Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player

I have been a happy user of Philips DVD players for some time, having at owned several models. Yes, I have had minor cosmetic issues in the past with the overly small and lightweight remotes, and the not-so-great on screen menu layouts and design, but overall they have delivered a quality image. I recently bought two Sony Bravia HDTVs and decided to go with this upconverting Philips model until I see how the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war plays out. I have been astonished by the fidelity and quality of the image of regular DVDs played through this unit! Although my Bravia's only support 1080i (and not 1080p) I am still amazed by the detail this unit seems to tweak out of SD DVDs. Also, the footprint of this unit is tiny and matches the base of my Bravias in color and size, so it's a perfect design fit. I have not an issue with the on-screen menus. They are far better than previous Philips models. Also, the remote is the new-style design (where it looks like an actual product designer and not an engineer figured it out... but it's still small and a bit too light). My only complaint is that the upconverting happens only via the HDMI output. My Bravia's only have a single HDMI input, so I had to sacrifice that to the Philips DVD player, and use the component inputs for my DirecTV HD signal. I use quality cabling and could discern no difference to the DirecTV signal. I also used a quality HDMI cable and the DVDs I've played are pretty breathtaking with the upconversion. I watched Pan's Labyrinth recently and there was astonishing detail in the foliage especially. I plan to watch the (non HD-DVD versions) of the Planet Earth series and hope they are almost as spectacular as the Discovery HD Channel broadcasts. (Sorry, I just couldn't handle the Sigourney Weaver voice over on those, and had to get the original Attenborough versions!). Bottom line, if you want to wait out the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war, then buy this for $70 and enjoy what you've been missing in your SD DVD collection! Also, I receive and play a lot of commercially purchased DVDs from the UK. With a simple series of remote control commands, I was able to unlock this player and make it region-free. It even handles the PAL conversion flawlessly! Try doing that with many Sony and other models!

I bought this player with the intent to mostly watch upscaled regular DVD's as well as DivX/XviD movies on both a burned CD-R/DVD-R but also to watch from my USB thumb drive.Watching from DVD's is awesome, and I'd give this unit 5 stars if I never used the USB function. But I do, and when I watch movies via USB, the video is choppy, and if there is any fast motion it starts stammering both video and audio. In addition, if you'd like to review/rewind a bit or fast-forward forget-about-it! It basically just stays put like it's paused and then if you are patient and wait a good 3-4 minutes, you might rewind enough to go back 1-2 minutes in the video. But since the player gives you zero feedback (it looks to be paused) on where the rewind progress is, you have to guess where it's at in the process. So if you didn't go back far enough, you have to wait another 3-4 minutes when you start this laborious process over again. It's totally not worth it to instant replay.I don't really care the the USB truncates the file names in the menu (which it certainly does), but the fact that you can't watch anything with any kind of action makes this function a dog; It's OK if you watch something with less action than a Jane Austin PBS movie - perhaps a lecture at a podium might be OK.I think this problem might be due to this player being 1.1 USB, and perhaps a 2.0 will solve this problem. Anyways, this unit is going back today.

All in all, I am super pleased with this player after about a week of use (bought it refurb $43.95 + 7.49 shipping). After using my Samsung HD-941 DVD player for 2 years ($200+ when it first came out), I figured that it was time to swap it out with something else after enduring a couple of its annoying shortcomings.The most impressive is the crisp picture quality. The unit processes dark shades without the annoying pixelation, which bugged me to no end with the Samsung. Another observation is that my picture was much sharper with the new player.For the more savvy in A/V electronics: So far, I have played Xvids, AVIs, Mpegs, and also normal DVDs. It plays just about everything except .ogm (I think there were a couple more formats, but I am not 100% sure). That was the key reason for me in purchasing the Philips. You can also unlock the player to make it region free. Just search the web for "unlocking dvp5982" and follow the instructions. Another cool thing is that the unit reads multisession discs, which saves everyone a lot of money in the long run if you are a burner like I am.A small gripe that I have is that the until does not have optical audio out. Because of my strange A/V setup, I cannot use HDMI for audio from the unit. Just a heads up...The Philips DVP5982 is tiny, which is nice. It feels a bit tacky, but Philips did a great job of using shiny plastics to spruce it up in the looks department. I appreciate that it does not have any annoying, super-bright LEDs on the front to distract you while viewing movies.Another feature of note is that the player can process 1080p, which is great since videos are starting to be distributed in higher quality formats.Now for the remote: It is laid out fairly well. The reason I say "fairly" is that when I do grab it in the right way, all the buttons are where I expect them to be. On the other hand, I have had occasions of holding it upside down (I think the jog buttons should have been on the bottom). I had read some other reviews stating that the remote does not have a button to open the tray door. If they would have read the manual, they would learn that the stop button doubles for eject.