Philips DVP5990 DVD Player with HDMI, 1080p Upconversion, DivX and USB

When I ordered a TV for my mother's bedroom, I also ordered a receiver and a DVD player. The TV is a 42-inch Panasonic Viera TH-42PX80U, the receiver is Panasonic XR57K and the DVD player is Philips DVP5990.

Although I was tempted to go with the Panasonic DVD-S54 to have an all-Panasonic setup with Viera Link functionality and coordinated colors and design, I wanted something that would play virtually all formats and have a USB port.

I myself have been using the Philips DVP642 DVD player in the past and it excelled at playing DivX, PAL, AVI and MPEG. But the remote control was horrible and the picture quality while playing store-bought DVDs was not the best. It had no HDMI out or USB port. The Philips DVP5960 that I got later was better and improved the standard DVD playback and gave me a decent remote as well as a front USB port. Not to mention DVD up-conversion with an HDMI port. Still, I switched to Pioneer DV-400V later.

This DVP5990 improves on the DVP5960 with USB 2.0, better DivX playback and upconversion up to 1080p. Not that we needed it (the aforementioned TV is a 720p model), but it can upconvert to 720p also.

Features

In addition to DVD-Video and CD-Audio, the player can play DivX, Xvid and JPEG files, MPEG1, VCD, SVCD, MPEG2, MP3, WMA, DivX (3.11, 4.x, 5.x, 6.0, DivX Ultra). You do not need to create a VCD disc structure, just copy the MPEG/AVI files to a CD-R/W or DVD-R/W or DVD+R/W disc and insert it into this player and it will play them. Pretty mach all formats are supported short of DVD-Audio or SACD. And, of course, Blu-Ray or HD DVD would not be supported at this price.

The DVP5990 can play PAL and NTSC discs on a PAL or NTSC TV. It can even convert PAL to NTSC and vice versa. Nice. The progressive scan and the upconversion to 720p, 1080i or even 1080p are also nice features, as is the HDMI out.

The player is DivX Ultra certified. It can also play music, video and JPEG images directly from the USB port (e.g. from a USB flash drive or even a USB-connected hard drive).

Connectivity

The player has only a coaxial digital audio out (no optical). There is also an analog stereo audio out, a composite video out and a component video out (progressive scan/interlaced), but no S-Video. There is also an HDMI out. Pretty much all you need (well, some people might prefer an optical audio out over coaxial; but I personally do not care since I use HDMI). All outs are well-marked and arranged.

The front panel has a USB jack, which you can connect USB drives with media files to and play those files from the drive.

Operation

This DVD player is medium-sized and weighs only 1.4 kg (3 lbs). There are only a few buttons on the front panel: power, eject, play, stop. The display is bright, but is still pretty small in terms of the amount of information it fits. For comparison, the Panasonic displays feature several colors, clear separation of digit groups and more real estate.

The DVP5990 is more intuitive to use than the DVP642. Its remote is much better than the remote control of the DVP642, which had rows and rows of poorly-marked buttons with some buttons having several uses. Although still not as good as Panasonic DVD remotes (which I could use my eyes closed, until the player died from the motor failure, that is), this remote is usable and is definitely more stylish.

The onscreen displays are not as informative or well-designed as the ones of Panasonic or the Pioneer DV-400V, but are better than the DVP642 ones. The player can convert PAL to NTSC rather well. I noticed no jerky movement and the image quality was pretty good.

Picture Quality

I used the player's HDMI out to connect it directly to the 42PX80U 42-inch Panasonic Viera plasma TV. The player was set to upconvert to 720p, which is the TV's native resolution (or close to it). The image quality overall was great. The player played my MPEG and AVI computer files flawlessly. There is a delay before the playback of the each file, but it was pretty short.

The picture quality is excellent and upconversion works really well. It is almost as good as the upconversion of my Toshiba A3 HD DVD player when I play regular DVDs on it. Still, upconversion is no replacement for Blu-Ray or HD DVD. You can still see jagged diagonal lines (stair step), which is especially apparent while watching South Park. You can see that Cartman's mouth is made of individual pixels and upconversion only makes them larger squares.

So is upconversion better than no upconversion? Well, your TV will upconvert any standard-def programming anyway, but if you supply 480i (or even 480p) signal over analog connection from your DVD player, the DVD converts the signal from digital to analog first, then the TV will have to convert it into digital form again and scale it. The result is blurrier image with less detail and depth. A DVD player with an HDMI input can pass the signal in digital form to the TV and even if it is in 480i or 480p format, it is still better than if you used any analog connection: composite, component or S-Video.

I conducted a small test. I took the older Philips DVP642 and connected it to the TV using its component out with 480p progressive scan enabled. I also connected this Philips DVP5990 in the same manner, Finally I connected it using HDMI with 720p upconversion enabled.

The results were remarkably different between the component video (480i/480p) and HDMI upconversion to 720p. The component video and no upconversion produced images that were softer, lacked detail, contrast and produced stairstep artifacts during any motion. The results over S-Video and composite video connections were progressively worse. The result over HDMI using 720p was much, much better. No noise, sharper image with better contrast and colors, no artifacts during camera pans.

Usability

The files can be burned on a CD-R/W or DVD disc of any format (+/- R/W) just as a regular data CD with no VCD structure needed. You can even record AVI and MPG files onto a DVD-R/W or DVD+R/W and the player will play them. Quite useful for downloaded content of any kind.

Overall, I like the fact that it plays PAL on an NTSC TV and plays computer-friendly videos. A great player for people who need to play European DVDs or downloaded videos was improved upon and is now a better choice for ones who also want to play regular DVDs.

The USB port in front accepts flash memory drives that are formatted with FAT32 and plays material from them as well. This is very convenient for several reasons: you don't have to burn whatever you want to play on a CD/DVD (be in videos or music), you can fit a lot on a flash USB drive or a USB hard drive, you get your material faster from computer to TV.

Does It DivX?

Update 05/2009: The player works flawlessly so far. It plays DivX files better than my current universal Pioneer Elite DV-48AV. It plays some discs that the Pioneer refuses to load altoghether and plays some files that stutter on the Pioneer with no issues.

Likes

Low price is a nice thing. Connectivity options, features, PAL playback and conversion to NTSC, computer video file playback. Decent build quality, very good video and sound. HDMI and upconversion up to 1080p, USB 2.0 port, improved DivX playback.

Dislikes

Cheap LCD display, remote could be better, although it plays some files my Pioneer DV-400V refuses to, it does not play some others that my Pioneer plays fine.

Bottom Line

If you need to play PAL discs on an NTSC TV, play computer files (including MP3, WMA, MPEG and AVI) and DivX, or play media files from a USB drive, the DVP5990 is a great choice. And the HDMI port and upconversion at this price are also impressive. But if you just want a DVD player with excellent picture quality and ease of use, you might want to consider the Panasonic DVD-S54 for similar price.