Philips DVP5990 DVD-Player

Introduction
Philips DVD players often generate a great deal of internet dialog. The reasons are clear: [1] Philips is a name that has been known in audio and video for many decades; [2] The company played an enormous role in the creation and introduction of digital media; [3] Philips DVD players continue to be innovative, always introducing features often unavailable elsewhere, and for the last number of years, at absurdly low prices. The low prices constitute a benefit and a problem: the benefit is that it enables a huge number of buyers to acquire these products and invites retailers to carry them; the problem is that such low prices also engender very spotty quality control. On Amazon's site, Best Buy's, or more tech-oriented sites like AVS Forum, we read literally hundreds of reviews, and while many are glowing, many also indicate design flaws in common, units that stopped working prematurely or were DOA out of the box. It is true that all manufacturers have their share of "lemons"; but Philips seems to make decisions too hastily, compromising their products' expected operation, and the number of reported lemons is unsettling. Moreover, the engineering department doesn't seem to communicate with the Chinese firm assembling the units or the departments writing the literature; the divergences are wide and leave the user to uncover points of operation on his or her own that are absent from owner's manuals and of which Philips Customer Service--even technical CS--is unaware.

A case in point is the latest DVD player, model DVP5990 (marketed as the 5992 by Costco, a two-digit subsidiary number indicating national market: e.g., the US version is generally the DVP5990/37). Introduced in the middle of 2008, the 5990 is touted as a player that will upconvert to resolutions as high as 1080p via its HDMI output (though, of course, it will not play actual HD sources), also being able to play almost every sort of media there is, from DivX Ultra to media files in a USB port (supported by the new USB 2.0 firmware--an improvement over the 1.1 version in the earlier DVP5982), and is capable of playing either NTSC or PAL discs (and easily made region-free). From the list of its capabilities, this is the ultimate player--and for under $60 in most cases. But it is the subtleties of design and performance, both good and bad, that the user must discover and decide whether they substantively add to or detract from this player's desirability.

Description
The Philips DVP5990 has two physical appearances: in black, and, as the 5992, with silver-colored trim. It remembers disc location for stopping and re-starting, even when a disc is removed and the player is off. The memory applies to ten discs, and is a very useful feature, but see below for a glitch in this function. The readout on the player is nicely informative, listing both total elapsed time and chapter number for DVDs and CDs. Within the display menu, one can select a time-remaining option for the disc or the chapter, which then shows up on the unit's front readout display. The irritiation is that access to alternate timing information is buried two layers down within the display menu, a large opaque gray rectangle that obscures the picture. Checking such alternate data during play is therefore disruptive; yet that is the only moment when one would want it. Philips makes some slight compensation by showing the screen in miniature above the display menu during selection of these options. For CDs, one can only view the time elapsed per track and the track number.

Performance
The same frustration experienced with selecting time, title, and chapter options extends to many options: everything must be accessed through the screen-filling, opaque set-up menu. Video has four settings, including "personal," where the user can individually adjust for brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness; but with the picture obscured by the menu, it becomes a guessing game. I observe that "sharpness" is operative in component mode, which, by definition, should have no edge-enhancement characteristic; purists will certainly be put off. Moreover, many find even the zero-level sharpness to be edgy in component mode, and that reducing the level makes the picture blurry; a satisfactory happy medium is not always possible. I found the picture to be satisfyingly crisp, but did note some jagged edges, especially on subtitles, surprising in component mode. The sharpness function has no effect on the HDMI output. The factory video adjustment is unsatisfactory for CRT TVs--two of which I was using: it is color-saturated, and so dark that details are lost. Clearly, it is intended for newer TV types, so the ability to personalize the settings in the player itself are crucial. In fact, even with its seductively rich image as well as brightness and contrast increased in the personal settings to abnormally high levels, shadow detail is nearly impossible to obtain fully in component (or grainy composite) video. The image is greatly improved, as it should be, by the use of HDMI connection; but of course, those with TVs that only have 480i or 480p resolutions reap no benefit. I should also note that HDMI and high resolutions like 720p and up do *not* support closed captions on DVDs, so for hearing-impaired viewers, HD is not such a good thing. As I noted, the ten-disc memory has a glitch. If a DVD is encoded to go into "jacket" mode (showing the front cover of the box) upon stopping, it confuses the player if you then turn it off. Powering back on will not start the DVD from the previous spot but shows a blurred jacket image in the wrong aspect ratio with distorted sound from the disc's opening (the studio opening logo). Pressing play/pause just pauses it. It's a typical Philips engineering error, but there are several workarounds not mentioned in the booklets. When the distorted jacket photo appears, press any of the direction-arrow keys and functioning will begin from where one left off; however, as these keys have their own uses, these will begin: e.g., > will take you to the next chapter, or >> will start to scan at 2x. You must then press play to start from wher these functions leave you. I have found the best key to choose is the downward arrow, as that is backward slow-motion: after clicking that, just hit play immediately and things will resume normally from where you left off. Fortunately, this weird, true-to-form Philips anomaly only occurs with DVDs that have encoded jacket photos. It is also a problem with the others in the current Philips line: DVP3962, DVP3982.

Audio performance is surprisingly mediocre. A host of cheap, nonsensical "3D" echo effects with names like "church" and "theatre" should be avoided, and the basic sound has two flaws when simply connected to a stereo TV: the audio level is very low, and the upper frequencies are attenuated so the sound is muddy. I note that buried in the "General" set-up menu tab, there is a volume control. Yet this is set, by default, to its maximum position; with such quiet maximum sound, one would hardly wish any less. The "volume" control on the remote, like the channel up- and down keys, is intended only for Philips TVs and has no effect on the player. There are several audio modes besides the "3D" options: along with "standard," we get such things as "sci-fi," "action," "drama," and "concert." These alter the sound's EQ and increase the volume slightly, but they merely throw the muffled overall quality of the audio into relief. Philips would have done well to eliminate all these useless audio tricks and simply supplied balanced, transparent sound, and a "dialog expander"--as the dialog track is often quieter than everything else on DVDs. The DVP5990 also has a feature that can resynchronize audio and video on discs where the player finds synchronization a problem--a strange feature, as I would consider that if a player or a disc has such a problem, it should be returned. And again, because the opaque menu must be displayed to use it, it becomes a hit-or-miss affair.

On the plus side, the DVP5990 can play virtually any recorded format, including the European/Australian PAL video standard. There is also a simple method of making the player region-free, as has been the case with virtually every Philips player. One can play .avi video files with the DivX function automatically; here, of course, chapters do not appear and this player has the benefit of a far faster scan feature than its predecessors. One should note that DivX files recorded in HD resolutions are not supported by the upconversion feature; as stated, no actual HD material recorded in any medium can be played. The DVP5990 also has a USB port so that FAT32-formatted files recorded on a flash drive (memory stick) and external hard-drives can also be played. One can even encode audio files into mp3 format on the player itself and save them on the inserted flash drive, a very flexible player, indeed. The DivX feature has been upgraded, and compressed formats play more consistently; "scan" on these files has also been improved by an increase from an 8x top speed on the 5982 to 32x on the 5990 (analogous to the improvement in scan speed for ordinary DVDs between the 642 and its successors). The player can play up to ten discs starting from the point at which they were last stopped and removed. But if a disc is left in the player and it is allowed to shut itself off, it will forget where it was in the disc, and start from the beginning when turned back on. It's ironic that the player (and all the current Philips players) will remember where to begin only if the disc has been removed: this is the reverse of what is normally expected, another engineering glitch.

Surprises
The people who design these players evidently are not much involved in the published descriptions of how they actually function as presented in the booklets; neither does anyone seem to inform Philips customer service or tech personnel, who are blissfully unaware of the player's various abilities and anomalies. An interesting example, with a happy result, is that the 5990 supports the frame-by-frame advance feature, though the manual makes no mention of it and Philps personnel deny that it exists. The history of this feature on Philips decks is worth recounting. The old model 642 had separate buttons for play and pause--as do most players; as is typical, one could press the pause button repeatedly, each time advancing the image one frame. After the 642, Philips combined play and pause into one button, so most people thought they had cost-cut the rather essential frame-advance feature. In fact, they did not--but without telling anyone. In the 5990 and its predecessor the 5982, frame-advance is accomplished in the pause mode by pressing the downward arrow repeatedly. Another egregious omission is advising the user that the skip and scan keys are now the same, and one can only scan by holding << or >> buttons down until the image starts moving quickly, a cumbersome procedure. While it does what the manual states, a much easier method, not noted in the manual or known by Philips CS, is using the < and > keys (two of the north-south-east-west-pointing keys) to scan, and retaining the << and >> keys only for skipping to the following chapters. While it was a relief to learn these things either second-hand or by trial and error, correct information supplied by the manual and/or Philips personnel would have been helpful, time-saving, and professional.

While the above were some of the pleasant surprises (however unnecessary the "surprise" element), there are quite a few considerably less agreeable discoveries. When playing photo files--jpg files--either from a disc or on a flash drive through the USB port, the player automatically starts a slide-show of the files in sequence. Worse, the photos do not show up fully formed, but unfurl slowly from the top down over the previous photo on the screen as "wipes." There is no setting to alter this process, and it makes photo viewing unappealing. Moreover, the quality of photo reproduction, however high the quality of the picture file, is very poor indeed: grainy, discolored, and full of artifacts. The photo-viewing feature, so common and generally more than adequate in DVD players for five years, is essentially unusable here. Another nasty surprise goes to the very core of the player's reason for existing. When using HDMI to upconvert, there are several problems. One must choose HDMI sound. If one attempts to use 5.1 digital sound with HDMI video, somehow it interfaces with the chapter-skip function, inserting a 3-second silence after a selected new chapter is begun. Moreover, there is an engineering problem that many experience a few weeks or months into using the DVP5990 with HDMI: the screen turns pink or orange; it develops lines and other anomalies; or sometimes the audio disappears. Reportedly, one of the color channels in the HDMI connection is inherently defective. Frequently, powering off and back on takes care of these things, but that such an interruption should be necessary indicates unpardonable engineering carelessness--and it has not been addressed, to my knowledge, in the frequent downloadable firmware corrections available on the Philips web site.

My player
My own experience with the DVP5990 was very frustrating. I do not have HDMI capability so I was unaware of possible problems in that area--though they could very well have existed, making for an unappealing future revelation. But the muffled audio was very problematic. In the past, DVD players had "dialog expanders" to help with the problem of inferior TV sound--which was, in fact, far better on older CRT TVs than any LCDs or plasmas: at least, the resonating cavity for the small speakers acted as amplifiers. Now, with compromised sound coming from both player and slim, case-free flat-screen TVs, it seems likely that the industry is pressuring consumers into acquiring expensive audio gear, making nonsense of compact equipment in the first place--an initial selling point of slim players and flat-panel TVs. I was also conflicted about the lush but ultimately dishonest video output of the DVP5990; as indicated, and like most LCD TVs, shadow detail is lost in a wash of seductively rich color in the larger images. The jpg "wipes" in the mandatory slide-show of consecutive poor-looking images completely undermines the photo function, as indicated. I found the remote to be well thought-out in terms of button placement but their functions on unlit black buttons against the remote's a black surface could be difficult to discern; moreover, the buttons are nearly flush with the remote, so pressing them is difficult, and often repeated pressing is necessary to yield results; the remote's aim at the player has to be pretty narrowly targeted as well. I was pleased with the number of things the remote could do with relatively easy access, and the fact that, although the on-screen display could not be switched off (as on my 2003 Toshiba SD-1800), at least the symbols on-screen were small and lasted a short time (though having the " symbol super-imposed over a paused image is always annoying). The PAL compatibility and easily obtained region-freedom were the most welcome assets of this player, and with so few players--and none in this price range--offering such advantages, they make the DVP5990 attractive. Regrettably, my unit was a victim of Philips quality control. After a week, loud static appeared intermittently in the left audio channel. I returned the player and didn't want to risk exchanging it for another. It can always be re-bought. It would be very complicated either to recommend this player or not. One has to weigh its numerous advantages against its equally numerous liabilities, engineering anomalies, and quality-control issues. What's genuinely unfortunate is that, as discussed in a New York Times article late last year, Philips will have divested itself of home media altogether by January 1, 2009; they were planning to license the Philips name to the truly inferior Funai company which will henceforth assemble and market products under that name. The DVP5990 and the other few currently produced (like the DVP3962 and DVP3982) could therefore be the last players actually designed by Philips.
---Robert E. Seletsky