Today I purchased this DVD Player at Sams Club. I've been looking for an inexpensive
1080P upconversion player to tide me over till the HD/Blue Ray players come down. Well I must say with the limited use I've done with it. With my modest system, Polaroid 3232 LCD and a Onkyo 603 receiver, it has shined for my needs. Picture quality is better than expected, outputs Dolby 5.1 and most importantly no freezing during play back. I suffered through this with toshiba players. Now the good part. Cost 4 9 bucks and it includes a HDMI cable. With the cost of cables now days without going online that makes it a 1080p player worth about 3 0 bucks. Biggest draw back for me is no DTS. For some that will be a deal breaker, but at this price you can't beat it. Looking forward to additional responses from other new owners. Planning on getting a 1080p lcd soon.

Magic

Please, please, please open it up and see what chipset it uses (digital photo of its inerts would be even better). Thanks in advance. If it's Mediatek like the Phillips 5982 then this indeed is the best value for 1080p DVD player yet as it would net less than $40 due to the free HDMI cable ($10 value).

I bought one to see what $50 will get you. As mentioned above, you get a standard HDMI cable (nothing fancy but functional at 6 ft. and no artifacts at 1080p). You get a remote and a light weight, metal cased, black, basic 1080p DVD player. It supports recordable media (except for DVD-RAM). It does not support DVD-A or SA-CD (also no analogue audio 5.1 output). It does support JPEG, MP3, supports folder playback for organizing pictures or musical albums, slide shows (5 second, 10 second, or per song delay), simultaneous JPEG image and MP3 playback (for musical slide shows), video-CD, and of course audio-CD. It has coaxial digital output (no optical), component out with 480i and 480p support (does not upconvert via component), and of course HDMI (not sure what version) with 480p (no 480i HDMI), 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. It supports black level brighentening for darker movies. It supports the Auto1 (film), Auto2 (film shot at 30 FPS), and Video (most anime, concerts, TV shows, etc.). It allows aspect control at 4:3 letterbox, 4:3 pan&scan, 16:9 wide (widescreen TV), 16:9 squeeze (nonanamorphic tittle).

Engine: Panasonic MPEG decoder and scaling solution (similar to Panny 53S): MN2DS0018VP and MN864702A (scaling board is attached to HDMI output opening with screw on the exterior back of DVD player and mounted upside down). Will comment on PQ later.

Bad Part: NO DTS SPDIF output (also confirmed in manual and no DTS logo on player or on box)--similar to cheaper solutions like Sylvania DVL-1000F (DCDi) and DVL-1000G (panny S52 chipset). It may have to go back to Sams Club :(

http://graphics.samsclub.com/images/products/0005381857050_L4.jpg

Pictures of player's guts are attached.

Picture quality is good on 720p (my HD1000u native resolution which is 1280X720X60Hz), 1080i, and 1080p (yes, HD1000u recognizes and sync'ed to its 1080p HDMI output at 60 Hz) without issues). Not much difference in PQ on all these modes. All modes passes Blacker than Black on Video Essential Pluge pattern via HDMI on all resolutions (480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p). I did not test component or other outputs at all.

Black enhancement needs to be on for acceptable dark scene details which crushes white very slightly on the white end of the gray scale.

Sharpness is good but slightly worse than my Samsung HD941 (DCDi) via 1080i HDMI or Zenith DVB-318 (DCDi) via 1080i component (Samsung is slightly sharper than Zenith). It's clearly worse than my Bravo D1 via 1280X720X60Hz via HDMI->DVI on test patterns.

It fails flag waving test (not DCDi) so deinterlacer is adequate but not great (so does the Bravo D1).

DVD loader is proprietary, medium in loading speed, and noisy (like Bravo D1 and more noise than Samsung or Zenith).

It pillar boxes automatically on 4:3 or non-anamorphic tittles using the 16:9 Squeeze mode, but it's zoom is not adjustable, poor quality, and zooms in too far to fill 16:9 screen with non-anamorphic image--Bravo D1 zooms a lot better with little degradation of image. Zenith's zoom is adjustable vertically and horizontally independently and zoom quality is also very good for those nonanamorphic tittle.

While playing with this player suddenly it lost 1080p60Hz mode altogether and would not come back despite unplugging the DVD player, reset to default settings, unplugging HDMI cable, rebooting the PJ (after appropriate bulb cool down of course). I think all the mode switching messed up the firmware somehow suggesting poor build quality.

The fact that it lost its 1080p60Hz with a few mode switches between 480p->720p->1080i->1080p showed that it's not very sturdy. Besides it does not pass DTS via SPDIF (no license). It's going back to Sams Club. I probably would have kept it if it did not lose 1080p60Hz--probably would have been stable if I didn't keep switch back and forth and back and forth between resolutions to test image quality (very very similar between 720p, 1080i, and 1080p which means my PJ is pretty good at scaling to native resolution at 1280X720p).

Vertical aspect is perfect (unlike Mediatek chipset which may squeeze vertical resolution slightly).

Next toy will be Philips 5982 1080p at Best Buy if I can find it as I like the DivX, USB 2.0, Mediatek chipset. :D

Next toy will be Philips 5982 1080p at Best Buy if I can find it as I like the DivX, USB 2.0, Mediatek chipset. :DI am pretty sure that the Philips is not USB2.0 (the ad copy is cagey, and I think just means that you can use USB2 devices on the player). However, the throughput on its USB port is adequate for most purposes (eg, movies by thumbdrive), and seems from reports to be better than on the 5960 it replaces. (There was a throughput limit in the MTK chipset hardware, I have not seen anything on the MTK website saying they've improved this.)

FWIW, the 5960 does not pillarbox 4:3 material when upscaling, and does not pass blacker than black over HDMI (only over component). I do not know if this is true for the 5982 as well (I hope not - let us know). - DR

I bought the 5982 yesterday at BB for $65+tax. It's a better performer on all counts than the Magnavox (I do miss the free HDMI cable though). It does pillarbox upconverting 4:3 tittles to 720p/1080i/1080p. It's quieter than the Magnavox. Can't see much improvement on 1080p than 1080i. On my PJ 1080i is a tiny bit sharper on resolution test patterns (indiscernable on video) than 720p (despite my PJ being 1280X720X60 native, Mits HD1000u) so I'm using that. 1080p would not lock on securely and occasional lose sync. (HDCP problem) with my PJ while 720p and 1080i are rock stable. I will try the newest firmware and region free hack for the 5982 next. Divx support is very nice even via USB (1.0 or 2.0 it does not matter to me as it plays smoothly on my 4GB flash drive with Divx 6.3 loaded). It plays Divx fine with CDs or DVDs loaded with DivX 6.3 also. It also supports HD-JPEG although I have not tried this yet. Best part over the Magnavox is it passes DTS via SPDIF.

This suggest that losing 1080p on the Magnavox with my PJ may not be a player problem but more compatability issue with my PJ. Thus, it's build quality may be OK and a heck of a value if you don't care about DivX, USB, or Mediatek.

Mediatek (5982) is a better performer than Panny chipset on my PJ: faster layer changes, no vertical squish error (Mediatek can do that on some displays), sharper upconversion (noticeable only on test patterns), more video controls (allows sharpness, contrast, brightness, and saturation tweaking from DVD side), and better zoom (for older nonanamorphic tittles).

Both chipset can be set to pillarbox nicely upconverted.

In the end, I returned the Magnavox and kept the 5982 due to it's worth the $25 premium to me ($15 price increase between the 2 and $10 for HDMI cable) due to all the listed advantages.

I too have just purchased this product and I have a few questions. I own a HD-ready 2000 Toshiba 61" tv (that is, it was made in 2000). I can watch in 480p and 1080i. From what I am gleaning from you guys, if I don"t have the HDMI then I can't watch in 1080p? I have not hooked this puppy up yet and frankly, since I do not know much about this I don't know if I want to. Can someone steer a nice guy like me straight on this or is another trip to Sam's in the offting tommorow? Thanx, BeeMayX.

Seems to have allot of features for the money.:eek:

Today I purchased this DVD Player at Sams Club. I've been looking for an inexpensive
1080P upconversion player to tide me over till the HD/Blue Ray players come down. Well I must say with the limited use I've done with it. With my modest system, Polaroid 3232 LCD and a Onkyo 603 receiver, it has shined for my needs. Picture quality is better than expected, outputs Dolby 5.1 and most importantly no freezing during play back. I suffered through this with toshiba players. Now the good part. Cost 4 9 bucks and it includes a HDMI cable. With the cost of cables now days without going online that makes it a 1080p player worth about 3 0 bucks. Biggest draw back for me is no DTS. For some that will be a deal breaker, but at this price you can't beat it. Looking forward to additional responses from other new owners. Planning on getting a 1080p lcd soon.

Magic

I think its the greatest. Also comes with its own el cheapo HDMI cable and el cheapo RCA cables. Its disposable. If it lasts 6 months or 12 movies whichever comes first you got your money out of this one, then just throw it in the trash. You can hardly get a couple of 30 packs for $50.

I too picked up one of these units @ Sam's last week. I was happy with it until I powered it off and could not power it back on, neither from the remote nor the power button on the unit. When I unplugged it and plugged it back in, it worked fine. But powering it off for a minute would cause it to lock up and refuse to power back on without unplugging again. I exchanged the unit at Sam's for another one, and it did the same thing. The electrical outlet works fine for all other components plugged in there, and I even tried putting everything else on a power strip, and plugging the DVD player directly into the wall. Same old thing. Tech support said they have never heard of this, naturally.

Any ideas?

Still working fine:D