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.

I have been a happy user of Philips DVD players for some time, having at owned several models. Yes, I have had minor cosmetic issues in the past with the overly small and lightweight remotes, and the not-so-great on screen menu layouts and design, but overall they have delivered a quality image. I recently bought two Sony Bravia HDTVs and decided to go with this upconverting Philips model until I see how the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war plays out. I have been astonished by the fidelity and quality of the image of regular DVDs played through this unit! Although my Bravia's only support 1080i (and not 1080p) I am still amazed by the detail this unit seems to tweak out of SD DVDs. Also, the footprint of this unit is tiny and matches the base of my Bravias in color and size, so it's a perfect design fit. I have not an issue with the on-screen menus. They are far better than previous Philips models. Also, the remote is the new-style design (where it looks like an actual product designer and not an engineer figured it out... but it's still small and a bit too light). My only complaint is that the upconverting happens only via the HDMI output. My Bravia's only have a single HDMI input, so I had to sacrifice that to the Philips DVD player, and use the component inputs for my DirecTV HD signal. I use quality cabling and could discern no difference to the DirecTV signal. I also used a quality HDMI cable and the DVDs I've played are pretty breathtaking with the upconversion. I watched Pan's Labyrinth recently and there was astonishing detail in the foliage especially. I plan to watch the (non HD-DVD versions) of the Planet Earth series and hope they are almost as spectacular as the Discovery HD Channel broadcasts. (Sorry, I just couldn't handle the Sigourney Weaver voice over on those, and had to get the original Attenborough versions!). Bottom line, if you want to wait out the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war, then buy this for $70 and enjoy what you've been missing in your SD DVD collection! Also, I receive and play a lot of commercially purchased DVDs from the UK. With a simple series of remote control commands, I was able to unlock this player and make it region-free. It even handles the PAL conversion flawlessly! Try doing that with many Sony and other models!

I purchased a DVP5960 3 months ago, then purchased the DVP5982 1 month ago in hopes of the DVP5982's new USB2 would allow faster transfer rates from an external disk connected to it's USB2 port. The DVP5982's USB2 transfer rate is minutely faster than my DVP5960's USB1. I have not found any practical difference between the two units or their USB ports (besides the case color). The DVP5982 is almost identical performance to the DVP5960. The DVP5982 is advertised with USB2 and the older DVP5960 is advertised with USB1 but they work almost identical in performance. I am reposting a review that I had made for my DVP5960, with the slightest of alterations for the DVP5982, (mainly substituted model names and changed the TIVO Best recording bitrate lag time from .5 sec to .2 seconds.) This DVP5982 still cannot play my TIVO "Best" recording "Best=5.8 Mbps" without pausing every 3 seconds. I was hoping the DVP5982 would be better than the DVP5960 to meet my needs to play my .mpg-2 TIVO recordings and DVD backups directly from an external disk and bypassing the need to burn them to a DVD but the DVP5982 USB transfer rate is not fast enough yet. If you save money and purchase a DVP5960, I would do that before buying the DVP5982. If not, then purchase the DVP5982, both are excellent DVD players. This DVP5982 player plays everything I have thrown at it on a DVD. Backup movie DVDs, mpeg files of various vibrates, jpg, mp3, DVDMP3. I have other DVD players that play "most" everything but for the money, this player is great. Plays back-up copies of DVDs on all brand DVD (&RW) media so far. Perfectly plays grandson's scratched DVDs that other players stopped playing. Picture is great, same as other posts, standard Composite & Component give a great picture and upscale 1080 does work for even a better picture. Hey, it is not a Blu-Ray player but for a sub-$70 unit, this player is well worth the money. I can use this DVP5982 for my TIVO backed up files. I use Direct Show Utility to change my .tivo files to .mpg files. I found that an external "My Book" western digital 400 gig disk is pre-formatted in Fat32 (plug and play). I copy files from my computer to the "My Book" disk and then I just plug the "My Book" disk into the 5982 USB port and it reads the complete 400 gig. You can move through folders with the remote and select any .mpg or mp3 and play it. (Both DVPmodels filename 8 character length limit can be a challenge when viewing on the TV screen) Video plays exactly as the original recording looked from my Tivo. The only problem is that Tivo can record in 4 different quality settings, Basic. Medium, High and Best. Both DVP players cannot play the BEST recordings from their USB port because the USB ports transfer rate cannot keep up with the higher Bitrate (more data per second) According to info from Google;------------ TIVO video is recorded at 2/3 D1 (480x480) resolution at 29.97 frames per second with constant-bitrate MPEG-2 at one of four bitrates: Setting Bitrate Best 5.8 Mbps High 3.5 Mbps Medium 2.6 Mbps Basic 1.47 Mbps ---------------------- I found that the "My Book" disk connected to the 5982 USB will play all Tivo recorded settings EXCEPT the "BEST" quality. The "Best" recordings play jerky because the 5982 USB cannot keep up with the higher transfer rate. It Plays 3 seconds then pauses .2 seconds while the 5982 buffer catches up to the transfer rate then plays 3 sec, then pauses .2 sec, and so on, not viewable. The 5982 also plays jerky like this if you try to play DVD files directly from the My Book disk. (but the same BEST quality .mpg files play fine if copied to a DVD or DVD RW, then play the DVD in the 5982) For me, the quality between TIVO's Best and High quality is negligible so I will now set all my future Tivo recordings to High and just put them on the "My Disk" external disk, then move the usb connector to the front usb port on the 5982 to play them on the TV) I can buy a $1000 HD/BluRay player and I can still find something to grip about but for less than $70, the DVP5982 is well worth it. Ok, the remote is a little stubborn and you have to slowly-deliberately press the buttons but it works ok. AND FYI; I formatted a different external disk but with multiple FAT32 partitions due to XP's maximum 32gig "Fat32" format size limit, the DVP5982 will only recognize one of the partitions. You can format any disk with larger FAT32 partitions with an old Win98 PC or a 3rd party format software (or just use a "My Book" external USB disk)

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.

I liked this player.. when it actually worked. Unfortunately at the 1.5 year mark it slowly start fading away. At first I thought it was a broken remote but when I bought a universal remote, it didn't improve anything. The unit no longer responds to remote controls while the buttons on the main unit still work. This doesn't really make life easy since there are only 3 buttons on the main unit. I believe this is due to shoddy worksmanship since I've read similar things about the previous model in this line dying after 1 year. What sucks is that I'm just outside the warranty period (of 1 year). I'm never buying Philips again.

Had a lot of hopes when I bought that they would have improved on their earlier model, returning it for the following reasons: Cons: - 8 char DOS names: horrible & cryptic dos-like file/folder names, no case sensitivity, I had no clue what I was looking at, this was reason enough for me to reject it, as I mainly wanted it for its USB capabilites. (only FAT32) - inability to browse after 4 (or 5) nested folders - agonizingly slow response to remote key press - agonizing to browse photos, no control over slideshow time limit, and (-->next) button takes forever - takes very long to render hi-res - arrow buttons moves frame in zoom mode (which is ridiculous, as in the case where it renders some movies in small frame, for which we have to zoom, then we cannot ff or rw)..there should have been an option to bypass this, or tell the video to stretch instead of zoom - unintuitively designed keys, you need to keep looking at the remote everytime..even a chimp cud've produced a better remote. - no s-video, no digital sound ?? ok, i may not have an HDMI capable tv everytwhere..I dont want to be stuck with composite quality - photos have warped edges - slow indexing during beginning of divx video, those in a dvd disc are even slower to get recognized at all (takes 10 seconds) - have no confidence philips will ever fix any of this in an update in future, and their support website had nothing to fix the above, and the instructions for updating said nothing of using the usb, we must still burn a cd ?? wtf ?? - not as small as some commented, it is sleek no doubt, but still standardly wide. - apart from all else, the other main reason I had bought this was for the upconversion, and for me, since I have all my data in external drives, it makes more sense to go the PC way, where upconversion has always been a standard function. Pros: Looks good, remote looks good video excellent quality, very fast recognition of usb drive

I bought this upscaling DVD players for my bigscreen HDTV. So far, I am not all that impressed. I had an older model progressive scan DVD player hooked to my TV before, and to be honest, I don't notice any difference in picture quality. The picture looks nice now, but it looked just as nice before in my opinion. One thing that really annoys me about this unit is the loading tray. It takes quite awhile for it to open when you push the button, so much so that you end up pushing it twice and then it "loads" instead of opens before you realize that you shouldn't have pushed it again. I am not a super impatient person, but it just seems to have quite a delay on it. And as other reviewers have said, it is very flimsy. So flimsy in fact that I actually made the mistake of tipping the DVD player back and my DVD fell out of the tray and INTO THE UNIT!! I had to take apart the unit to get my DVD out. That was annoying. The remote control is very cheap feeling as well and has limited choices. And why is it gray when the unit is black?? THe unit does look sleek, has worked fine and I got it at a good price so overall I am happy with it, just not impressed.