Philips DVP5960 DVD Player with HDMI, 1080i Upscaling, DivX Ultra, USB direct

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...Read more

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...Read more

USB:
The primary reason I bought this DVD player was because of its ability to play off USB devices. The specs indicate it will read jpegs, MP3s, and WMAs off a USB flash drive. It will also read off a FAT32-formatted external hard drive as long as it is externally powered and it will also play divx/xvid from USB. I'm using a 250GB Seagate HDD inside a (warranty-voided) Maxtor enclosure. The divx/xvid playback works perfectly and no stuttering. The interface for the USB is pretty bad though. It will only give you 8 characters of the filename and only 4 filenames at a time.

DVD Playback:
No issues, but I wouldn't recommend this player if your only using this for DVD Playback. One should take advantage of the divx/xvid and USB capabilities, otherwise, why buy this? Some people have complained about lack of DTS decoding, but the vast majority of the public are fine w/Dolby Digital. It's a $80 machine after all. Like many DVD players, there's a region free hack...Read more