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

I can't remember where or when I bought this DVD player, but it must have been at least two years ago. I hadn't used it much. When I got a 37" LCD HDTV a year ago, I got frustrated because when I played DVDs on this player using the HDMI cables, there was no audio. Therefore I was using the regular A/V yellow-red-white RCA connection to watch DVDs. Last week I got a LG BD 370 Network Blu-ray Disc Player, and a new TV, for the living room and moved this DVD player and the living room TV to another room. I hooked this DVD player and the older TV up with the A/V cables, and decided I would replace this DVD player one of these days with one that would work with the HDMI cables. Out of curiosity, I looked up this DVD player on amazon - and I'm so glad that I did!

From customer reviews here, I learned how to change the region settings. Now I can bring DVDs home from my next trip abroad without worrying about whether or not I can play them. Sweet.

Encouraged by this change in the region setting, I tried again to understand the rest of the device settings. And this time I found that the HDMI audio setting was at "off" - no wonder my DVDs were silent over the HDMI connection. Yes, I'm admitting that I managed to miss that setting option before, and must have misunderstood something I found online about the audio output when I initially googled for an answer to the HDMI audio problem.

I've now played a couple of DVDs and compared the A/V connection to the HDMI connection. The HDMI hookup produces a beautiful picture on my 37" LCD HDTV from a regular DVD (not a blu-ray disc), and the TV's info display shows the AV picture resolution as 480i, while the HDMI-delivered picture is 1080i. I can certainly tell the difference. I'm only using the TV speakers so I don't notice any difference in the audio quality.

This was an inexpensive DVD player, but I'm so glad I didn't stick it in the "donate to charity" box before researching it on amazon!

EDITED to add: I tweaked the settings again, and now the display tells me that when using the HDMI input the resolution is 1080p. I'm not sure I can tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p, but it seems I can have my choice of either one.

We received this DVD player as a gift for our wedding. We moved recently after that and didn't get around to hooking it up until about 5 months after we received it. Well, it never worked. It would turn on, but would not read any kind of disk. I called Philips Customer Support and they informed me - well too bad. You can drive 3 hours to a Philips repair shop and pay to have it fixed yourself, but would not warranty their product. They told us the eye was probably damaged which is why it would turn on, but never recognized any disk - and we tried quite a few of them. Even a CD - nothing.

I would highly warn against buying any Philips product, as even though it said it had a 1 year warranty - they refused to honor it. The service was terrible. What a waste.

If you are buying a DVD player and not thinking about moving up to high definition then this is a great choice for the money. The picture quality for the DVDs is great. The standout feature is it's ability to play movies you rip onto a separate HDD through the USB connection. I have my whole catalog of movies on one HDD that plugs into the DVD player. I can then play any movie I want without having to dig through the DVDs.

The biggest downside is the remote which is poorly designed; nothing is intuitive (hence the 3 stars on "easy of use")

My last 3 DVD players have been Philips players. The price is always right and the technology behind it is always good. Also very "tweakable" if you know what I mean. One think I would say is that it takes a bit longer than I like to turn on. Remote control is simple to use, nothing fancy. A really great purchase.

This device was used to view UK DVDs (BBC), and worked fine at first. After about 20 hours of use, it locked up during playback and made rapid vibrating noises. Now it won't load any DVD (says "No Disk" after a few minutes). I'm going to try to return it under warranty.

Update: neither Amazon nor VCT ELECTRONICS are willing to stand behind this product. That's $85 wasted, including shipping.