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

If you are a film addict and like to watch movies in their original languages... and sometimes you cannot find gems in our limited American film/DVD stores and resort to buy them abroad: Do not worry about region incompatibility with those useless codes!

This machine will play it all!

I love it, because besides playing any DVD in this planet, it also upsamples the ones you have to a sharper, crispier and more detailed, elegant image. Something you could only dream of if purchasing a more expensive player... or a Bluray disc player.

The beauty of it is precisely how beautiful it presents the moving picture in any system you have and at a meager price, or course! How could you go wrong buying a player like that?

After using this product heavily over the course of the last two weeks, I'd have to conclude that I am thoroughly satisfied both in quality and features of this DVD player. The picture quality is robust and sharp, the controls are logical and intuitive, and it's ultra quiet and sleek to boot. I especially like the fact that I can pop a DVD out, play a different one, come back to the first, and then the original DVD will pick up from exactly where you left off in the movie before. For someone who's been using an XBOX to watch DVD's all this time, I certainly appreciate this feature, and I kinda feel like a caveman who's finally ventured outside of his cave. : )

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[EDIT]

However... I just discovered WHAT Philips does NOT tell you, when it comes to playing AVI files (burned to DVD). They don't tell you that the MAXIMUM play-time that any given AVI file (DivX) may play is 4 hours, 20 minutes (approx.). After this time, the AVI will cut off and not finish. The entire file plays on the computer just fine, it's just when it's in the DVD player that anything over 4'20" will not play past this mark.

The fix for this of course is to split large files, which is what I was forced to do, and then burn the pieces to a DVD. When I did this, everything worked just fine, as expected.

By burning AVI files directly to a DVD, you can easily watch them without the extra work of authoring a DVD (with the same file). So considering how important it is that you own a DVD player that plays AVI files, I'm left wondering how Philips could possibly exclude, from their Instructions, the MAX Play-Time of any given AVI file that has been burned to disk.

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I bought this so that I could play UK DVDs and it does that admirably. Picture quality is great and CDs play well. I have not tried the other functions/capabilities. It has component video outputs if that is what you need for your home theater and digital co-ax for audio - my set-up could not take advantage of the HDMI.

The disc tray is pretty flimsy and seems to take a while to load and eject but those are minor issues for me. Don't lose the remote though as there are virtually no controls on the actual player.

All in all, excellent value for multi-region capability.

For the last 5 months this player has played one or two discs per day, sometimes more. I haven't found anything it wouldn't play. I've had everything from Sony's to dollar store garbage and none of them ever play for any great length of time.

Save yourself a lot of aggravation and a lot of money, at this price it may be one of the better deals on Amazon - you can't go wrong with this one.

I'm here to buy another one for a different room.

Received product and immediately replaced my old HDMI DVD player with this one. My daughter was able to watch 2 DVD's that evening. The next morning when she tried to watch a 3rd DVD, the entire TV movie was green. The DVD player had an orange screen when no DVD in player. I tested the TV with my Verizon Fios cable channels and the TV worked fine. I unplugged the DVD player power cord and plugged it back in. The colors returned to normal. However, now there was no audio. I replaced the HDMI cable with one that worked and still no audio. I tested the cable on another DVD player and the cable worked fine. I tested the component and audio outputs on the Philips player. They worked...however, I didn't buy this HDMI DVD player just to have to use component or composite cables!!!

For those people that have not had any problems with this unit...I am happy for you. However, I won't be buying another Philips HDMI Up-Conversion DVD Player again! There are plenty of other players on the market for less money that work for more than a few hours!