Need another Philips USB Divx Player

[s-toon]

Hello, I have a Philips DVP 5990/37 and would love to have another philips dvd player that can do as much as that one. I preffer to be able to go out and buy it like at Best Buy instead of having to order online. Just wondering what new models philips have that are as good or better then the dvp 5990 that I could go out and buy.

I have the 5990 in the living room and would love to get another one like it for the master bedroom.

thanks,

[jagabo]

Maybe the Philips 3560?

[dfisher052]

the 3560. I use the USB to play avi's all the time. Works great.

[victoriabears]

I do not share your reluctance to buy on line, but I looked at Besy buy.com for the USA and they do not sell the Pioneer 420V I would currently recommend-although you have to hack it to make it region free.

Dvd players are going the way of the dodo as blu ray players can play both and are becoming cheaper.

If you can overcome your on line purchase bias, I would go this route:-

http://www.bombayelectronics.com/Pioneer_DV610AV_K_Multi_Region_DVD_Player_p/pi_dv610avk.htm

[Noahtuck]

The one you linked to say's it's region free so why would you need to hack it ?

Or are you talking about just the 420v ?

[jagabo]

Because the one you get at bestbuy won't be region free.

[s-toon]

Thanks,

I really have nothing against buying online, its just that for example, right now im at work, as soon as i get out of work I could head out to Best Buy and buy it, and im done. I wont have to wait for it to come in. Im not saying im going to be doing that today. But chances are probly be going to Best Buy somtime by the end of the week.

Yes, i too mainly use it to play avi files from the usb. Right now I have just bought me a WD 2TB External Hard Drive. I will be putting everything I have from movies, tv shows, cartoons, to anime on it that I have burned to dvd's. I use to have 1TB hdd but droped it one too many times and it died. Lucky for me, I had everything burned to dvd's.

[jagabo]

Right now I have just bought me a WD 2TB External Hard Drive. I will be putting everything I have from movies, tv shows, cartoons, to anime on it that I have burned to dvd's.

Then just get a WDTV Live Plus, Seagate FreeAgent, Asus O!Play, or some other media player. They'll play a wider range of formats better than most DVD/Blu-ray players.

[MilesAhead]

I have 1st gen WDTV player for USB. As far as I know Philips still has the restriction that you can't play avi/divx larger than 720x576 DVD PAL standard. For SD the USB port is convenient for sticking in a USB key. But I also believe it won't recognize NTFS. I'm pretty sure the drive has to be formatted FAT32. Not the best for large drives. Also if you are not going to use network input as the main source, but a HD it's much more convenient to use a USB 2.0 docking station. I have a BlacX permanently hooked up to my WD. I use the more economical WD 1 TB 6 Gb/s internal HD plugged into the dock. I have USB 3.0 docking stations on my PC. I do whatever format manipulations and subtitle work I need, then copy to the drive in the USB 3.0 dock at full speed. When I'm ready to watch I pull the HD out of the dock and slide it into the dock hooked to the WD. No unplugging wires. Instead of killing the power to an external drive, just hit the power button on the dock.

WD have their own quirks but for the money it plays a lot of formats. It will play HD avi files the Philips won't touch. SD avi will be upscaled to HD if you are connected to HDTV via HDMI cable.

edit: I don't know how much the external WD drives are going for these days. But the internal 1 TB WD I get from an online discount house at less than $100 each. If you have USB 3.0 on your PC they are great for muxing too. I can read large files off at about 138 MB/s on my quad core. Of course it depends what kind of USB 3.0 you have. I have USB 3.0 PCI express card and drives hooked to it are faster than my system drive.

(Provided of course the drive is plugged into a USB 3.0 docking station.)

[jagabo]

You can get 2 TB WD (and other brand) external USB 2.0 drives for about US$90 if you watch the sales. Our local Fry's ad shows the WD Elements USB 2.0 2TB drive for $89.99 today. Example:
http://newspaperads.mercurynews.com/ROP/ads.aspx?adid=10627500&advid=32664&type=

[deadmeow]

I used Philips DVD players for a long time, to watch divx/xvid movies. I went through 3 different models through the last 8 years or so, and each newer model was a little bit better than the last one. I think any model Philips you buy will probably work well.

As an earlier post mentioned, you may wish to buy a media player (asus, wd, etc), as you can play a wider variety of files on these.

[s-toon]

If I had an hdtv I would probably be doing the same as you guys mention. Right now I have an older TV, it is 48" widescreen JVC TV. Nothing speciall, but do like it. An avi file at 624x352 looks really good on it, so right now don't really matter if I can get a better video avi file as you won't be able to tell the difference on my tv.

When I bought my Philips 5990 at walmart it was about $60-70 i think it was, bought it awhile back. Anyway, was thinking could do the same with another philips dvd player, just go out and buy it someplace and be done, and just enjoy it watching stuff on it. I love the usb as I don't have to be going looking for a dvd of a movie i burned. I can just scroll and find it on the hard drive. But I also do back up everything on a dvd, just to be safe.

One more thing, I don't even use it to play dvd's anymore. Mostly use the usb. I have not bought a dvd and played it on my philips 5990 in a very long time. Usually just get movies that I know are dvdrip and they look great.

Thanks,

[jagabo]

I've seen some of the standalone media player selling for as little as US$50 as refurbs.

Here's a WDTV (if you don't need networking) refurb for US$60 today.
http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-wdtv-hd-media-player-usb-2-0-hdmi-composite-a-...209975073.html

[s-toon]

Does the WDTV HD Media Player have a folder and files limit like the Philips 5990, not that I have reached the limit but just curios. If not that would be great, might just end up getting one.

[jagabo]

Does the WDTV HD Media Player have a folder and files limit like the Philips 5990

Not that I know of. Or, if it does, it's very high since I haven't run into it. Once you have lots of files you want to have some kind of organization so you don't have to scroll through lists of hundreds of files to find what you want. I separate movies into folders by the first letter of the name. For example:

\movies\A-B\...
\movies\C-D\...
...
\movies\Y-Z\...

Note that the FAT file system (if you use that) has a limit on the number of files in the root directory. The WDTV series can read NTFS.

[handyguy]

Philips USB ports are upside down & it's HDMI ports are in the front. Weird. Also subs tend to drop out several times. But I still use mine now & then but prefer a Seagate FreeAgent Theater+, as it comes with Internet Apps, Netflix, Connects to File Servers & has a HD dock on it. I just convert dvds to file & put on HD. easy.

[s-toon]

Thanks, but one thing too is that i like how I am also able to playe the avi files i burn to a dvd. I asked before if this was possible with WDTV here https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/325674-WDTV-question?p=2016813&highlight=s-toon#post2016813 didn't really look much into it after that but now that im looking, it seems that I would have to do some hacking to it. I burn all avi files I have to dvd as back up and Im glad I have been doing that cus when my 1tb HDD died I would of lost everything, and I was still able to watch anything I wanted, after burning it to dvd, just put the dvd in and press play.

Would be sweet if there was a WDTV that could also play dvds from factory.

[jagabo]

The WDTV devices don't play files from DVDs unless you use hacked firmware and an external USB DVD drive.

[s-toon]

Might just go with the Philips 3560 for now. But would be great if you could point me in the right direction as to where I could get some info on getting the hacked firmware for the wdtv to play files from dvd's and I could also ask some more questions there.

Thanks,

[jagabo]

Might just go with the Philips 3560 for now. But would be great if you could point me in the right direction as to where I could get some info on getting the hacked firmware for the wdtv to play files from dvd's

http://b-rad.cc/

Also check out the various AvsForums for different players:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=39

[MilesAhead]

My biggest gripe with 1st gen WD player is it doesn't have a Page Down. If I have 20 episodes of a show in a folder and I want to watch ep 10 I pretty much have to hit the button 10 times no matter which direction I come from.

I don't know if you can get them anymore but I got a 27" Wega Sony HDTV for less than $600 new. It's CRT but it has 1080i 720P and 480P resolution plus 16x9 mode. The picture isn't that big but with small pixels even upscaled avi looks great. x264 is awesome.

It only has one HDMI input but 2 component inputs. I have Philips 5990 DVD player and if I input to the TV using component the TV upconverts to HD. If I input using HDMI the player does the job. I can't tell the difference so I use the HDMI input for the WD box.

As for playing video off DVD using WD box I haven't tried the firmware/USB DVD player route. I just drag & drop the files from the DVD onto a WD HD in a docking station. Then I plug it into the dock hooked to the WD. You can get bargains on slow WD drives these days, 32 MB cache Sata 3 Gb/s but you can get a lot more than storage out of your drives if you get the Sata 64 MB cache 6 Gb/s drives. The 1 TB models often sell for around the same price as the 32 MB cache older models that are being phased out.

It's a lot more fun copying file on to watch on WD box when you can copy them on at 100+ MB/s than having to wait around. USB 3.0 should start getting cheap, at least for the docks. The PCI express cards may run you $40 or $50 for 2 ports. On my PCs it's 5 times faster than USB 2.0 though. No comparison.

[deadmeow]

The Asus O!play does play DVD's (with an external dvd drive), and it will play DVD ISO's with full menu support. And this is something you can use with your CRT television for now, and then continue to use whenever you finally upgrade to HD TV, as I did.

[MilesAhead]

The Asus O!play does play DVD's (with an external dvd drive), and it will play DVD ISO's with full menu support. And this is something you can use with your CRT television for now, and then continue to use whenever you finally upgrade to HD TV, as I did.

Looks like a nice player. But I didn't see a mention of DTS audio in the specs. So still stuck down mixing manually to AC3?

[jagabo]

The Asus O!play

I didn't see a mention of DTS audio in the specs.

Amazon says it can bitstream or downmix DTS:
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Play-Media-Player-Black/dp/B002MCZJ3C

Bitstream or decode Dolby Digital and DTS Surround audio

[MilesAhead]

Guess I didn't see DTS at the end of the line on the manufacturer's page:

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=sPkRGUeRrpiVYl5K&templete=2

[handyguy]

My FreeAgent remembers where I was in any film I watch & it does that even if I turn it off or take the HD from it & put it back. Takes about 3 seconds to change from first file to second & it remembers subtitle selection.

[jman98]

The WDTV devices don't play files from DVDs unless you use hacked firmware and an external USB DVD drive.

Getting this to work is tricky. While I use the hacked firmware and it works fine I've tried several different types of external USB DVD drives and I've never gotten any of them to be recognized by the player. Even the notes on the firmware say that not all DVD drives will work. And for the record I do know about the requirement to use another USB device on the other USB port at the same time you try to make the USB DVD drive work.

[jagabo]

The WDTV devices don't play files from DVDs unless you use hacked firmware and an external USB DVD drive.

Getting this to work is tricky.

I've never tried it myself. So the WDTV isn't accessing the drive at all? You can't even see a disc full of Divx files or JPEG images?

[MilesAhead]

Web search should turn up a dedicated WD forum hosted by WD. Maybe someone on there has a step by step to kludge it.

[jntaylor63]

Why not look at getting a Blu-Ray player that supports Divx?

I have an LG that plays Divx, MP4, AVI, MKV-HD and Divx Plus-HD. (One of the few that can also Play 5.1 AAC)

You can burn them to disc of play off a hard drive formtted in FAT32 or NTFS.