Philips DVP5140 Multiformat DVD Player with DivX, MP3, Windows Media Support
by Philips
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List Price: Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips DVP5140 Multiformat DVD Player with DivX, MP3, Windows Media Support
Customer Review: Cheap and Great!
Summary: 5 Stars
I watch lots of movies and have owned quite a few DVD players. I've come to like Philips players... the main reason being their ability to play a wide range of formats.... a feature not found on many more expensive players from other makers. I usually don't find it necessary to reprogram my DVD player or TV in order to watch a new disc, and when I do, I don't mind using on-screen menus, since I appreciate the simplicity of the small Philips remotes which don't have a hundred tiny, hard-to find buttons. This is the third Philips DVD player I've owned, and the cheapest in cost, with the handiest remote, and the clearest picture.
I just got it, so of course I am hoping for long, trouble-free service... however, there are few guarantees of that no matter what you spend. Fortunately, it was so cheap (the price of two DVDs!) that I'm not worried much. Not worrying is the most security you're going to find.
Everyone's setup is going to be unique, and I am not striving for ultimate high-end performance. But, on my progressive scan (720p) rear-projection LCD HDTV, this unit delivers the best picture I've seen yet... the difference was instantly noticeable. I am very pleased.
Pros: Region-free capability, small, easy-to-use remote, fast load and start times, resume playback after stop, can play data discs on TV, excellent picture, almost ridiculously cheap.
Cons: Apparently, reading the manual is necessary, dag nab it! Failure to read the manual seems to be the cause of most negative reviews.... :o/
Recommendation: Buy it! Free Shipping! Wow! Happy New Year!
Customer Review: An Awesome Affortable DVD Player
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this DVD player mainly to play other region DVDs but to my surprise, the digital quality of this DVD is about the same as my other DVD player, which costs a lot more than this one. The only turn-off about this DVD player is that it doesn't have a scan-rewind and scan-fast-forward option in the remote. When you press fast-forward or rewind, the chapter just jumps ahead or behind.
Overall, a great DVD player for a small standard entertainment center.
EDIT!!!
After a year of using this DVD player (I don't use it that often), I finally found out that you can actually rewind and fast-forward! Just press the right arrow key for fast-forward and the left arrow key for rewind.
I also thought this DVD player cannot go back to where I stopped on the disc once I turned off the player, but I found out that it can actually hold up to 5 DVD's memory. Here's what you do:
1. Turn on the DVD player
2. While "loading" is shown on the screen, immediately press "Play" on your remote
3. The DVD will go back to where you left off
*Note that you must have played the same DVD beforehand and stopped it by just pressing the "Stop" button once, and then turned off the player. If you press "Stop" twice, it's going to cancel the memory.
So this is a normal DVD player after all. I thought it lacked a lot of basic functions at first but since I just needed the multi-region function from this DVD player, I thought I just take everything for granted. Luckily this little thing surprised me a the end.
Customer Review: DivX features are incredible but the player itself is pretty lousy!
Summary: 3 Stars
Pros:
- DivX playback is fantastic- put whatever files you want onto a DVD or CD, burn it, pop it into the player and select the file on the drop down menu.
- Nice sound, nice picture, although really at this point I expect that from all my DVD players. But these players aren't exactly expensive so definitely points for quality. Menu has lots of options for sound and picture quality.
Cons:
- Super, super slow operation. Why does everything have to take so long?
- Terrible remote. Not really self explanatory, menu system is terrible, it's not really a pleasure to use this remote. I switched to a Universal, but have to go back to the other one whenever I want to use subtitles.
- Why is Resume Play so hard to get to? It shouldn't take such a long time for this thing to power up in the first place, let alone find the last spot on my disc. It can be a real trial re-booting this thing. Which leads me to my next gripe...
- Leave this thing alone for five minutes and it turns itself off!!! Seriously guys? This is easily one of the stupidest design flaws I've ever seen! Fix this in your next player, it's amateurish in how dumb it is.
That's all I can think of. If you really value the DivX playback (which I've been using as a very, very nice convenience) this is a good player, albeit with quite a few flaws that I wish I didn't have to overlook. Until other manufacturers start hitting the market with budget priced DivX players, this is your best bet.
Customer Review: For under 60 dollars, its a good player.
Summary: 4 Stars
Had my eye on this for a while as I'd just moved to the US with alot of Region 2 DVDs.
It has alot of good and bad things about it. On the negative side, I'll accept every bad thing said about the remote, it leaves no room for error when you're pointing it and that doesn't seem to be the case with any of my other remote controls. Can be a bit frustrating at times. I'm not a huge fan of the menu system either, especially for mp3s and CDs - just seems ugly and I can't imagine it would have taken much to code in better aesthetic software.
On the plus side, the playback quality is good for composite and it is multi-region. The playback of video files is quite nice, despite the misgivings of reviewer who (rather smarmily) felt his computer was for such things, it's nice for showing homemade videos - when you have friends and family over, for instance.
I'd also be dubious about the negative marks for not being able to figure out how to fast forward or resume play. It has a nice little booklet with it for those who are unable or afraid to experiment with a few buttons to get things working. The book is printed on that old school paper stuff too, so there should be no problem figuring out how to work that!
You can get nice fancy players for 100 dollars up that do all of the things this does and more, so if you're expecting something high end, look elsewhere. What you do get here is a nice solid multi-region DVD player for under 60 dollars, that also plays PC-format disks.
Customer Review: Easy to make region-free!
Summary: 4 Stars
We didn't watch any television or movies for about 3 or 4 years. Yes, the kids would watch, but my husband and I probably watched a movie every other month or so. However, I decided recently that I ought to catch up on my tv viewing and needed a new dvd player when my WONDERFUL Daewoo region free player died.
So, I looked for a new region free dvd player and came upon this one. And, the instructions for making this region free worked like a charm. One try, and it played the British dvds I've been getting (much much cheaper on Amazon UK than here).
The most important thing of all is that the player plays. And, it does! However, I didn't realize what a great player that Daewoo was until I got this one. The remote here doesn't have an eject button (I know you have to get up to put the disc in) and it doesn't have volume control. I still have to figure out the advance function codes for my universal remote, so I may even be able to get the dvd player to eject with the Universal remote.
This player takes a bit longer to do its functions. Turning it on, off, etc., takes longer-- I can hear it spin and just when I wonder if it is even going to work, it does. It's definitely not as fast as I'd like but it plays perfectly fine and that's the most important thing of all.
All in all, I can't be happier. I received this very fast from Amazon, had it out of the box, hooked it up, programmed it to Region 0 (any region), and had a PAL dvd running in probably under 5 minutes.