following week, I was faced with the
problem of how to install it.  My car, a 1990 Geo Prizm, does not
have a standard DIN E sized radio.  The other consideration was that
I wanted to be able to reinstall my old radio when the time comes to
sell the car many years hence and so take the radio from car to car.
So I needed a wiring harness to avoid having to cut the wires to the
original plug, so that I can just unplug the harness and replug the
original wiring into the original radio.  I had a lot of trouble
finding a wiring harness and installation kit for my car locally.  I
wound up ordering the items I needed from the mail-order stereo
house Crutchfield, in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Again, courteous
service, etc.  More kudos.

Thus suitably prepared, the installation turned out to be a
comparative breeze.  I think the whole thing took me about two
hours--one to wire the harness, and one to physically install the
radio.  The plugs included with the radio were missing a couple of
necessary wires, but that was remedied simply enough.  The front of
the radio is wide enough that it prevents it from slipping entirely
into the harness without shaving some of the plastic in the hole for
the radio.  Minor enough problem, though.

I've had this radio installed for a month, lived with it, used it on my 
brief three-mile commute to work and a couple of 200-mile long trips.
The verdict?  Mostly positive, but with a few reservations and a few
suggestions.

Medium Wave and FM performance is okay, but not outstanding.  You
can't manually change between stereo and mono on FM; the circuitry
that handles the switch is pretty good, and seems to try to minimize
thrashing back and forth.  The station I use to test sensitivity is
WHYY-FM, 90.9, the NPR station in Philadelphia, about 90 miles away.
At home, I cannot receive it with my stereo; my Sony 2010 can get it
quite well in one part of the house, but not in the other.  The
factory car radio can give a listenable signal up to about five
miles away from my house on a regular basis.  The DC-777 doesn't
perform quite as well.  I can receive the station up to about 15
miles away from my house in the direction of Philadelphia.  Not bad,
but I was hoping for better.  The capability to temporarily load the
strongest five stations in the area on MW and FM into memory is nice
when you're away from home, but not essential to my mind.

The cassette deck's performance is pedestrian.  No Dolby.
Acceptable, but not outstanding.  There are no provisions
for bringing external signals into the radio, but you can work
around this with one of the cassette adapters designed to work with
portable CD players.  I haven't tried this; I decided that I already
have enough toys to play with in the car, and that bringing a
Discman along would be overkill.

Performance on shortwave is impressive.  You're not going to
be doing any DXing on this by any stretch of the imagination, but
for the major stations it does quite nicely, thank you.  It helps to
be listening to stations directed at North America or broadcasting
from here.  For instance, at lunchtime here in New Jersey, I get
excellent reception on the BBC on 9515 and 15260, VOA on 15580 and
17800, Radio Moscow on 17810, and Radio Canada International on
17820 and 15325.  I enjoy being able to listen to "Just A Minute" at 
1715 while eating my lunch in a nearby park.  The radio seems to be
optimized for this kind of reception.  Frequency response seems to
be wide enough to allow for pleasant listening, but narrow enough to
minimize adjacent-channel interference.  In sound quality, I have
trouble telling the difference between the BBC and RCI and local MW
stations WNYC and WCBS.  The shape factor of the filter used seems
to be fairly steep, as well.  Receiving other stations can be a bit
more problematic; the BBC, for example, is much more difficult after
1745 when 15260 and 9515 go off the air.  Deutsche Welle in French
to Africa on 21660 is marginal at lunch.  Evening reception of
stations like BBC on 7325, RCI on 5960 and 9755, Kol Israel on 7435
and (in Hebrew) 9388, Radio Nederland on 6020, et. al., is just as
pleasant as the stations I listen to at lunch.  The radio doesn't
seem to be able to do much with weak stations, but this is an
acceptable tradeoff, and one I suspect was made to make for better
reception of the strong stations.  So for the SWL (as opposed to the
DXer), so far, so good.

The ergonomics of the radio, however, leave something to be desired.
Granted, the radio has a lot to do, but some of the controls are
less than apparent.  Most buttons have multiple functions.  The
volume control also controls, in conjunction with one other button,
balance, fading, treble, and bass.  Manual tuning is accomplished by
pressing both slewing buttons together until a beep is heard, and
then pressing the desired buttons.  Pressing the slewing buttons
will otherwise engage the search function.  The search function
works very nicely, better than any shortwave scanning function I've
seen elsewhere (certainly better than the one on my Sony 2010, which
is damned near useless.)  It comes in handy for bandscanning while
driving down the road.  To directly enter the frequency, a
capability I welcome, you have to open a small panel with a number
pad on it, along with an enter key and a key to switch to a time
display.  The keys have a spongy feel, and I have yet to get to a
point where I feel comfortable tuning this way any other than at a
traffic light.  I also worry about the durability of the panel and
what happens if/when it breaks and will no longer open.  It does
seem reasonably strong, however, so I think that day is a long time
coming.

There are 20 memories available for SW; the way this is implemented
actually makes sense to me, and I like it.  There are five buttons.
Each of the first four can store five frequencies.  The fifth button
cycles among the five frequencies stored on a given button.  For
example, on button one, I have loaded 5975, 7325, 9915, 12095 and
15070, all BBC frequencies receivable here in North America.  To
find which frequency works best, I hit button one, and then use
button five to cycle through the frequencies, going to the next
frequency each time I press the button.  The radio beeps each time
it cycles.  I find the beep annoyingly loud, and wish there were a
way to reduce the volume.  But overall, the memory functions very
well.

To choose bands, there are two buttons.  The one labeled "Band"
selects between MW, LW, and FM.  The one labeled "SW" selects meter
bands.  Nice.  The scanning function searches through the chosen
meter band and then starts back at the other end of that band.
Nice.  Unfortunately, the limits of each meter band is hard-wired
into the radio.  Not nice.  For instance, 31 meters is programmed
from 9500 to 9900 kHz.  This means I can't use the scanning feature
to find the BBC at 9915 or the Christian Science Monitor on 9455.  I
would like it much better if the ends of each meter band were
programmable by the user.  But then, they'd probably have to come up
with some other less than intuitive button-pressing combination.
Minor nit on an otherwise good scheme.

Overall verdict?  I like the radio.  I wouldn't want to be without
it or something like it now.  Since I want to be able to listen
without having to concentrate too terribly hard while I'm driving, I
think that the compromises built in to the radio are appropriate.  I
don't think that DXing Radio Nibi-Nibi in rush-hour traffic would be
quite appropriate.  Besides, I can't take notes for that all
important QSL while I'm driving....  This radio has obviously had a
lot of thought put into it, and it shows.  Using it has been a very
pleasurable experience.  But make sure you read the manual
thoroughly, and more than once, because otherwise you won't be able
to take advantage of some of the features.  I still find myself
going back to the manual periodically after having the radio
installed for five weeks.  My 2010 is easier to operate in many
ways.  But Philips has done an admirable job of building so much
functionality into such a small package.  And for mobile shortwave
listening, there really isn't any other alternative right now.  But
anyone else aiming at this market has a pretty difficult target to
hit.  The Philips DC-777 does the job it was designed for and does
it well.  If you understand its limitations, it's just what the
doctor ordered.  Four stars.
-- 
Ralph Brandi     ralph@mtunp.att.com     att!mtunp!ralph