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: A real pain to work with
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a pretty basic DVD player and I wasn't expecting a whole lot of fancy features but the basic sequence of turning it on, ejecting it to add/remove a disc, and closing it is a real pain.
It won't turn on automatically when you press eject, so to start from the off position you need to press the power button, wait for it, then press the eject button and wait for it. It seems like it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but I've had a lot of dvd players that would just power on and eject when you press eject and it wasn't so much of an issue. This makes you wait at least 30 seconds after pressing power before pressing eject, and it seems like if you press eject twice (because you are getting frustrated) it cancels the previous eject.
The remote control is also very sensitive to angles so I find myself having to press the buttons repeatedly and contort my body into all sorts of positions to make it work.
The other day was the last straw. It seemed it froze up on me and would not power off or eject, so I had to climb behind the entertainment center to unplug it.
Customer Review: Region Free AND Multi-System, hidden gem
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a terrific value for money DVD player. Not only can it be easily set to play any region DVD (many thanks to H. A. Emet for his invaluable and easily followed instructions) but it seamlessly translates from PAL to NTSC. The manual says that it can also do the reverse, but I haven't been able to test it.
For some reason neither of these capabilities is promoted in the product literature, and as such, the player sells at a substantial discount. I was able to buy one this weekend from my local Radio Shack on a manager's special clearance for just $52!! The shelf labelling would have given no clue to anyone who did not know what they were looking at as to why the unit was different to the others around it.
Thanks to this unit I can play UK discs on my US TV with really pretty good image quality. How you can get this sort of sophisticated electronics for close to fifty dollars amazes me. At this price, how can you go wrong?
The only slight negative I have found is that the remote control is not very powerful and you really need to point it directly at the player.
Customer Review: Worst DivX player I've used yet.
Summary: 1 Stars
This isn't the first DivX player I've owned or encountered, but it is by far the worst. I owned an earlier model Philips DivX-certified player, and while the unit was clearly cheaply made, it worked fairly well until it finally wore out 2 years later. This system, in contrast, has been poor since the moment I opened the box, and it stopped working correctly about the next day after the warranty expired. Currently, the unit only plays single-layer burned DVDs -- not store-bought DVDs, not CD-Rs, not CD-RWs -- and those only after several attempts. When it was brand new it *did* play those disc formats, but the DivX specs it can play well seems narrower even than the earlier (cheaper) model I owned before. In addition, the button programming and general behavior of the unit leads me to believe that this unit was very poorly QA'd by Philips, and wasn't really taken seriously as a production unit. It seems they just slapped the DivX logo on there and expect to be able to sell it to enthusiasts regardless of the quality. Unfortunately, in this case it was me. Don't let it be you: AVOID THIS MODEL.Customer Review: Region Free Player - So far so good
Summary: 5 Stars
I was somewhat confused initially by talk I'd seen around the web concerning region-free vs. code-free vs. both, etc. All I wanted was a good DVD player that would play any region dvd. I was even concerned with purchasing this player as I never found a review (of the ones I read) which said someone successfully changed the region to 0 and then played with Region 1 and 2 DVDs. Well, so far so good!
Using the instructions found in Emet's review, I successfully changed the region to 0 and then played two Region 1 DVDs. I will update later with whether or not the Region 2 DVDs I mainly bought this player to play will work.
As for the other features on this player, they're pretty much what you'd expect. Component/AV Out, Divx, and a good remote with not-too-many buttons. Overall, I'm very pleased with what's turning out to be a solid purchase.
UPDATE: Also played several Region 2 DVDs with the same region setting. So this is exactly the DVD player I was hunting: one that could play both Region 1 and 2 DVDs without any trouble.
Customer Review: Small, cheap and easy to use.
Summary: 4 Stars
This was an early purchase when relocating from the UK to the US 14 months ago and has been a lifesaver. I needed a small, cheap, multi-region DVD player for ther 100+ Region 2 PAL DVDs I brought over. This fit the bill.
A year later and it's still going strong. It plays all my DVDs plus numerous formats of downloaded content, without problem. I expected to have some issue, be it frame rate or aspect ratio. Nope, this just ran smoothly using basic component cables. The picture quality is excellent and the sound is fine for my HD TV. I have yet to hook up a home cinema but it does have the applicable outputs should I want to.
The only negative aspect is the speed to load a disc. From opening the draw (which is very slow to react) to the machine recognizing the disc, everything is frustrating slow. As Guiness like to say - Good things come to those who wait. Expect to wait.
I recommend this to anyone wanting to play region 2 discs without much cost. For anyone looking to purchase this just for region 1 purposes, I'd look elsewhere.