Rating  - Great bang for the buck!
This is the second one I've bought over the last 6 months. Although I do a lot of purchasing here, I bought both a Walmart (couldn't beat the price).
More and more units are coming out now that support the usb input, but higher dollar ones seem to fall short where this one excels. Pioneer's model is overly picky about what files it will play via usb, Sony detects copyright violation on a few movies(on homemade files?!). Philip's seems to play more files and formats than the rest.
The only gripes about the unit are not real gripes...only limitations via price, and technological capabilities at this time. Yes, the usb menu is cheesy and "old" looking, but remember this is a dvd player and not a cuomputer...the idea is playing movies, not flashy menus. The remote is very cheap and simplistic...but this is a budget model, and the remote reflects this accordingly.
All in all, this is an EXCELENT player at twice the price. Great upconversion, dependable, and I have yet to find a DVD it wouldn't play, even with scratches other players of mine hung at. Blueray players are still artificially high, and in the early stages.....I would feel silly paying $300 for one and ONLY be able to play DVD's and Blueray discs. I notice little if ANY difference between a blueray movie and a standard DVD upconverted to 1080p ( a friend has a Blueray player). But the real beauty of this unit is the usb port. Flash drives are cheap these days, and you can fit 5-6 divx movies on one 4 Gig flash drive......better yet you can buy a hard drive enclose here or ebay for as little as $15, and throw any old 7200rpm hardive in it, and have hundreds of divx movies on one drive. Just remember that the drive must be formatted Fat32 (the format most flash drives use today) and that your partition will be limited to around 130 Gigs. IDE drives will work, but you might experience an occasional "hang" do to its speed. SATA drives work smooth and flawlessly with the usb port.
As a side note, I've read where Blueray sales are still sluggish even with the exit of HD discs/players. People don't like spending 5-10 times the ammount for a player that a cheap upconversion dvd player will replicate. If Sony doesn't step up and drop the prices of their units soon, they may be the first to lose a format war with no competition.
Rating  - Good price - average product
I wish there was a way to turn off the upconvert you can only cycle thru different resolutions. The menu is a bit clunky and somewhat difficult to navigate.
I have a 16:9 wide screen tv and for whatever reason I cannot get this DVD player to stop shrinking the picture / large black bars top & bottom. After researching the internet I've found some movies (if specifically widescreen format) can do this. However I figured there must be an option (either within the dvd or the player) to change it. I've changed about every setting I could find within the DVD player and can't resolve this. My previous el-cheapo player did not have this problem (which is why it bothers me so much).
Is it worth paying under $100? Hell yeah. Just remember you get what you pay for. The usb avi play feature is limited to FAT type partitions and can be picky when it comes to which codec your file is encoded in. I basically purchased this player for 1) hdmi connectivity, 2) 1080p up covert, 3) usb port / ability to play files vs. re-encode / burn to play
Rating  - Good, but not DVD Region agnostic
I'm not a videophile, so take this with a grain of salt. I bought this unit in order to play a Region 1 DVD I couldn't get any way else. According to specs I read elsewhere (not on Amazon) this unit was supposed to fit the bill. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Region 0 only.
In other respects, it's a decent unit. I wish the pause would hold longer before the unit starts to power down.
Rating - Great DVD player - not great USB interface
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.
Rating - Works well, once it works
Pro(+)
- Price
- Picture quality
Con (-)
- Sluggish response
- Horrible menus
- Junk remote
--------------------
Overall I am happy with this buy. The player is a nice size: slim and shallow but a standard width. The player looks good and works with my Samsung 32" 450 series TV (LN32A450) over HDMI without any problem.
I assumed upconverting was a total gimmick. After swapping back and forth between the same DVD in my old player and this one, I'm a convert. Even turning the upscaling off on this player makes for a good comparison; however, trying to do so highlights the limitations of the player.
It is SLOW to respond to commands and has HORRIBLE menus. With the TV on and the correct source selected it takes 10+ seconds to go from standby power (with a DVD already in!) to first screen flicker. It's not that 10s is the end of the world; it's just much slower than the average DVD player and a noticeable wait each time I use it.
Combine the counter intuitive menus with the slow response and initial setup is really frustrating. [1 of 5 for initial setup] The slow response time and junky remote make getting a movie going less than a joy. [3 of 5 for all subsequent interactions directly with the player] Watching a movie and having it look that good for less than $70, more than covers up the problems. [5 of 5 for picture quality]
Verdict: $70 very well spent.
Go to the Product Information page
page 2 of 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Customer Reviews for Philips,DVP5982/37,609585129504,0609585129504,B000N254LU, |
