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402 of 432 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great HDTV picture, July 10, 2006
The rumor that the new Philips DVP5960 has corrected the bugs that plagued the Philips DVP5900 upscaling DVD player appears to be true! Also, the DVP5960 produces a much better picture than the DVP5900. The DVP5960 is "DivX Ultra" certified. I've tried upscaling DVD players from Sony, Samsung, and Toshiba. Only the more expensive Sony could match the DVP5960 picture quality. However, Sony DVD players are notoriously finicky about which discs they will play, while Philips is known for its "plays it all" DVD players.
The DVP5960 uses a 12 bit/108 MHz video system instead of the 10 bit/54 MHz system used in the DVP5900. The 12 bit/108 MHz video system produces visibly sharper images and natural colors. The quality of the picture on my 42 inch Plasma HDTV is very impressive.
When using the HDMI digital interface, I have found 480p to be the best selection. Anything other than 480p causes distortion of the picture for a disc with non-widescreen content. Selecting 480p turns off the DVD players upscaling feature and allows my HDTV scalers to format the picture correctly for my display. Also, selecting 480p restores functionality to the "format" button on my HDTV remote control, thus allowing me to select a format that produces the best picture.
Use of the HDMI digital interface as opposed to the Component Video connection produces no visible difference in image quality on my 42 inch Plasma HDTV. The HDMI interface (cable must be purchased separately) can carry both video and audio, which cuts down on cables. HDMI transmits video and audio digitally; therefore, any cable that meets the minimum standard will work correctly.
The DVP5960 has a USB port on the front panel that can accommodate a USB device or a flash card reader for playback of JPEG, MP3 or WMA files. You can display JPEG files with SD or HD resolution. The SD JPEG image quality is very good. The HD JPEG image quality is excellent but image display is very slow.
One major complaint with DVD players concerns their inability to play damaged discs. The DVP5960 has successfully played imperfect discs that other players couldn't handle.
Using the "display" button on the remote, you can view the bit rate and other interesting information about the disc being played.
If the selected soundtrack on the disc you are playing is DTS (Digital Theater Sound), the analog audio output will be muted; consequently, you may need to use the "audio" button on the remote control to select a different soundtrack. DTS soundtracks are not very common in DVDs.
The DVP5960 shows a noticeable pause at the layer change point when playing dual layer DVDs; however, this is not unusual for DVD players.
The DVP5960 does not have an optical digital audio out or S-Video out connector.
The DVP5960 seems to have replaced the DVP5900 which is no longer listed on the official Philips website. The DVP5960 chipset is MediaTek MT1389. The DVP5900 chipset is Zoran Vaddis 778.
The DVP5960 provides video scaling up to 1080i. The resulting video output signal can be fed to an HD display through the HDMI digital interface. The objective in scaling is to make something out of nothing. Nearly all projectors, flat screen LCDs, plasmas and projection TVs have upscaling video processors. The issue here is quality. Scalers built into HDTVs should perform better than or equal to those in most upscaling DVD players. Scalers built into HDTVs are designed to work with that equipment's native display resolution.
HDMI is about DRM (digital rights management), a euphemism for copy protection. HDMI = DVI + HDCP. HDCP is the copy protection component of the HDMI standard. HDCP encrypts the outputed DVD content to prevent unauthorized copies from being made. It is possible that with certain copy protected PCM audio qualities, the digital audio output (coaxial and optical) from HDMI compliant devices is muted. Furthermore, HD video signals may be downsampled to non-HD for non-HDCP DVI connections. HDCP compliant products are prohibited from sending HDCP protected content to analog outputs at HD resolution.
The other component of HDMI is the digital interface. Although manufacturers claim otherwise, many experts say there's very little difference in image quality using a digital interface as opposed to an analog connection.
For nearly a decade, manufacturers have been selling televisions advertised as HDTV, HD-Ready, HD-Capable, HD-Compatible, etc. Most of those televisions do not have DVI or HDMI digital interfaces. The FCC approved HDCP as a "Digital Output Protection Technology" on August 4th, 2004. Consequently, most HDTVs manufactured before 2004, and many manufactured before 2005 may become useless for watching true HDTV.
Both the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD organizations have stated that the first movies to be released will not implement the HDCP protection flag. These may be the only DVDs that many HDTV owners will be able to view at HD resolution.
Proper working with HDMI is only guaranteed with HDMI/HDCP compliant consumer products. Digital devices from different manufacturers have the possibility of differing standards which may cause problems. Vagueness in the HDMI/HDCP specification or inadequate testing may cause further problems.
*** Addendum
DTS (Digital Theater Sound) soundtracks are most often found in Superbit DVDs. Superbit and DTS technologies are especially beneficial with high end audio equipment and large screen high definition displays.
The availability of DTS encoded DVD movies is limited. DTS encoded DVDs often cost more than their Dolby Digital (AC-3) counterpart. Discernible differences in audio quality between DTS and Dolby Digital (AC-3) are highly dependent on the encoding technique and equipment as well as your decoding equipment.
The soundtrack for a DVD movie can contain Dolby Digital (AC-3), DTS, MP2, or PCM audio data. NTSC DVD players must support Dolby Digital (AC-3) and PCM soundtracks; consequently, all 525/60 (NTSC) discs must contain, at a minimum, Dolby Digital (AC-3) or PCM audio data. All other formats are optional.
A DTS soundtrack is almost 4 times as large as a comparable Dolby Digital (AC-3) soundtrack. This is because DTS audio is not compressed to the same degree as Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio. Both DTS and PCM together don't usually leave enough room for quality video encoding of a full length movie. Consequently, a disc with a DTS soundtrack will usually carry a Dolby Digital (AC-3) soundtrack. This means that all DTS discs will work in all DVD players, but a DTS compatible player and a DTS decoder are required to play the DTS soundtrack.
Most DVDs are encoded to optimize space for the feature plus added value and audio streams. Superbit utilizes the physical space devoted to added value to produce a disc with a higher bit rate video and both DTS and Dolby Digital (AC-3) soundtracks. Superbit titles have a Dolby Digital (AC-3) soundtrack (at the highest rate of 448 Kbps) and a DTS soundtrack (at the half rate of 768 Kbps). Superbit titles are recorded on dual layer discs (8.5GB storage capacity). There is usually a noticeable pause during the layer change as the player's laser adjusts to read the second layer. The length of the pause varies from disc to disc and player to player.
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102 of 108 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for playing all formats., July 9, 2006
I bought this DVD player in mid May and 3 weeks later with very nominal usage my player just died in the middle of a movie. I had it connected to a top of the line surge protector so the problem was not a power surge. I could not even get the disc out. When I took it back to Circuit City they assured me it was probably just a bad one and gave me a new one. I could have got another brand but for the features and price I could not find one I liked in the store. The new player has worked ok for the last month but it shows some jitters while switching from one HDMI set up mode to another and causes a 'green' screen to display on my plasma. Once I switch it off and then on again it has worked fine but I am prepared to have it die on me in just a few months. I did not notice any substantial improvement in picture using the HDMI cable over the component connection. In fact, if you have a progressive DVD player I doubt that you would notice too much difference in the image quality using this upconverting DVD player. I had it set to the 1080i resolution and also to the 720p and 570p. On some DVDs the 1080i performed better than the other resoulutions but on some others it did not seem to make much of a difference which makes me think that the image quality is very DVD dependent.
The good:
Plays all discs - VCDs, CD-RWs, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, Div-X and just about anything that won't play on other DVD players.
It even has a USB connection in the front which you can use to directly plug in a zip drive or another device like a hard drive, although I have not used this feature yet.
The bad:
Remote is not at all user friendly. It is of cheap construction and buttons are not intuitive. I liked my Sony remote much better. Worse, the DVD player is VERY slow to respond to your pressing remote buttons. At times, I have to struggle to get it to respond.
While changing resolutions through DVD player set up it is better not to have a disk playing in the DVD player as that causes errors.
Finally, for the features and price this is a good buy if you have a lot of Div-X, VCD, DVD-RW discs and copies of original DVDs as this player plays them all. However, don't expect this player to be a life-long purchase and cross your fingers and hope you get a good piece when you buy one. In fact, I recommend buying it from a store close to you so that the return is easier.
11/06/06 Update: The player has worked just fine up till now but I hardly use it more than once a week.
11/16/08: This player is still working fine and plays all DVDs and home made movies without any problem. You can also make it region free if you like - just Google it. So I stand by my rating.
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47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Value w/ USB and Broad Media Compatibility, August 11, 2007
I bought this after being incredibly satisfied with its pseudo-predecessor, the Philips DVP642 DVD Player. The reasons I loved that player was that it played just about anything I threw at it. I could take DVD's I bought and convert them to DIVX or XVID and play 6 movies, or twenty TV shows on a single disc. It would also happily play all of my mp3's and jpgs I burned to data DVD's and CD's. I don't use the picture functionality much, but it makes for a great slideshow/screensaver.
Anyway, the DVP5960 has all of that functionality and more. Here are the top three reasons I recommend this DVD player and the reason I gave it 5 out of 5 stars:
#1: like it's predecessor, the DVP5960 is cheap. It makes a great birthday, Christmas or wedding present. I've probably bought 6 or 7 of the DVP642's to give away, and will likely do the same for the DVP5960 over the next couple of years.
#2: this sucker plays just about anything you throw at it. The DVP5960 will happily trudge through scratched or non-standard DVD's that other DVD players would scoff at. (Especially the DRM-happy Sony players)
It plays NTSC, PAL, Burned DVD's and CD's, and even burned *DATA* DVD's and CD's which can hold thousands of pictures, hundreds of mp3s, 15-25 television shows or 4-8 movies per DVD (compressed, like in divx or xvid formats.) There is a slew of software which will convert your legally-bought DVD's to these compressed DIVX formats, as well as all kinds of free content you can download off the internet.
I'ts pretty cool to throw in a DVD and watch an entire season of your favorite show without changing the disc. Also, I found that the DVP642 occasionally had problems rendering certain .avi's. The DVP5960 seems to have improved it's codecs and consequently, every video I used to have a problem with plays beautifully on the DVP5960.
#3: This is the coolest feature to me: The USB port. The product literature suggests the USB port is there to hook up mp3 players and cameras, and play mp3's or display pictures from them. As a test, I threw a few .avi video files on a 2 gig USB stick and plugged it in. I was delighted to see the DVP5960 pick up the videos on the stick with absolutely no problems. In fact, it loaded and played them much faster than it read my DVD's.
Next, I took a little external 80 gigabyte hard drive I had, loaded it up with mp3's, jpg's, mpg's and avi files (divx, xvid, etc) and enthusiastically plugged it in. After a few seconds trying to recognize the drive, it displayed "Disk Type Unsupported" on the screen. Doh!
Demoralized, I wondered why the USB stick worked and the external drive did not. The next day I realized the main difference between my external drive and the USB memory stick was the file structure. USB sticks generally default to either the FAT or FAT32 file system. However, Windows XP likes to format drives to NTFS, a proprietary Microsoft file system. In fact, XP will not allow you to format a drive to FAT or FAT32 through it's GUI. It does provide instructions to do so via the command line (start-->run-->'cmd'), but after four hours of formatting my drive to FAT32, it failed. I did some research and found out that although a common misconception is that FAT32 can only format a disk up to 32 gigabytes or so, it can actually support drives up to 2 terrabytes. (2000 gigabytes.)
Do a search for a free program called "fat32format.exe" and run it from the command line on your external USB hard drive. It formatted my 80 gig drive it in about 30 seconds.
After doing this, I loaded up the drive again with mp3's, jpg's and several dozen movies and television shows, crossed my fingers and plugged it into the DVP5960.
I clicked the USB button, waited a few seconds while it tried to recognize the drive, and much to my delight, displayed the full contents of my 80 gig external drive! As I type this, my DVP5960 has been reading videos off that external drive for about 12 hours now. This alone makes this DVD player worth it to me.
As others have said, these drives do seem to break down after a period of heavy use. With the DVP642, I think I heard of two burning out, each running for about two years before they gave out. If you make sure they don't get to hot (provide ventilation) I think you can limit this. But frankly, I am more than willing to pay $70.00 every two years for the broad compatibility and USB functionality this drive provides. And who knows, maybe this new model will have a longer shelf life. Time will tell.
If you're looking for a drive that will run just about anything you throw at it, this is the drive for you. I have messed with many, many DVD drives, and I simply cannot recommend this drive enough.
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