A mix of old and new. (Philips DVP5960)

Member Name: SticMan

Product:	Philips DVP5960
Date:	12/07/07 (735 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Affordable, reliable, some great features

Disadvantages: Can't play HD-DVD's, some configuration problems with some HD TVs

The Philips DVP5960 is a top player which will suffice for most people looking for an affordable but advanced DVD player. There is a growing trend for DVD recorders and these will slowly replace VHS Recorders. However this DVD doesn't have the capability and thus is catered to a different market. With Phillips you know you are getting a superior product and it is worth paying the few extra quid rather than a non branded or inferior brand, which through many reviews sometimes cause problems for different people.

The best features of this DVD player are:

HDMI Upscaling: Basically this gives a high definition view of your current DVD's provided you have a HD television. Of course this doesn't give the same quality as the new HD DVD's but it certainly is a mark up from playing DVD's on your HD set, because you do seem to get some pixelation. I would say it is similar to those who have played PS2 and PS3 on their high definition television sets. There is a significant difference, HDMI upscaling acts as a middle-way between the two qualities at a fraction of the price of both HD DVD player and HD DVDs. A word of caution in that you will require a HDMI cable to upgrade DVD quality movie to the desired level, this doesn’t come with the player and thus it will result in an additional cost and perhaps a change of mind on the purchase if you are on a budget. There remains a concern on some DVD’s of viewing screen of 4:3 and 16:9 (widescreen) and some may not configure to your ideals.

DivX compatibility: This for me is the best feature. DivX has become a very important video format in recent years, generally you can you use it to reduce the size of a DVD (up to 4.7gb) onto a CD (700mb) and the loss of quality is not that appreciable. Nowadays many television programmes are available on the internet (both legal and illegal content), of course for the legal content it is preferable to many to download programmes off the net and use the USB feature of the DVD to transport the video file and watch in on a television. It certainly beats sitting infront of a computer for over an hour. I have yet to fully test this feature and for the non-techies it maybe an irrelevant feature because they may not even know what DivX is, let alone what to do with it but for some it is incredibly helpful. The USB feature may be misleading to some as not all files will be able to be played. Indeed only those which are coded by the DivX format will play. The most popular files mpegs, wmv etc.. will not automatically play and certainly the low quality video files available on the net will leave the user disappointed.

The DVD player is aesthetically pleasing, like most models available today it is slimline and doesn't occupy to much space. The player is not a mutli-region one, however like most DVD players available there is a method of changing this should this be required with the information freely available on the net. There isn’t too much wrong with this player and for those looking for a DVD player which is cheap but still has modern features then you can’t go wrong with this.

Summary: Top quality player.

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