Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player

I was searching for a multi-region/region-free DVD player so that my wife could make use of some of her European DVD's and stumbled on this unit. Took a chance and it turned out to exceed my expectations. Very good instructions, lots of options for hooking it up and extremely easy to use and configure. It has worked flawlessly on European and Australian DVD's and claims to play all known regions. Again, definitely an outstanding unit and well worth the small price. I highly recommend this unit.

This is very good DVD player. It can up-convert the video signal to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. The picture is extremely clear and vivid on my Sony Bravia KDL 40V2500 at 1080p.

Other great features are the regional codefree, USB, and DIVX (playing avi movies). Setup is pretty much close to nothing. Just plug and play. The player takes HDMI, component, and composite (no S-video). When using HDMI cable, the default setting is to output just the video to your HDTV. The audio is to output to your receiver. (This can be adjusted to output to your HDTV in the menu).

Best of all is the price. It is very affordable relatively to other up-converted DVD players in the market, plus it has the top features you're looking for; namely 1080p up-conversion, and regional codefree!

It would be very nice if this player has the optical output for audio. But for its price, I have no complaint.

The main reasons I bought this DVD player were the great reviews and the small size (I have it on a dresser in my bedroom and wanted it to blend in). The most important thing to me is the picture quality... and so far, I'm impressed. I would have given this 5 stars if it weren't for the other problems I've had. But I will say this is my first upconverting DVD player and it's connected to my first HDTV. So, anything would probably look better than what I had before.

The problems: Almost every time I stop a movie halfway through to watch later, something isn't right when I resume it. I hit "stop" and it says "the movie will resume at this point." Then I hit power to turn it off. The next day, I hit power to turn it on and it immediately starts playing where I left off... however, almost every movie has had issues when it resumed. 1: The Davinci Code - no audio at all when it resumed. I have my TV connected through HDMI and somehow the setting for HDMI audio switched back to off (no one touched it since I stopped it the night before). 2: Apocalypto - The subtitles went away when I resumed the movie. 3: Blades of Glory - This one was really strange. When I resumed, only the background music played... the voice and effects tracks were missing. Each time I was able to correct the problem by starting the movie from the begining and skipping to the chapter where I left off. But this is still very annoying! I think I have the latest firmware, but I'll check again.

If I never stopped and restarted a movie, I probably wouldn't have ever had this issue and would have given this DVD player 5 stars. But with 2 small kids and a new puppy that has to go outside regularly, it's rare I can sit through a 2 or 3 hour movie non-stop.

This is the best DVD player I've found for the media geek who needs a versatile player. It will play DVDs or DIVX movies or display photos from burned DVDs or USB jump drives. Upgrading the firmware is as easy as downloading it from the Philips website, burning it onto a CD-ROM, and inserting it into the player. And if you enter the unlock code 1,3,8,9,3,1 in the Preferences menu you can make it permanently region-free.

This misses getting five stars for a few reasons. The filter they use to upscale seems to have a lot of "ringing" artifacts and might not be as good as your video device's native upscaling filter. When playing from a USB device the file browser doesn't show long file names. It plays divx/xvid/mpeg4 movies but it will not play h.264 video or anything high-res: 960x528 files fail with an "video resolution not supported" error. It also fails to handle ".srt" files correctly if you try to watch DIVX movies with subtitle files. No other player even attempts most of these features, so this is still the best and most versatile player I've found.

I've only had this player for about a week, and so far I love it.

Yes, the only difference between this and the 5960 is the 1080p upconversion, but that's a pretty major addition if you ask me. The 5982 is cheaper than the 5960 anyway, so you might as well get the 5982 even if you don't have a 1080p TV yet.

But I do have a 1080p TV, and if you do as well, this is definitely the one to get. The upgrade in picture quality over a standard DVD player is instantly noticable. Your standard DVDs will look fresher immediately; you definitely will notice the difference in resolution. Of course, your DVDs won't look as good as Blu-Ray disks, but that isn't to be expected from *any* up-converting player.

At around $70, the price on this player can't be beat. A 1080p upconverter for $70???!!? Are you kidding me??!?! Amazing! A few months ago you had to pay over $200 for this capability!

I also love that this can be made into a universal region-free player with a few button presses on the remote. The code is readily available on the Internet. I recently purchased a set of Region 2 DVDs from the UK, and once I put the 5982 into Region 0 (region-free) mode, the DVDs play no problem.

I highly recommend the Philips DVP5982. You just can't beat this level of quality and this feature set at the price!