Philips DVP5960 DVD Player with HDMI, 1080i Upscaling, DivX Ultra, USB direct
by Philips
(Click here)
Customers in the UK,
buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: PhilipsBrand: Philips
Edition: Electronics
Model: DVP5960/37
Publisher: Philips
Studio: Philips
Music Label: Philips
Product features:
- DivX Ultra 6, Mpeg 4 video
- HDMI, 1080i Upsampling
- USB Connect, plays flash drive files
- Ultra Slim Design
- Composite and component inputs cables supplied are only for composite no optical out just digital coax
- AmazonBasics 3RCA Component Video Cable (6 Feet)
- AmazonBasics Ultra-High-Speed HDMI Cable Braided (9.8 Feet/3.0 Meters)
- AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Braided Cable (6.5 Feet/2.0 Meters)
- AmazonBasics 700MB 52x CD-R (50-Pack Spindle)
- AmazonBasics 700 MB 52x CD-R (100-Pack Spindle)
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips DVP5960 DVD Player with HDMI, 1080i Upscaling, DivX Ultra, USB direct
Customer Review: Fantastic Value w/ USB and Broad Media Compatibility
Summary: 5 Stars
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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Description of Philips DVP5960 DVD Player with HDMI, 1080i Upscaling, DivX Ultra, USB direct
DVD, HDMI (1080i Upsampling), DivX Ultra 6 (Mpeg 4 Video), Ultra Slim design, Progressive Scan, Plays CD, MP3, DVD, DVD+/-R/RW, CD-RW, JEPG Pictures,USB Connect to play all your favorite music or digital pictures, Windows MediaDigital Cameras and Photo Categories