Customer Reviews

RCA HDV5000 HD DVD Player

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this HD-DVD player about 2 nights ago and am just amazed at the value this player provides both in terms of build quality as well as performance. Some people have complained about the boot up time but you cant speed it up by downloading the latest firmware through the internet, i never felt it was a problem so i haven't applied any software patches to it.

After the demise of my Panasonic dvd player i was thinking of getting an upconverting dvd player like the Oppo or a Panasonic but i am SO GLAD that i waited until the HD-DVD players came out. The standard DVDs play beautifully on this player as well.

All im going to say in the end is, take a look at your local BestBuy store for a demo of the HD-DVD player and you will know why im so amazed with what this player is capable of. Make sure you get Chronicles of Riddick HD-DVD with your player, in one word "WOW".

I'm excited about the long awaited next generation Hi-Def DVD players, but being an early adopter comes with it some growing pains. First of all, I'm all for HD DVD, I think it's the right price and the right technology for the next step. This RCA player is part of the HD revolution and is identical in stats to the Toshiba HD-A1. The player itself is clean and attractive, although large and bulky, it literally houses a home computer inside the case. Such as a computer, the boot up time is extraordinarily long, with the biggest fault being that it will not allow you to pop discs in and out while booting up. So basically, you will have to wait a good 3-4 min from initially powering up before you can pop out the disc in exchange for a another one. We have been spoiled by the instant-on DVD players of today and I have to keep telling myself...this is not a DVD player, but a new HDDVD player. Secondly, and as expected, the machine is very finicky about the movies it plays. In fact, switching layers is downright quirky. While watching a pristine copy of Mission Impossible 3, the RCA player locked up toward the latter half of the movie, I imagine during the time the laser has to refocus layers. Bascially, the picture freezes while the laser is trying to refocus; with your only option being to unplug the unit and start all over from the beginning, including the 3-4 min bootup. In order to finish the movie, I had to skip to the next chapter and reverse back, ensuring I didn't go past the layer change. If you recall, back when DVDs first came out, the first DVD players had the same issue regarding refocusing on layers. This problem is even worse with used discs. It will flash a blue screen and say Disc Error, with your only option to eject the disc or power down. When all is well, you get a fantastic picture and sound. The DTS is crisper and much more balanced than before. The pictures are vibrant and crisp. All in all, if you can wait, I'd definitely wait until the next generation players come out. If you can't, don't expect your experience to be without quirks.

Have had the RCA HDV5000 for about a month now. Found one in the back room of a local Wal Mart here in Columbus, OH for $450.00. All I can say is, it really works well! I am really impressed for this much quality for the money. These heavy duty units are built by Toshiba in Japan and are built much better than the $30 DVD players coming out of China these days. The unit has a computer quality drive mechanism and a cooling fan on the back . It reminds me of a piece of quality computer hardware. The remote is not fancy but well organized and is able to operate different brands of TV sets by changing the code to your TV brand. I did connect the unit to the internet via a ethernet port on the back of the unit and downloaded the latest firmware. The unit came shipped with version 1.0 firmware and now shows version 2.0. This allows the manufacturer to iron out glitches in this first generation HD-DVD player. My unit loads a lot slower than my old DVD player, but that is about my only complaint with this unit so far.
The back panel well laid out and is filled with jacks for analog, digital and optical outputs. Component output plug is there along with HDMI output. The best thing about hooking this to my Sony 46" LCD was that this DVD player included the expensive HDMI cable! The picture quality is stunning and this player does a great job of upconverting regular DVD's too.
Buy this unit and be enjoying 1080 output HD-DVD today. The technology is here and is affordable.

Edit - CONCERNING SOME BAD REVIEWS: This player plays King Kong and every other HD-DVD disc you can throw at it. The trick is you must connenct this unit to the internet (or contact RCA for a CD) and update firmware to 2.0 to play King Kong and some other newer discs. All of my HD-DVDs are 1080p and they play just fine. Don't listen to the people who don't own this player. The picture is great.

I recently picked one of these up from Wal-Mart on clearance, it was new in an un-opened box for $200! What a deal! Those of you getting one will want to update the firmware to at least version 2.0. After extensive research I discovered a few things. First these HD DVD player are similar to computers in many respects, including the need to update the firmware as new technology is added and/or bugs are found and fixed. Some users have mistakenly thought that these were defective or incapable of playing 1080p discs, in reality it plays them all, it just outputs the signal in 1080i (or less) instead of 1080p. The reason for some discs not playing (King Kong being one of the main ones) is that there are new features on some of the newer discs, in the case of King Kong it is actually a new feature called U-Control, King Kong just happened to be one of the first few discs with this feature, if you read the warning paper that was inside the King Kong disc when you first opened it, it stated that you would probably have to update the firmware on your player in order to play it. Once you connect it to the internet and update the firmware(or you can call RCA and they will send you a CD for free that updates it) it works fine, the firmware also updates some HDMI-DVI connectivity issues as well as decreasing the boot-up time. As I see it the ability to update the firmware as the technology advances is a definite advantage.

FYI this is the exact same player as the Toshiba HD-A1, only the color of the faceplate is different and the buttons are square instead of round. As a matter of fact there are some reports of buyers of the Toshiba units getting the RCA splash screen during boot-up when they turned it on, and Toshiba had to send them a firmware disc to change it to Toshiba. Once you have updated firmware it all works fine, it is a great player, also keep in mind that even though these are the same unit as the Toshiba, RCA is usually a couple months behind Toshiba on posting the firmware updates, I believe Toshiba is currently posting v2.2 and RCA still shows v2.0 as the newest update. I am not recommending this, but some owners have installed the Toshiba firmware on their RCA unit, once you do this it then for all intents and purposes becomes a Toshiba player, and you get the Toshiba boot-up screen. I understand it will even contact the Toshiba website for updates once this has been done. Again I don't recommend doing this, I only mention it because it seems to further confirm this is the same unit as the Toshiba A1.

Over all I love this unit, I gave it 4 stars only because it is the lowest and most basic entry level player, the higher end units have faster boot-up times, and output 1080p, as well as several other whistles and bells. But for the price, the picture quality, and the features it is a great unit for those on a budget or wanting a second machine.

First of all, completely ignore the "cannot play 1080p discs" and the "obsolete" nonsense spewed in the guise of "reviews".

First: The HD DVD discs were recorded as 1080p from the very first handful released back in April 2006, and the HDV5000 can play EVERY one of them. In fact, you will be hard pressed to identify any titles at all that are NOT recorded as 1080p (though the HDV5000 will indeed play those as well.)

(Note: The player will not output 1080p, though absolutely all of the original 1080p video information is, in fact, delivered to the HDTV. This means that it will fully meet the needs of the VAST majority of HDTV owners, though probably not all.)

Second: Every feature provided on any HD DVD released to-date is fully supported on every HD DVD player manufactured to-date. All that's required is the firmware be up-to-date (can be performed either by internet update or CD-ROM update from RCA.)

Finally: I own an HDV5000 which I purchased in July 2006. It is going strong at the center of my home theater setup and is currently running firmware version 2.4. I use it for both SD DVD and HD DVD playback and it provides excellent picture and sound with both (I use both Toslink and HDMI for audio, and component and HDMI for video.)

As far as delays are concerned -- true, it certainly isn't the quickest player imaginable, but it was NEVER anywhere NEAR as slow as those particular "reviews" state -- obviously written by people who never spent time with the player, let alone owned it! To give an accurate current picture, I just took measurements and here is what you can expect with firmware version 2.4:

Time from standby to drawer open: 45 seconds
Time from drawer open to picture start with SD DVD: 35 seconds
Time from drawer open to picture start with HD DVD: 65 seconds

As I said, I have owned this player since July 2006 and it continues to perform well in my setup. Excellent picture, excellent sound (requires DTS decoder in the receiver for either RCA or Toslink 5.1 audio with HD DVD) and I find the remote control responsiveness to be satisfactory (rapid button press sequences are not advisable.) Build quality is excellent and appearance, as always, is a matter of personal taste -- I consider it a good looking player!

Call RCA, the phone # is in the box right on the sheet about updating the firmware on the net under the part about "If you do not have internet we will send you a disc". they will send you a disc ( mine was V.2 and took about 3 days after I called ). Pop CD in the player. 5 minutes later your done. Your watching TRANSFORMERS or KONG yes the 1080p disc will play back in 1080i player and your HD TV will input the 1080i back out as 1080p if it is a 1080p HDTV and this will happen so fast on a good set-up that you would never know that a 1080p image was cut into a 1080i and back into a 1080p. Will RCA stop making updates for this? If they do just use the TOSHIBA A1 updaters. You will lose the RCA menu screen and get the TOSHIBA screen if you do this but the player controls are the same.When I first got this player last year I did have some disc that would not load before I did the firmware update but they work fine now. STARDUST and BLADE RUNNER are the most recent HD disc I watched on this RCA player. This is a HEAVY DUTY UNIT , nothing cheap about it.

Others have reviewed the player's capabilities, I have little to add there, most importantly, the player will produce full 1080 output over an HDMI link, and has Dolby 5.1/DTS it will output on optical, coaxial or HDMI ports provided HDMI is connected, same as Blu-Ray DRM requires.

What is important is this: when you first set up the unit, it won't talk to your newer high resolution display, because that has an electronic signature that did not exist in 2006, when this player was built. If you simply connect this player out of the box using ONLY the yellow RCA video jack, most flat panel displays have one, you will see it come up in setup mode in a couple of minutes. Have patience, it will get there, just make sure you don't have anything else connected but the yellow RCA video jack and the Ethernet internet connection. If it gives you nothing after 3 to 5 minutes, use the V.OUTPUT and RESOLUTION buttons on the remote to make sure there is no entry on the LCD panel for V.OUTPUT, and 480i for RESOLUTION. If you get no response, it is still starting up, the first time startup takes forever. Have patience, it will get better.

I know many reviewers have gotten update disks from RCA - there is no need for this, the unit will update fine over the internet. Once you have done the update, it will talk to any HDMI port equipped HD screen in the market today.

Once you have a startup or signature screen on your monitor using the RCA video connection, push SETUP on the remote if the unit did not go into setup by itself. Make sure your Ethernet is connected to your cable, FIOS or DSL router. I keep a 100 ft Ethernet cable (too long for permanent use!) around for setting up the odd piece of equipment that wants to see an internet connection while it configures. This is one. Now go into the "Ethernet" section of the setup menu, into the DHCP option, and turn DHCP and DNS on. Confirm, and exit that menu section. Set the NTP server on, and the network speed to T1. Your player will now establish a connection with its manufacturers - wonderfully, after all these years, RCA and Toshiba have made sure the site the player needs is still up and running.

Now go into the "General" section of the Setup menu, and go into Maintenance. Once there, go to Update, enter that, and confirm you accept the T&Cs. The player will now begin to update over the internet. This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour, the player will turn off BY ITSELF after it is done. YOU NEED TO DO THIS at least TWICE, or as many times until the player returns an error, when it can no longer find an update to install.

You will know you are successful when, once you've done the updates, the player turns on and no longer identifies itself on the screen with "RCA" but instead says "HD DVD" and "Toshiba". When you see the "No Disk" screen, you can connect your HDMI connector to your HD screen, use the V.OUTPUT and RESOLUTION buttons on the remote to change output to HDMI and 1080i, and you will have signal on your HDMI input (turn the unit on and off if you don't see anything on your HDMI input screen). Do any other setup you need to (my Dolby decoder is connected to the player using the optical port, so I set it up that way) and you are all set to enjoy your HD-DVD movies. There is no need to worry about 1080i versus 1080p, the player outputs 1080i, and all modern HD displays show that to you in 1080p, you won't notice any difference.

RCA HDV5000 HD DVD Player is an excellent player, I have owned one for 2 years. ( disc boot is slower than standard dvd players) Here is a tip Toshiba Manufactured unit for RCA. The Toshiba Model is HD-A1. GO to [...] Ask for Firmware update 4.0 for HD-A1. DON'T MENTION that it is a RCA Branded device.
Just ask for TOSHIBA HD-A1 Firmware update to be mailed to you. Voila Note: that set-up screens will change to Toshiba, small price to pay current firmware.

I BOUGHT AN RCA HDV 5000 FROM ICON OUTFIT ON
JULY 13 th 2009. WHEN I RECIEVED IT, THE BOX WAS
VERY TATTY BUT NOT OPENED. I OPENED THE BOX AND
IT LOOKS OK. NOW COMES THE BAD NEWS. I CALLED
UP TO GET THEM TO SEND ME THE UPDATE DISC,
THEY TELL ME I SHOULD GET IT IN TWO TO THREE
WEEKS, SO I WAIT & I WAIT. WHEN IT ARRIVES THE
DISC IS SOME SORT OF HOME MADE COPY, BUT THE TWO
PAGES OF INSTRUCTIONS THAT CAME WITH IT, YOU CANNOT
READ ANY OF IT ALL, SO NOW I WAITING FOR
A 2 nd SET TO GET HERE.

Reading the cons on this unit, I find it to be the lack of updating the unit as RCA suggests in doing. The loading and boot up is slower than your typical DVD player, but it is well worth the 45 second wait. The picture is clear and the surround digital dolby is unbeatable especially in conjunction with a surround sound system. So now you can not only see the movie, but feel it too! Yes, the unit is a bit bulky and heavy (reminds me of the first VCRs that came out back in the days) but for the price here on Amazon, well, it is well worth it considering that they retailed at almost $499. What I suggest is contacting the seller to see if they have updated the units or simply buy one from me because I update each unit so that the buyer can start using it out of the box. All this with free shipping :)