I have had the original king of DivX, a.k.a.
Philips DVP642 for a while and considering its impressive feature list (including PAL playback on NTSC TV, DivX playback and progressive scan), I was relatively happy with it for $41 that I paid. I was not happy with it overall however, and would not have paid its original price (my unit was Philips-refurbished).
One of the issues I had with it was the fact that although it played most DivX videos, it stuttered on some others and showed terrible block noise on some others, making them unwatchable. That was in addition to it having fast scan speed of no higher than 8x and its resume functionality requiring you to push Play while it said
Loadining. Miss Loading and you are stuck trying to find the point where you stopped watching last time. Exciting.
To improve on the above and to supplement my new 50-inch 1080p Hitachi plasma TV, I decided to get a DVD player that would further improve on DivX playback, have HDMI and upscaling to 1080p (or at least to 1080i) and, for the love of progress and file sharing, a USB port.
Which brought me to ordering another Philips: Philips DVP5982 online for $63. One of the great features of Philips DVD players is their price.
Features The player can play DivX, Xvid and JPEG files. You do not need to create a VCD disc structure, just copy the MPEG/AVI files to a CD-R/W disc and insert it into this player and it will play them.
The player supports slow and fast scan (up to 32x speed; an improvement on DVP642¡¯s 8x). It can play PAL and NTSC discs on a PAL or NTSC TV. It can even convert PAL to NTSC and vice versa. Nice!
The unit is DivX Ultra certified and has a front USB port. It also has an HDMI out and upscaling up to 1080p. And, of course, it plays MP3 and WMA as well as all recordable disc types.
Operation The player is medium-sized and is not too lightweight. There are not many buttons on the front panel. The display is bright, but is pretty small in terms of the amount of information it fits. The most it can fit is
PHILIPS spelled in capital letters. And whereas I could use my late Panasonic DVD remotes (two Panasonic DVD players dies on my with a dreaded H02 error) with my eyes closed, this remote needs
good light to use.
The onscreen displays are not as informative or well-designed as the ones of Panasonic. But at least the highest fast scan speed is now 32x, as opposed to 8x pf my previous Philips (DVP642). My Panasonic DVD players could scan at up to 200x.
The player can convert PAL to NTSC rather well. I noticed no jerky motion and the image quality was pretty good. The 1080p output over HDMI was rather good: sharp and clear. Since I have not expected it to rival an HD-DVD disc in my new Toshiba HD-A3, I was rather satisfied with that.
The image quality overall was good and the sound was good as well (using coaxial digital connection to my Panasonic XR55 receiver). Sadly, the optical/coaxial digital out combination of the DVP642 was not retained. There is no optical out. The player played most of my MPEG and AVI computer files flawlessly. The files can be burned on a CD-R/W disc just as a regular data CD with no VCD structure needed. I say most, because it still stutters on some files, on which the DVP642 stuttered. They play fine on my computer.
The front USB port is a great feature and lets you use a USB drive or any similar device, provided it does not require much power. USB-powered hard drive will most likely not work. Still, it is a great feature as I can copy over a bunch of MP3 or WMA files onto a USB drive, plug it into the USB port of this player and play it through my receiver and speakers. Ditto the video files.
Overall, this is a great player for people who need to play European DVDs or downloaded videos or want to play material on USB drives. It is a decent choice if you want 1080p upconversion a tight budget. A poor choice for others.
DivX Improvement I have since gotten rid of this player and, after trying the Philips 5960 (unsuccessfully) settled on another DVD player that plays most DivX files, on which Philips stuttered. It is much easier to use as well and has excellent performance. See my review of the
Pioneer DV-400V.
Likes Low price is a nice thing. Connectivity options, features, PAL playback and conversion to NTSC, computer video file playback, USB, 1080p. Decent build quality, good video and sound.
Dislikes Poor remote, cheap LCD display, poor GUI and not easy to use, aside from basics, DivX Ultra certification does not help it play some DivX files.
Bottom Line If you need to play PAL discs on an NTSC TV, play computer files and DivX, play media files from a USB drive and have a 1080p display, the DVP5982 is a good choice. If you want an inexpensive basic DVD player that is easy to use and performs well, there are better choices. And if you want the best DivX playback, get the Pioneer DV-400V. 
