Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player
by Philips
|
List Price: Our Price: $39.00 You Save: $50.99 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player
Customer Review: great dvd player if you don't want to spend the huge amount for HDdvd/bluray
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this dvd player to replace my dvp-642
I was a little scared at first when i switched my hdtv's input to hdmi and the audio stuttered and a green screen came on, but that is the nature of the digital signal and its just checking itself when first switched on. some people say that they don't like the remote control, however I do. This remote is similar in layout compared to my previous philips dvd player.
pros:
inexpensive for what you get
it will upscale to 1080p (whether or not you notice it is up to you)
sleek piano black finish with mirrors
usb input works great and is pretty quick, it's a poorman's media center
remote control fits well in my hand and has easy to use buttons
usb function will play xvids!
HDMI output, need i say more?
cons:
my HDTV's built in upscaler is better or equal to the one in this dvd player, so no improvement was noticed with the upscaling function
you need to dig in a menu to turn on HDMI audio
it will not output HDMI audio and coaxial audio at the same time
philips always seems to make the dvd players too small and a little too wide. it is wider than my series 2 tivo, so the dvd player sits underneath it, however it is not long enough in the back. thats just a nitpick though
it does take a little while to startup, it's especially annoying when you just need to eject the dvd and have to wait about 10 seconds before anything happens.
the buttons on the remote are white and semi-translucent, making me think that they would light up or glow, but they don't
i wish the usb input was also available on the back, it looks bad to have an external drive's cord hanging sticking out of the front all of the time
keep in mind that the usb function will not play hd content or .tivo files
Customer Review: Interesting feature set, but terrible menus and abysmal warranty service
Summary: 2 Stars
Bought this from Amazon for the upconversion and the front panel USB port media player. 70 days after purchase, it has started to fail, but I'll try to be fair:
The Good:
-Excellent video quality in 1080p upconversion (to my LG LCD) and component, to my AV reciever
-Neat feature: USB port in front will play many (not all) media file formats from my cheapie USB drives
-Reasonably well packaged when shipped from Amazon
-Codes available on virtually all universal remotes in my house worked great on the first or second try
-Optical audio sounds great
The Bad:
-Completely non-intuitive menu set. I've seen better menus on $15 generic digital cameras. Possibly the worst I have ever seen. I WAS able to get advanced features configured, but it took an hour and was not described at all in the manual.
-Coaxial digital audio and Optical digital audio do not coexist well
-Poorly vented enclosure...too thin, feet too low to allow airflow underneath...see below.
-Failed after 70 days of ownership (front panel is blank, overheats mid-playback despite being all by itself on an open shelf)
-ABYSMAL warranty support from Philips. READ CAREFULLY: THE WARRANTY IS ONLY 90 DAYS, and even then, they expect YOU to pay for insured, priority return shipping BEFORE receiving the replacement unit. If you return it non-insured or non-priority, they will refuse to replace it. I may wait until the 90 day warranty is expired, just to take advantage of my credit card's warranty extension service.
I guess I should've expected this from a $59 DVD player, but I guess I was spoiled by my last $59 DVD player: an Apex that played any horrible disc I threw at it and lived for 5 years.
Customer Review: Not bad.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a replacement for a 7 years old DVD player. I didn't want to enter the format wars and gamble with my own hard earned money at this point and end up with a useless DVD player in a couple of years. This will serve its purpose for at least 2-3 years by which time we'll know who won (Blu Ray or HD) and the price for those will drop even further so in 2-3 years I'll have a new DVD player for less money than I would pay right now for either one of those high-end DVD players.
The player itself is not bad. It feels small and the door for DVD/CD is tiny and looks kind of cheap. The remote is rather simple but lacks some functions that you will find in other players. On the other end, you can hook up your 200 GB hard drive via USB 1.1 connections and play all your downloaded movies and TV shows without actually having to burn them to a DVD disc provided your hard drive was formated as FAT 32 using Swissknife software. The software from Seagate (Maxtor) will format it as FAT 32 but this player won't support it for some reason. But I love this option to no end. Second, the setup is pretty intuitive, I didn't have to read the user manual to set it up. I don't see the near-HD upconversion, I guess I am not that sophisticated. The picture looks okay although it is evident it is not quite HD. The ability to play DIVX movies - okay but I would rather rent a real DVD and play it at DVD quality than to rent a DIVX, pay the same money (or even a little bit more) to watch a movie at near-DVD quality. But it does play mpegs and wma files from the hard drive created from Hauppauge USB 2.0 PVR. Overall, not a bad player, if Sony or Panasonic only had USB connection, I'd get one of those brand names - brand quality but for this kind of money you won't get anything better.
Customer Review: Love it, but I've had problems
Summary: 3 Stars
The main reasons I bought this DVD player were the great reviews and the small size (I have it on a dresser in my bedroom and wanted it to blend in). The most important thing to me is the picture quality... and so far, I'm impressed. I would have given this 5 stars if it weren't for the other problems I've had. But I will say this is my first upconverting DVD player and it's connected to my first HDTV. So, anything would probably look better than what I had before.
The problems: Almost every time I stop a movie halfway through to watch later, something isn't right when I resume it. I hit "stop" and it says "the movie will resume at this point." Then I hit power to turn it off. The next day, I hit power to turn it on and it immediately starts playing where I left off... however, almost every movie has had issues when it resumed. 1: The Davinci Code - no audio at all when it resumed. I have my TV connected through HDMI and somehow the setting for HDMI audio switched back to off (no one touched it since I stopped it the night before). 2: Apocalypto - The subtitles went away when I resumed the movie. 3: Blades of Glory - This one was really strange. When I resumed, only the background music played... the voice and effects tracks were missing. Each time I was able to correct the problem by starting the movie from the begining and skipping to the chapter where I left off. But this is still very annoying! I think I have the latest firmware, but I'll check again.
If I never stopped and restarted a movie, I probably wouldn't have ever had this issue and would have given this DVD player 5 stars. But with 2 small kids and a new puppy that has to go outside regularly, it's rare I can sit through a 2 or 3 hour movie non-stop.
Customer Review: one of a kind treasure!
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's one electronics product that exceeded my expectations for it. In this device, Philips continues great line of cheap yet surprisingly full-featured DVD/DiVX players, originating from 3960 model, which still serves me well after 3 years of heavy use and hundreds upon hunderds of DVD, divx and mpeg movies and clips.
This sleek device main new features over my old 3960 are:
1) upconverting feature -- works beautifully with my HDTV. Colors are brighter, shapes sharper, dynamic range and tonality are way improved. Together with a cheap HDMI cable from ebay the whole setup cost me less than 70 bucks - less than a price you'd pay for a 'loaded' DVD player from the likes of Sony and Toshiba.
2)USB connector -- Haven't tried it out yet, but I hear it's USB 2.0 speed, which means blazing fast file transfers. Gotta get myself a 1TB external bigdisk when the prices go down a bit on those. For now my 2Gig flash mem stick should work.
3)lastly, sleek black exterior and nicely-shaped(though admittedly too plasticky) is a nice improvement over silvery and all too cheap-looking previous model. The form-factor is still awesome half-size in depth dimension helps to fit the device in lots of places other 'loaded' players won't go.
Overall, an A+ job on the device, Philips! Kudos to Amazon for stocking it and shipping the it almost instantaneously!
[P.S. My only suggestion for this device would be the addition of wifi capability that will turn this device into an all-purspose entertainment center.]
Thank you, I'm done - back to watching 'Sideways' on my awesome new video player.