Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player

The set-up: This DVD player is hooked up to a Syntax Olevia LT32HVM 32" HD-Ready Flat-Panel LCD TV by an HDMI-to-DVI cable and coax (for digital audio to my Sony 5.1) It is controlled by a Logitech Harmony 688 Universal Remote Control (Black) . I was a little worried that up-conversion would not work being that my TV does not have HDMI and that converting it to DVI would negate the conversion. Well, if it does, I don't notice. The picture I see -- after fiddling with the "setup" menu for the DVD player -- is amazing. This unit replaced my Philips DVP642, and I can really see the difference in the video. I am running my up-conversion at 1080i, with the color settings at "standard." The remote is a bit on the odd side. I know that all the remotes look the same and maybe Philips wanted to be different, but what's with the white top and wedge-like feel? It looks as though it belongs with a different unit altogether. The buttons are a bit slower to respond than my DVP642, but not by much. Using this with my Logitech Harmony 688: I noticed that the new DVD player plugged in and worked in place of my old one without any changes having to be made to the 688. Sweet! One less hassle. It plays Taiyo Yuden DVD-R (8x) and Verbatim DVD+R DL discs just fine. It also remembers where you left off from the last movie. I put in a disc, played it, took it out, played another and then put the first disc back in and it remembered where I left off. You also have the on-screen option (about 3 seconds) to start from the begining. The on-screen menu for 'setup' is huge, blocky and reminds me of old, old Windows programs. Plus, the color management option is completely useless since you cannot see the screen while you change the options becuase the menu blocks the whole screen. You have to make changes on your TV or keep going back and forth between the screen and menu. Lame. But you do get lots of options on the menu, if you are into fine-tuning the DVD player's video and audio and TV setup. Hooked up the HDMI-to-DVI cable and coax audio and both audio and video worked right out of the box -- didn't need to play with the setup menu. Some DVD players seem to need a bit of setup menu fiddling for certain configurations. I did notice that if I chose the wrong resolution (i.e. 1080p) for my TV, it turned the screen blue and basically locked me out of seeing anything. I had to turn the unit off and back on in order for it to reset. My player came with firmware 37.07.32.40, and when I updated it to 37.07.32.43 it fixed the "set losing resolution setting upon standby." See Philips website for details on upgrading your player. You'll need a CD-R to get the 2 files to the DVD player. Overall, it is an amazing DVD player. Hero and LoTR look amazing. Now I just need an HDMI TV.

I bought this player with the intent to mostly watch upscaled regular DVD's as well as DivX/XviD movies on both a burned CD-R/DVD-R but also to watch from my USB thumb drive. Watching from DVD's is awesome, and I'd give this unit 5 stars if I never used the USB function. But I do, and when I watch movies via USB, the video is choppy, and if there is any fast motion it starts stammering both video and audio. In addition, if you'd like to review/rewind a bit or fast-forward forget-about-it! It basically just stays put like it's paused and then if you are patient and wait a good 3-4 minutes, you might rewind enough to go back 1-2 minutes in the video. But since the player gives you zero feedback (it looks to be paused) on where the rewind progress is, you have to guess where it's at in the process. So if you didn't go back far enough, you have to wait another 3-4 minutes when you start this laborious process over again. It's totally not worth it to instant replay. I don't really care the the USB truncates the file names in the menu (which it certainly does), but the fact that you can't watch anything with any kind of action makes this function a dog; It's OK if you watch something with less action than a Jane Austin PBS movie - perhaps a lecture at a podium might be OK. I think this problem might be due to this player being 1.1 USB, and perhaps a 2.0 will solve this problem. Anyways, this unit is going back today.

All in all, I am super pleased with this player after about a week of use (bought it refurb $43.95 + 7.49 shipping). After using my Samsung HD-941 DVD player for 2 years ($200+ when it first came out), I figured that it was time to swap it out with something else after enduring a couple of its annoying shortcomings. The most impressive is the crisp picture quality. The unit processes dark shades without the annoying pixelation, which bugged me to no end with the Samsung. Another observation is that my picture was much sharper with the new player. For the more savvy in A/V electronics: So far, I have played Xvids, AVIs, Mpegs, and also normal DVDs. It plays just about everything except .ogm (I think there were a couple more formats, but I am not 100% sure). That was the key reason for me in purchasing the Philips. You can also unlock the player to make it region free. Just search the web for "unlocking dvp5982" and follow the instructions. Another cool thing is that the unit reads multisession discs, which saves everyone a lot of money in the long run if you are a burner like I am. A small gripe that I have is that the until does not have optical audio out. Because of my strange A/V setup, I cannot use HDMI for audio from the unit. Just a heads up... The Philips DVP5982 is tiny, which is nice. It feels a bit tacky, but Philips did a great job of using shiny plastics to spruce it up in the looks department. I appreciate that it does not have any annoying, super-bright LEDs on the front to distract you while viewing movies. Another feature of note is that the player can process 1080p, which is great since videos are starting to be distributed in higher quality formats. Now for the remote: It is laid out fairly well. The reason I say "fairly" is that when I do grab it in the right way, all the buttons are where I expect them to be. On the other hand, I have had occasions of holding it upside down (I think the jog buttons should have been on the bottom). I had read some other reviews stating that the remote does not have a button to open the tray door. If they would have read the manual, they would learn that the stop button doubles for eject.