Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVP5140 Multiformat DVD Player with DivX, MP3, Windows Media Support

For the past few years, I have been collecting region 2 DVDs and playing them on a CyberHome CH-DVD300 player. That player came at a very good price, about $30, but every so often I would buy a DVD that would have a jumpy video playback or, even worse, would skip in the audio playback. Obviously, trying to follow a film in a foreign language is hard enough without the audio dropping out syllables.

This Philips DVP5140 player solves that problem. After enabling the multiregion support I was able to playback and understand DVDs that I had to just set aside before. It's great; I suspect the improved PAL to NTSC conversion comes from the higher sampling rate in this player.

Do be aware that some of the features you expect to find are not obvious on the remote. For example, the fast forward or backward buttons. For these, you will need to scan the manual or refer to the FAQs on the Philips website. The only missing feature seems to be the frame-by-frame advance.

It is true that this player does not have an S-video output; rather it provides a composite video signal for older TVs. For me, this was not very important, as this player provides component video output for progressive scan widescreen TVs, certainly the preferred cabling.

Enough was said about the quality so I will contribute on where to get the best price. Do an online search for price comparison, once you located the lowest price, go through the order process without actually placing the order, then print out the page and take it to a Sears store. They will match the price plus give you 10% of the difference between your price and theirs. I got the player for just under $47 tax included. Sears has the DVD player in stock but it's always a good idea to check online before you go. Another option is to order from Buy dot com and use Google check out, which takes $20 off.

I've only had the player a couple of days, but I really like it so far. I'm not a Audio/Video-phile, but the picture and sound quality is good on my 32" LCD HDTV once I turned on the Progressive Scan feature and hooked it up with a component cable. I also found start-up times and loading times to be good.

Of course I wouldn't buy this player if that's all I cared about, I also was interested in the DivX features and so far it's handled several files just perfectly. It has played a couple of different videos from different sources once I burned them to CD-RW.

The menus left a little bit to be desired and can be difficult to navigate at times, that's my only complaint.

This product from Philips is leagues above the Samsung DVD player it is replacing because the quality is so much better, though price isn't much more. I bought this Philips DVD player in order to play PAL discs, which is does rather well. It plays everything, as advertised and it seems to be constructed very well. Normally I am a Sony customer and this is the first Philips product I have bought. Based on its performance, I would not hesitate to purchase additional Philips products. The only complaints I have about the DVP5140 are its absence of a fast forward, or scan, feature and a frame-by-frame play. It will skip to the next chapter or track, but will not scan the current chapter. This is highly annoying and, at least I thought, a standard feature for DVD players. The lack of frame-by-frame is perturbing, but I can live without it. Other than that, this is a terrific value.
*UPDATE - I tried pausing the picture and then pressing the FF button, but this only skips to the next chapter. This does not advance the picture frame-by-frame.

I just bought this DVD player, and right out of the box it does what it claims to do. It's a simple unit, made for no frills use. I partly wanted this as a replacement for our old Philips DVD player of 7 years (which continues to work fine despite my past issues with other Philips electronics). But the main reason for buying this is to use it with my stereo system (by the TV, also) to play MP3-coded CD's. Overall, for the price, this was a fair purchase. Here's why:

Pro's:
-low cost
-excellent sound quality of audio and MP3 discs
-mulitple sound and video settings to choose from
-simple operation and set up
-easy navigation of features
-slim design

Con's:
-narrow remote range; must point remote deliberately and carefully
-slow response time between operations (selecting chapters, etc.)
-lack of sync between audio and video
-no tray-open control from remote (negligible complaint, really)