Toshiba SD 780 - DVD player - upscaling Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The region-free hack is poorly executed. Item arrives with a manual in English and, I guess, Russian (not the usual English/Spanish/French). From the start it was incapable of playing from the point stopped after being put on standby. All I could do was write down the minutes and fastforward from the start each time. Later, with no input from me, it set itself to the strictest child setting, so refused to play a rental DVD of the Lost series, instead asking for a password I couldn't possibly guess. Trying anything to get around this, I hit "reset defaults." This done, my HDTV refused to recognize the machine, pleading "Mode unknown." So I left it in my condo lobby with a "free" sign.
The bright side? It's picture output was superb, much better than the 1080p Samsung player I bought to replace it. If only I could find a region hack for the Samsung.


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Sherwood BDP-5004 Blu-ray Disc Player (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)It makes a little noise when loading a disc, So Be It! It takes a little time to load, Oh My! It's tempermental and doesn't want to play discs all the time, Really?!
Let's address the complaints first and then I'll tell you why you need to get this player as soon as possible. First ALL players make noise loading discs and Blu-Ray discs take a while because you are loading up software. If yours doesn't do either of these thing well, Burah! You have a unique player. As for not playing discs all the time, Huh. The only problem I had with playback of my entire library were a couple of imports and I think that was in the mastering.
So now that that's been settled let's get on to all the reasons you should buy this player-----This is a region free Blu-Ray player, PERIOD. I shouldn't have to say anymore than that. Unless you've just had your decapated, cryogenically frozen head thawed out after 20 years, you know all about the region debate. Distibuters have markets and in order to keep those rights DVDs got regionalized. Funny thing though, European players have had the capablility to play NTSC all along and multi-region, while the US has been stuck with our region only. Hmm. You even have a major company like Disney buying up the rights to the domestic distribution of Asian properties and puting a great company like Tai Sung out of business by theatening to sue them into the ground and then not releasing these movies in favor of crummy remakes instead. But I digress.
Foreign special editions have been around forever and I've been region free since players first became available (I even have a VCR that will play PAL tapes) because I just wouldn't settle for what the US companies had to offer. So when an out of the box, region free, PAL - NTSC converter Blu-Ray player hit the market, I got it. Yes I did wait to see if the price dropped and it did, still dropping as far as I can tell.
There are only two features missing from this player that would want them to fix: Zoom and playback from last point in movie when you turn it off. That's it! These aren't a major concern and I don't miss them that much. Everything else is outstanding. Upconverting DVDs so they are sharper, an easy to use set up menu and Region Free.
And about the region free feature, here is the skinny. It will play DVDs from all regions and also convert PAL to NTSC. My Malata would too but had some problem with progressive scan so that moire and edge jumping was common. Not so here, seemless conversion most of the time. Just two DVD had problems, Eureka's M SE and MGM's Moonstruck. The latter will not play in the correct ratio, it squeezes it to full screen no matter what setting. Like I said, it's got to be in the discs, not the player. I haven't any "B" or "C" region Blu-Rays yet but look forward to it. If you appreciate World Cinema you have just been handed it.
Now how to make this region free. You will have to program it and it reverts back to "A" region on Blu-Rays when you turn it off, but the programing stays for the DVD.
Codes are:
8751+0+1 is all DVD and "A" Blu-Ray regions
8751+0+2 is all DVD and "B" Blu-Ray regions
8751+0+3 is all DVD and "C" Blu-Ray regions
8751 is the program, the first number after is the DVD region and the second is the Blu-Ray. You can set to play all region DVDs by putting in a 0 after 8751 but need to specify the Blu-Ray region. And like I said, the Blu-Ray will default back to "A" (that's us) but DVDs will stay. There are, however, DVD that demand you have it set up for that region. Had a Disney refuse to play until I set it to "1" (once again, that's us) and a Japanese disc to "2". You have to have the tray empty and closed to input the code.
An alternate code is 9735 before the regions. They both work.
Maybe I come off as a little harsh but when you're handed the world and complain about it I don't think you deserve it. A little too hot, a little too cold. Hey, Goldilocks, stop your sobbing! Kick back, relax and save the complaining for your cel phone provider.

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Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)To go along with my HDTV, I decided that I needed to upgrade my DVD player. While my Insignia DVD Recorder/VCR didn't look awful, it certainly didn't look good. And while the quality of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are definitely impressive, the on-going format war combined with the cost made those players inviable options.
Enter the market of upconverting DVD players. These players, which take your standard 480i DVDs and scale them to high-definition resolutions are as common as regular DVD players these days. Places like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, are full of them. I've actually owned two of them.
I started with the highly-touted Sony DVP-NS75H which is truly a great machine. It has a great design and a super picture quality. Sadly, it only upconverted to 720p or 1080i, not 1080p as my set is capable of. While I'd like to think that I'm not a total videophile, I noticed some of the ghosting and artifacts that interlaced video can expose when put on a big screen. Despite the claim of my HD monitor to do de-interlacing, I was finding that it didn't do an especially good job.
Enter the Philips DVP5982. Based on Philips well-received 5960 the 5982 adds support for 1080p output as well as improved USB compatibility. I returned the Sony, picked this one up, and set it up. Here are some of my observations:
The basics:
The DVP5982 is a basic upconverting player that you can get for around $70. It includes an HDMI output for upconverting along with coaxial digital audio outputs, plus the standard analog outputs (component, s-video, composite, and stereo audio). There is no upconverting over the component outputs however. It supports DivX file playback (as long as they're standard resolution and not too large) over USB from a FAT32 formatted device. The menu system on the 5982 is a bit archaic and hard to read, but it's manageable.
What I Like:
- True 1080p output. I was suspect of whether the 1080p output would make any visible difference over the 1080i of the Sony. I was wrong, the 1080p output made a huge difference in certain troublesome scenes from movies. I had noticed with the Sony that whenever there was a light or white background (such as a white wall or the sky) and there was motion in front of it, there were artifacts left all over the screen. In the same way, motion scenes would blur and leaving ghostly lines on the screen. Those problems are largely gone with the Philips.
- DivX playback. I have a 160GB hard drive attached to the USB and loaded onto their I have various movies that I've captured onto my computer from my cable dvr. Rather than burning all of these onto DVD or having to hook my computer up to the TV to watch them, I can just transfer them onto this hard drive and hook them up to my DVD player and they play. Pretty much every file I've thrown at it has played no problem (but I don't have any DivX HD files). The only exception was some movies that were encoded at incredibly high data rates. Even then, for the occasional really large or really high data rate file you can put it onto a DVD in DivX format and play it from the player.
- Image Quality - although its not as good as the Sony with some adjustment to my tv settings the image quality is still very good. There is some minor pinching
What I don't like
- Audio Output - this machine will either output over the HDMI cable OR the digital coaxial out - but not both at the same time. This really is only a minor problem, but it can make things more complicated than they need to be
- The Disc Tray - The tray feels kind of floppy and cheap
- The Menu System - Simply put, it's awful. Once you figure out the fonts and how it works, it makes sense, but the visual appearance really leaves something to be desired.
- The Image Quality - As I said above, it's not quite on par with the Sony, although the elimination of the ghosting and artifacts make it a worthwhile trade off.
The Summary:
Well, seldom am I so glad I spent $70 on something. Some minor inconveniences aside, for the price you cannot beat this player if you're looking for 1080p (or want to future-proof you DVD player). I feel very comfortable waiting out the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle with this player attached to my HDTV - DVDs look fantastic. The DivX playback, while somewhat limited by what USB devices can be attached, is a really nice added feature. But for me it was the combination of price and 1080p playback that convinced me - and I haven't been disappointed.

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