Home > Consumer Reviews > Philips DVP5982 HDMI 1080p DivX Ultra DVD Player

I was really dubious about the quality of this unit, but bought it anyways. I have yet to find a disc it won't play and the up-converted picture quality is as good (or at least nearly as good) as the up-conversion on my $400 blu ray player. I bought it because so many movies I like are available in other regions of the world and not in the U.S. I've heard stories about problems playing PAL movies on U.S. TVs -- none here! I hooked it up to my 65" Mitsubishi LCD HDTV via an HDMI connector (not supplied) and every PAL disc I've played is crystal clear, sharp and detailed, with no video noise or distortion. I'm watching old favorites I haven't in seen 20 years and they look better than ever!

This unit doesn't have all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a high-end player. For example, if you're looking for high-end audio you probably won't find it here. But it does a great job in delivering all the basics and it even has a few features I didn't expect (like digital zoom). I've had some issues with Philips in the past, but they did a nice job on this unit and at a very reasonable price. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought a second unit for the bedroom. I wanted something to up-convert regular DVDs for my Vizio HD set and I didn't want to spend the big bucks on another blu ray.

I wanted a region-free DVD player so I could watch foreign DVDs. I found this one on amazon which also had HDMI hookup with up-conversion, so I thought it would be the right one for my HDTV. It has really turned out to be the perfect little machine. Hooking it up was easy (for god's sake, don't pay $50 for an HDMI cable at Circuit City - get one from amazon for $5). Anyway this DVD player not only plays all DVD regions, but it plays pretty much anything you can burn to disc - MP3, WMA, JPG, AVI, MPG, MP4. It's tiny, but smart. The only slight annoyances are that it's a bit slow to load discs and it's always turning itself off if you've stopped the video for a few minutes - it doesn't lose your place, but you're constantly having to turn it back on. Worth it for the diversity of playback.

Great machine for the price.

Small, compact, very easy to install. I previously had a Pioneer multi-regional DVD player which I had to format for Region 2, and it had lots of connections. It gave up the ghost after just three years... motor failed.

The Phillips has just one connection (not included, but bought on Amazon.com very inexpensive) and comes ready to play all regions. No programming necessary.

I'll stretch myself to find something wrong ... only one tiny unimportant thing ... the remote does not have an open-close button, so you have to press the button on the unit itself. No biggie.

The picture is brilliantly clear HD.
I'm loving this unit.

I've been wanting to play my region 2 dvds on a dvd player seamlessly. I got this item because it's cheap and I didn't need bells and whistle. It does a good job playing dvds. The dvd tray responds a little slow and the remote just has the basics except an eject disc button.

Overall a decent player. Works as advertised: plays PAL, NTSC, multi-zone.

A couple of negative points:
- DivX navigation is slow. It takes forever to fast forward, pause/resume.
- It doesn't load some DivX movies - just hangs up. The same movie works fine on a PC. Maybe it's something to do with the size: the movies were 2+ GByte.