Philips DVP5960/37 and lost remote

[elgalan]

My little one tossed the remote in the trash and I put it out to the curb. She thought it was funny the next day when I asked her where it was, she walked me over to the trash and pointed. There was a new trash bag in the can. "All gone!, hee hee hee" were her exact words.

So now here is the question. I have seen replacement remotes online but the sites all look shady. Does anyone recommend a site for a replacement, or should I go with a universal remote? If so, which one does the group recommend?

[Bodyslide]

Replacement remote from Philips $20.00 and will be avail in Feb 07..

https://www.ceusasupport.philips.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogI...1=996500035359

[elgalan]

Urghh, long time to wait. Can you program the usb button into a universal remote?

[handyguy]

Mine reads the usb port if there is no disk in the drive.

As a matter of fact, my 642 remote can also control my 5960.... (no usb selection though )

[MozartMan]

I use Sony RM-VL600 learning remote to control my

Phillips 642 DVD player
Motorola HD-DVR
Hitachi TV
Sony A/V amp/receiver

And it is only $25.

Here is review: http://www.remotecentral.com/vl600/index.html

[Squash]

@Mozartman:
Thanks for the heads up on the remote. After reading the glowing reviews I picked one up last night. I like it so much I'm going to get another one to put up for when I break/lose the first one. Very easy to program; one touch on the DVD button and it changes the input on my TV from component to HDMI and starts controlling the DVD player. Works great with my TV and my over-the-air digital tuner, too. Also learns very well and easily.

@elgalan:
Ah, the joys of parenthood.

I have a 5960 and the VL600 does work with the 5960 (code 0012) out of the box with certain exceptions, such as the USB button. handyguy's USB workaround is good and ithas worked for me before when I misplaced the remote. It was easy to teach the USB command to the VL600, though, and that works very well. You also have to teach it the "subtitle" function for AVIs. I also could not find a way to bring up the "setup" screen without teaching it. Don't know how much you use those so may not be much of a problem. The "next" and "prev" buttons, >| and |<, needed changing too so I learned over them from the original. There may be other things I haven't run into yet but if there are they're nothing major. There's plenty of buttons that don't do anything that you can use for your learned functions.

One weird thing: a couple of the functions wouldn't toggle; for instance, hit the USB button twice and it should toggle back and forth between disc menu and USB menu, but it didn't. I got around this by teaching the same signal to another button, then the 2 buttons worked as the one should have. The same thing with the "setup" button. It would bring up the menu but would not shut it down, so I did an additional button for it, too. And the "next" button for skipping to the next chapter or AVI would only work once. Later I was experimenting and found that you can fix these glitches and get one button to work by hitting the right-arrow (play/pause) button between hits and this would restore toggle functionality to one button: USB-Pause-USB would cycle the menus, "next"-Pause-"next" would advance chapters normally, etc. So I cleared out the buttons I'd wasted. Pretty much anything I taught it wouldn't toggle till I stumbled on the workaround.

Anyway, I'd recommend this unit to you if you don't want to wait till the end of February to order one. It will work right out of the box for basic playback, both DVD and USB. If you have access to a 5960 remote then the VL600 is a 100% functional replacement for it. Ideally maybe you could call up Circuit City, tell them you bought yours there and could they let you borrow a open-box remo in-store for a few minutes while you copy a few codes, or maybe you can find someone who's got one (by the way, the 5140 remote would work as well; the "mute" button on it puts out the same signal as the "USB" button on the 5960 remote, and the setup command is the same as the 5960's).

If you want I could loan you mine. I've got a backup now. PM me if you need it. It'll be Wednesday before I could get it in the mail due to the national day of mourning, but I'm centrally located in the U.S. so probably wouldn't take long to get there.

The local Circuit City and Walmart have them on the rack, don't know about Best Buy, I didn't look there. $25 at either place.

Damn I've written a book here. I quit. Happy New Year. Good luck.

[litmus]

Bump

My 5960 remote died this morning. I see that the remote is not readily available from the Philips website anymore.

Can anyone recommend a universal remote that would not require learning from the old remote as per Squash's description?

Since the old remote no longer works I can not easily use the "Learn" function.

[Squash]

I don't know of any universal remote that will work 100% out of the box for the 5960, but there's a good chance I wouldn't know if there was. As I said above, the VL600 will work about 80% using the programming code.

Philips remotes seem to be very compatible between models. The remote for my old Philips 642 and 5140 players also control the 5960, even down to minor things like subtitle controls and zooming. The "mute" button on the 5140 switches USB on the 5960; they're located in corresponding places on the units. And there's always the manual way to switch to USB (don't have a DVD in the tray). So if you can find a remote for one of those players, and probably the newer 5982 or 3960 as well, on ebay or somewhere, you could use those, or borrow one from somebody to teach the codes to a remote such as the VL600.

One problem with teaching Philips remote codes to a universal remote is that Philips often uses toggle bits for many of the functions (see the problems I described in my previous post). After I posted the above I learned how to teach more than one function to a key, so that I could reproduce toggling with only one key press. This is possible with the VL600 because it has a 250 bit command length (vs. 20 to 30 on most other universals). Most commands are 8 to 24 bits long, so you can cram more than one command into a single key on the VL600. Basically you teach the command then very quickly enter a non-functional button command and this will reset the toggle.

That function (multi-commands) is not mentioned in the VL600 manual but there's a description of the procedure in the review linked to from MozartMan's link above. The reviewer calls it "micro macros" and it takes practice to get the hang of it. Precise timing is critical. All this by way of saying that your average universal remote is going to have a lot of trouble controlling a 5960 very well.

I saw some 5960s on the shelf a few weeks ago (probably Walmart or Target) so I guess they're still around. One option would be to buy one, keep it for a few days, teach the codes to a VL600 ($25 at Walmart or Circuit City, if you're in the U.S.), then take it back and get a refund. Tell them your TV connectors don't match up or something, the clerk won't know any better. The 5982 or 3960 models would probably work, too (they have the same region-code hack as the 5960, and they both use MediaTek chips). The 3960 is $40 at Walmart, so wouldn't cost much more than a VL600 remote.

[Krispy Kritter]

Check out the Logitech Harmony line of remotes. They all support most IR based hardware and if not, they are learning capable.