REGION FREE DVD PLAYER REVIEW

Model: Philips DVP-5982 Multi Region DVD Player
Replaced: Previous Philips DVP5960 Code Free DVD Player
Color: Black
Modification Tested: Software Conversion (no internal hardware modification)
Warranty: 1 year parts, 90 days labor
Reviewer: Robert Wiley
Date: January 2008

VIDEO PERFORMANCE - 78/100

When I first tested this Philips DVD player I was hoping that the manufacturer had improved over their past few offerings, specifically the DVP-5140, and DVP-3140. The same poor video quality symptoms apply to the Philips DVP-5982. The player showed a lot of graininess when attempting up conversion to 720p resolution. The delay time to render the high resolution picture was significant and I got some added motion blur in a few instances. There was visible shimmy (a shaky effect) during many scenes in on of my favorite old style review DVDs Risky Business. I do not believe this was caused by the soft modification to the player to allow it to play all regions. Black levels were pretty solid, but overall I was unimpressed with the film delivery.

FEATURES, FUNCTIONALITY, CODE FREE MODIFICATION – 69/100

Two of the major upgrades over the Philips DVP5960 are the USB port accepting 2 bit rate transfer rather than 1. Secondly the DVDP5982 does having up conversion to a modified 1080p where the DVDP5960 did not. Other than that the players are very similar.

As I have mentioned before when reviewing DVD players with soft conversion modifications, these all region DVD players that are not hardware modified often perform poorly in certain situations and over time. During some of the British region 2 DVDs we were testing, this region free DVD player at times freezes and skips. It also displayed the message, “NO DISC” several times. We reprogrammed the remote and menu (painful to use) again and rebooted. This resolved the issues for another 45 minutes, but then the player froze up again. I would recommend staying with higher quality discs if you use this DVD player, as cheaper DVDR recordings failed completely. This is not truly a code free DVD player. It’s just a normal DVD player with a remote controlled “soft” mod to enable it to play some DVDs from Europe and other countries.

Some general observations: The setup menu is cryptic and difficult to work with. Player reaction to the remote control keys is excruciatingly slow. There is little to no control over photo slide show. The player does play Divx which could be important for those with lots of content on the hard drive. Additionally the unit does have an HDMI output obviously since it up converts, but up conversion scaling efforts to 1080p were not impressive. The remote control is not user friendly; keys are located in odd places and there is a strange lack of an optical audio output since many receivers only have optical as the digital audio input option.

Lastly, PAL DVDs will only play at 480p or 480i resolution. They cannot be scaled up to 720p or 1080i.

SUMMARY/VALUE – 80/100

If you want a low end DVD player with an HDMI output and “light” up conversion duty this DVD player is alright. It would be fine matched with a smaller TV as long as you are the patient type. I would not recommend the Philips DVP-5982 with a large plasma or LCD TV which will expose vast weaknesses in up conversion ability. As a region free DVD player to play DVDs from other countries and convert I recommend staying away from the inconsistent operation which froze and skipped. Many foreign DVDs are also of poorer quality and this DVD player had a problem with them.

OVERALL RATING: 75.6/100

* Ratings from 70 to 100. Ratings in the 60s for any category are reserved for product with a serious defect or design flaw.

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DVDCity - Region 1 & Code Free DVD Players
ZoneFreeDVD - Specializes in Code Free DVD & Region Free DVD Players
RegionFreeDVDPlayers.com - Supplier of CodeFree & Region Free DVD Players
Crutchfield.com - Region 1 Players
Buy.com - Region 1 Players

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