can you play avi, wmv, divx on it through the USB?

Beats the Coby players. Here;s your cheap up-converters folks.

I've played Xvid and Divx through the USB port (off a low speed CF Card). I don't have any wmvs to test. I got this deal about 2 weeks ago when it was sold out as well, and received it about a week later.

Interesting thing, I plugged my 925 in 1 multireader (maybe a slight exageration... it has 4 ports) and when I had a CF, a SD, and an XD plugged into it, it showed up as 3 different usb devices in the player, and pressing the 'usb' button toggled through them.

Anybody know where there's a good 5-disc upconverter?

I just received and tested out all but the USB port on one of these refurbs. Works as advertised - no issues. The unit has no marks or scratches that I have noticed.

The shipper is bad. The box had gotten wet at some point (saturated) and it was literally falling apart. It was kept together by the plastic bag the shipper put it in when leaving it at my door.

Received two days ago, mixed feelings. Supercheap packaging by Philips. Box broken in two places, there is a fresh dent on the bottom of the unit. You have to tweak your TV settings, such as avoid "vivid color" and other such fancy options, which will cause artifacts when playing upconverted material. I got the best quality when using standard picture in "theater" mode on my Sony Bravia. And still, the quality you get will depend on the material. Playing DVDs via S-video from a good progressive scan Onkyo player was yielding more constitent results in the past, but the Philips unit can do a slightly better job if the material and settings are right. Loading photos via USB is dog slow and there are aspect ration problems. No menu controls on the front panel, so you mostly depend on the remote (don't lose it!). Menu graphics is atrocious. All in all, an average player imho.

How are the remote features like ff/rew, zoom, ect. Many don't have normal ff/rew and just have the chapter ff/rew. Makes it hard go go to specific points.

#7, you can FF/Rew easily with this remote. I believe FF goes in increments of 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, and 32x and I don't recall the Rew increments but I imagine they are the same.

I've had this player for over 3 months now and my only real complaint is the menu screen is horrendous. I'm rarely going through the menu, though, so it's not that big of an issue.

The USB feature works great, the upconverting is nice, and it's ability to play just about every video format makes this player fantastic.

People still use S-Video?

Yes, people still use S-video. If you buy quality equipment it lasts longer than the technology.

I don't think it plays wmvs, but it's a good player, especially for $40!

Just got this a few days ago but can't get it region free. Help, please. Thanks.

#12--Google the player model number and add region free.
Amazon.com: how do you make the Philips DVP5982/37 DVD player ...
The above subject line will give you instructions.

#8: Try to play .wmv or .asf files. It won't play. It will not play .avi files taken from my Canon SD1000 camera either. So it doesn't really play just about every video format out there.

i use this with a 500gb external usb harddrive to play divx.. no problems at all

well.. the 8 character names made me have to change my naming system.. but not a big deal

#15 How is the drive formatted? Is it FAT32? The manual says the Philips player will not read from a NTFS drive. And FAT32 has a max partition size of 32 GB.

#16, I formatted 200GB of my 500GB external to FAT32 for my DVP5982. Sorry to burst your bubble, but going above 32GB in FAT32 is possible.

I believe you can't format more than 32GB for an OS installation.

"FAT32 - Volumes from 512 MB to 2 terabytes."

"In Windows Vista (and XP), you can format a FAT32 volume only up to 32 GB."

#17 what did you format with? I have three of these players and a lot more than 32 GB of DivX files.

Supposedly there are third party utilities to format to a larger size.

I used Partition Magic. I'm sure other programs will work as well.

so.. ben, even though it says sold out they'll still ship it as long as you placed order? how long does it take to get it shipped?