Philips DVP5140 DVD Player

I am not a techie when it comes to DVD players. I know that this DVD player is a 12 bit player (as opposed to a 10 bit player) and that it has some very impressive stats for a $50 DVD player. However, if you're looking for a techie review, this isn't on of those.

When my wife and I got married, I inherited three DVD players from her that were trash. They were made by obscure names like Trutech and Cyberhome. In short order we went from three DVD players to none. Suddenly we were in the market for a DVD player. We are young and broke, so we needed something functional and reliable for little dinero. The brands I usually steer clear of at the local big box store are Coby, Emerson, and anything that doesn't have a familiar ring to it (like SnazzyDVD). I usually prefer names like Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, etc. The Philips name isn't one I usually associate with high quality, but I'd had some luck with headphones I'd recently gotten from them, so I thought I'd give this one a whirl.

My experience with DVD players has pretty much been the same across brands. I put in a DVD and I get to watch a movie. I don't have an expensive television, so I can't speak to any DVD player's ability to give true 1080P performance, or how it sounds on a big sound system. When the DVD player doesn't play movies, I say it's a bad DVD player. On that criterion, this is a great DVD player.

I've also been fiddling with using DivX for my movies, and one of the reasons I decided to go with the Philips was because it played DivX movies. I have two step children who aren't too careful when it comes to handling DVDs. I've sacrificed four DVDs so far to the little hands that kill DVDs without understanding how or why they can't use them as frisbees. So I bought a DVD ripper that can take the DVDs and translate them into DivX format. What a lifesaver! Now when they destroy discs, it's a copy of the movies, and not the movies themselves.

Another advantage of this DVD player is that it plays just about any disc I've put in it. Discs that used to not work on other DVD players because they were scratched play on this player. Likewise, it plays the mini-DVDs I use for my camcorder.

The set up with this player is very easy. You have the option of both component or coaxial connections. No, it doesn't have digital connections (HDMI). Did I mention I don't have high end stuff? If I were in the market for high end components, I wouldn't buy this DVD player. However I need to be about as high tech as getting Barney on the screen, and this one works.

The remote control is a little spartan, and, like every other DVD player I've ever gotten, if you lose the remote, you've lost most of the functionality of the player. Most DVD menus don't work with the four buttons on the console. Also, the remote doesn't have an eject function. That's just...weird. I hardly know any remote that doesn't do this, until now.

Philips players are also easy to make region free players. We entered a code on the remote control and we can now play any region DVD. You'll have to do a little digging to find the code and how to do it, but it's not hard to find.

I'd say another thing I really like about this player is that it's really slim. I've seen slimmer DVD players out there, but this one is very thin for not much money, which is nice. Ours sits precariously perched on the top of the set, right on top of our cable box.

One thing I'm not wild about is that you can't see the time. You set up the time and date for the player, but heaven forbid if you ever want to see the time and date. To do that, you'll have to navigate to the time/date setup menu again as if you were going to change it. Likewise, it's display menu is weird. If you want to know how much time you have remaining on the DVD, then it gives you a screen full of stats and shrinks your movie down to a small window. Not very intuitive, and not very smart.

Now for the acid test...reliability. In a house with two toddlers, this DVD player has been through the trenches of being dropped and abused and it still plays DVDs. In other words, it's kid proof. I'm sure if one of our darlings decided to pour their milk in the DVD tray, we'd have problems. Thankfully they haven't done that, and I'm not in market for another DVD player.

Are there better DVD players out there? Absolutely. But even with all the quirks on this DVD player, it gives a great picture, it reads practically anything you put in the slot, and it survives two toddlers going at full tilt. If you're a videophile, there are better DVDs out there. If you're a parent surviving the early years, this is a good, expendable piece of technology that will survive with you.