Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVP5960 DVD Player with HDMI, 1080i Upscaling, DivX Ultra, USB direct

1. Its low cost DVD player with good features
2. Pro: Play all formats, HDMI Upconvert to 1080i, USB input, region free
Upconvert works great if you know which resolution to use. I have a Sharp 1080p LCD. I had some trouble at beginning that all movies are being stretched unless I use 480p, but after playing about 20 times with different movie with various settings, I found that the upconvert setting is depending on the the display size. Set to 480p for a 4:3 screen. 720p or 1080i for a wide screen depending on your TV. A proper setting can avoid the stretching problem. In fact, I find a wide screen movie to narrow when I set it to 480p.
3. Con: machine too light, remote too cheap but I use all-in-one instead, USB is only 1.1, that means Dvix with 2 chennels audio. More than that, you'll have problems.
4. The latest version works for Dolby 5.1 and TDS with HDMI. Set to all digital for coaxial output and PCM for HDMI output to TV.

New information

I hooked up both HDMI and component cable to my 1080p TV, I pause the movie, then switching among all settings and here are my assessment:
There are differences among component at 480p, HDMI 480p, 720p and 1080i.
1. Color looked better at HDMI 480p then the component cable (which is 480p) but picture quality are the same
2. Picture quality is best at 1080i, then 720p, then 480p
3. For a good DVD, use 1080i or 720p, but a poor quality video shows better with component cable
4. A 4;3 video only shows correct aspect ratio only with 480p, but a wide screen video show correctly only with 720p or 1080i
Hope these helps

I moved and left my Philips DVP642 back home and I thought that was great (and it had its share of problems).

Missing movies, I decided to but the Philips DVP5960. Let me tell you: What an Improvement!

The direct USB works great with my 2gb thumbdrive. There has been ONE movie where it had parts where it froze but I think the bitrate was too high for those moments. Other than that, all the other movies I played were great.

What really surprised me, is that I loaned my DVD player out and he stored a movie on an iPod and plugged it into the DVD player via USB and it worked. This was a pleasant surpise since a lot of my friends had iPods and that they can make use of their extra space.

It is a nice looking DVD player.

Made region-free in less than a minute.

I notice that upscaling works well with the Divx files and the movies look better than on my comp.

Cons
-Remote is different than typical remote. Cheapy
-Don't know how to operate without remote (always keeping it in a safe place)

Bottom line:
Excellent Price. Two highlighted features: USB support and Divx.
In the world of digital media, this DVD player is the way to go at this point in time. The less limitations of what to play, the better.

My review only pertains to downloaded media.

I bought this $60 player from amazon and could not be happier. I used the DVP5960 to replace the high end PC that was serving up my movies and music to my entertainment system. This player has no problem reading any media format out there. Check the specs for yourself, but I ran cd-r cd-rw dvd-r dvd+r dvd-RW, flash drives, external HDs

{big note here: This device does not read NTFS. With stock windows tools you can only format FAT drives up to 32 Gigs. Any out of the box USB drive or flash stick will work fine. {as long as you did not go out of your way to format the device NTFS} The downside on the usb reader is no long file name support.

The Key to Success, for this player, is the combo of the USB port and the Updated codec's. I played movies off a 2gig flash drive, external usb hard disk, burnt dvds, and over burned CD/rw's.

This player, played movies that VLC would not. No macro pixels (IN ALL THE DARK SCENES) This player does not play .bin/.cue files in the raw format. {no big deal, just burn them to kvcd like you are supposed to and they run fine) The best downloads are in .avi format anyway.

I had some fast forward problems. I only got a 4x FF speed. Then, on my next movie, I could not fast forward at all. {this was on a flash drive} I unplugged the player, restarted and the FF went up to 32x.

If you have purchased a high def TV and long for the same clarity from your vast DVD collection under the old standard format, THIS is the player for you.
My standard format DVDs sparkle with the lift given them by this player. The lines of resolution are hiked up to nearly match the high-def the new formats brag.
Philips has my vote for performance and PRICE!

I guess they had to cut some corners in order to support all the formats they do at this price point. The big annoyance to me is the remote control apparently alternates between two codes each time you press the same button. This makes programming a learning remote to replace it almost impossible. What were they thinking by doing something whacky like that? A minor annoyance is that you have to press the play button at startup in order for the unit to return to the place in the dvd where you powered off.

On the plus side, the picture looks good and it has hdmi output.