Philips DVP5900/37 DVD Player with Divx
Excellent player, much better than Philips 642 and Toshiba 4980
I purchased this player mainly for playing DivX/Xvid movies. I had Philips 642, which had very limited DivX capability and poor picture quality. Then I tried Toshiba 4980. It was an excellent player with very slim compact body. It could play everything with very good picture quality, but the remote frequently locked up and that frustrated me. Then, I found philips 5900 and decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. It plays everything I throw and the picture quality is very good. Based on its way of handling DivX movies, I think this player is armed with Zoran Vaddis chipset, the same as Toshiba 4980, although I could not find any chipset data online as of now. I am very happy with it's DivX capability. It played all the DivX movies (standard definition, i.e. less than 720x576 resolution) I have without a glitch. Subtitle support was excellent, too. I don't have remote lock-up problem of the Toshiba player, and I don't have any problems with music CD some reviewers reported. The only complain I have is it does not play DivX movies with higher resolution than 720x576. Although this is the Zoran chipset limitation, I am a little disappointed because I have a 800x336 movie that my old 642 could play without a problem, but this player displays a large green noise bar on right with any movies that exceeds the specified resolution. However, this palyer can paly alla the movies my old 642 could not handle properly. Overall, I'm very happy with this player. FYI, I am not using HDMI output. I'm using only component output.