Philips DVP5960 and USB

robbtronic · Member Joined: 27 Nov 2007 Location: United States

What's up everyone.

Just got this player today. It has the firmware up to .33, rather than the .29 update on philips' website.

My observations have shown that with a packed bit stream, it shows a slight slight mild stutter, that's easily fixed by unpacking. In fact, I don't even know if it's noticeable unless you're looking for it, but if you are, you can tell it's there.

However, whether it's packed or not, it still stutters on the opening logo screen. Like, the warner bros screen or paramount screen and then it's fine, and that's ONLY on two movies I've seen. I've tested out about 10, and that's the only problem I've seen so far (and it is a mild one). I don't know if it has something to do with the bitrate during those opening logo scenes or what. It's kinda odd, but seeing as how it's not stuttering during the movie, it's not a big deal.

Also, before I got it, I read that it doesn't like snow. I haven't seen any problems with the video during the snow scene in 300.

Both my external hard drive and usb thumb drive work. I have a 2gb pny attache optima thumb drive, and a 160gb western digital external drive hooked up in an iomega enclosure. Both were recognized without a problem.

...oh yeah, picture quality is much much better than I had expected.

acid_burn · Member Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Location: USA

I notice the dislike for snow, during HBO's original program screen where they have snow as part of their affect.

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

om4k · Member Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Location: United States

I have owned this player for about 10months now. I never tried using the USB till now. I tried plugging my external HD but did not work, I have 150GB and 320GB HD. I do not think they are FAT32. I will format later, I tried Corsair 2GB FLash Voyager, it did not work. So I tried SanDisk 512MB Cruzer loaded, the frame Width 624 x 464 Height. So i tried another episode of Entourage W: 512 x 384H. Still it stuttered so much starting the beginning of the show. Plus after player recognizes the USB drive, i hit play, it takes atleast 30-45 seconds to PLAY or start, is this normal? Initially i thought it did not play because I did not know i would have to wait that long. I have VISTA Ultimate, I formatted the Cruzer with FAT32 so many times already. Still does not work properly, it stutters every other second, freezes, sound does not come properly. Any suggestions? One more thing SwissKnife does not work in Vista. So I used CMD or right click the drive, format, selected FAT32. No luck, lots of stutter, u cant even watch a video...
This is from one of the episodes info. which stutters in MPEG4 Modifier File Info.

Packed bitstream: No
QPel: No
GMC: No
Interlaced: No
Aspect ratio: Square pixels
Quant type: H.263
FourCC: XVID
User data: XviD0029

I-VOPs: 462 (1.24%)
P-VOPs: 36679 (98.76%)
B-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)
S-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)
N-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)

Any suggestions? Please Help!

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Do the same files play ok from a DVD?

om4k · Member Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Location: United States

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Well, it sounds like the bitrate is too high. From the USB port, the 5960 starts to sutter whenever the total bitrate gets over ~4000 kbps.

om4k · Member Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Location: United States

I also downloaded "Carlos.Mencia.No.Strings.Attached.DSR.XviD-UMD.avi" from torrent, it works for first minute or two, then audio comes in, the video is stuttering, for Entourage Season 1 Episode 1, video/audio both stutter every couple seconds, I downloaded from Torrent, how do i know if the bitrate is too high, I am tired of burning all the files, I want the USB to work, any suggestions? Is my DVD player bad?

Questions:
1) Does your USB lag when you press Play? Mine takes 45 seconds before it even plays, some files says Reading Index, some do not.
2) SanDisk 512MB Cruzer Micro should be ok with FAT32 for USB?

Info. from DivX Player for:
Carlos.Mencia.No.Strings.Attached.DSR.XviD-UMD.avi
Filename:
D:/carlos mencia no strings attached/Carlos.Mencia.No.Strings.Attached.DSR.XviD-UMD.avi

Video Track #1:
FOURCC: "XVID" (XviD Mpeg-4 Video)
512x384, 29,969999 fps

Audio Track #1:
FormatTag : "85" (MPEG-1 Layer-3 Audio (mp3))
2 channels, 48000Hz
Language: N/A

From MPEG4MODIFIER:
Packed bitstream: No
QPel: No
GMC: No
Interlaced: No
Aspect ratio: Square pixels
Quant type: H.263
FourCC: XVID
User data: XviD0037

I-VOPs: 491 (0.66%)
P-VOPs: 74141 (99.34%)
B-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)
S-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)
N-VOPs: 0 (0.00%)

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

The player does take a while to open files. The time varies, in part, on the size of the file. It took 20 seconds to open a 700 MB (~100 minute) AVI video from my 1 GB thumb drive, 4 seconds to open a 40 MB (5 minute) video.

I suspect your problem is the speed of your thumb drive. It probably has very slow flash memory. Do you have any drive speed diagnostics you can run from windows?

om4k · Member Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Location: United States

om4k · Member Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Location: United States

I forgot to mention, that "Carlos.Mencia.No.Strings.Attached.DSR.XviD-UMD.avi" takes 45 second to actually PLAY. Sometimes you may even think it is not working, but it is, just wait and it will eventually play and in my case, will stutter. Please Help with any suggestions, I'm willing to try anything. Thank you!

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

I suspect the drive speed program you used didn't take into account Windows' file caching so it gave erroneously high read results. But looking at the write rate of only 0.023 MB/sec I suspect the problem is the speed of the flash drive. The speed of flash drives varies. Some, especially older ones, are very slow.

I tried to download the Mencia video but didn't have any luck. The video properties you pointed out don't show any of the usual problematic features (GMC, QPel, packed bitstream). You didn't report the bitrate but my guess is that too high a bitrate is the problem because your thumb drive is too slow.

You can find 1GB thumb drives these days for less than US$10. I recommend you try getting a new drive. Here's an example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208058

Note the read speed of 10 MB/sec and the write speed of 3 MB/sec.

Here's a bigger, faster thumb drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148064

micallen · Member Joined: 20 Nov 2007 Location: United States

OK, I just bought the 5960, and tried to read my thumb drive tonight (PNY 1GB, USB 2.0). It doesn't recognize it. So I read through several of the 21 pages of this thread and can't figure out if there is a fix for being able to use a 2.0 flash drive. I noticed a post suggesting a few thumbs and they were both 2.0.

Can someone recap for me?

Thanks.
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Micallen

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

USB 2.0 isn't a problem. I suspect your thumb drive came with U3 software preinstalled.

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/3121/u3_extends_smart

Remove it, reformat as FAT32, and the drive should work.

micallen · Member Joined: 20 Nov 2007 Location: United States

dvdab · Member Joined: 10 Dec 2007 Location: United States

I have a DVP5960 and an essential 500GB usb hard drive. I formatted it with a FAT32 and it seems to play divx moview fine. The only problem I have run into is that it uses short file names (blabla~1) instead of the full name. When I plug in my jump drive the full name of files shows up. Has anyone figured out a way around this. It gets to be difficult to figure out what's what when you have more than 10 divx movies in one directory.

Thanks

Agria · Member Joined: 11 Dec 2007 Location: Sweden

Hi!

I've been following this thread for over a year now and it was this thread who convinced me into buying a DVP5960 roughly a year ago. I've had no problems with it... until now. The issue I'm having, if I haven't missed something, is new to this thread.
For some time now I have been using 2 memory sticks á 4 GB for watching divx movies and playing mp3s. Both of them have U3 installed by the way, but still work excellent.
Two weeks ago I bought a 500GB (Lacie Porsche) external HDD to backup my old internal ones. However; After backing up stuff I was left with 200 gigs of free space and thought that I'd use it to store movies for the DVP5960.
I split the drive into two partitions. The first is FAT32 at about 45 GB. The second one is the NTSC backup one.

I do as instructed here in this thread. I plug the external power in, then the USB cable and last I power up the DVP5960.
I see the directory tree of the Lacie disc just like i see it on the memory sticks (with 8 letters). But when I click a directory it just takes me back to the root. I can keep doing this until the DVP freezes up.
If I try to play a avi-file directly from the root I end up with the same result - at the root.

I installed the latest firmware for the DVP also.
What do you think causes the confusion?

Thanks!

patrics · Member Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Location: United Kingdom

USB port is designed to easy transportation of images and mp3s. Hardware that supports that port is simple. It has problems with too many files in folders and big amounts of data. You can play videos in that way, however don't expect much. Playing videos through USB is IMO already more than we could expect.
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mencoder -vf scale=720:576 -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid -lameopts preset=256 -xvidencopts fixed_quant=3 BBC_BluePlanet_HD.ts -o blue_planet.avi

robbtronic · Member Joined: 27 Nov 2007 Location: United States

[quote="dvdab"]I have a DVP5960 and an essential 500GB usb hard drive. I formatted it with a FAT32 and it seems to play divx moview fine. The only problem I have run into is that it uses short file names (blabla~1) instead of the full name. When I plug in my jump drive the full name of files shows up. Has anyone figured out a way around this. It gets to be difficult to figure out what's what when you have more than 10 divx movies in one directory.

Thanks[/quote

you can't change the filename setup with usb. i think there's a hack somewhere to do if you're playing the files off a dvd, but not usb.

dvdab · Member Joined: 10 Dec 2007 Location: United States

Thanks for the reply robbtronic. That's a shame. I will keep a list somewhere to decode the names I guess. Do you know why the full name comes up with the jump drive (Verbatim 2GB)?

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

soulfly76 · Member Joined: 21 Dec 2007 Location: Finland

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soulfly76 · Member Joined: 21 Dec 2007 Location: Finland

TBoneit · Member Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Location: USA

Exactly to work it hs to be 1 drive, 1 fat32 partition.

thomem · Member Joined: 10 Dec 2007 Location: United States

Anyone having success with a 2.5 external drive? I have a usb&power splitting cable, a powered mini hub for the usb power and a external enclosure but it will not display the contents of the drive. Powering the external drive has gotten rid of the 'device not supported' but I still don't see the contents of the drive.

thomem · Member Joined: 10 Dec 2007 Location: United States