Phillips Blu Ray Player is... - Page 5

Another option worth considering is the Samsung BD-P1000 which can be had for $499 from Amazon and for which there have been a couple of firmware updates to improve performance and PQ. Its really not that much different than the Philips.

I just picked up one of these -- no box, but brand new -- off Ebay for $350.

I took a look at that model, but from many accounts, the Philips has slightly better picture quality, much faster load times, and a better remote.

wow, awesome deal.

That's exactly the reason I decided to go with the Philips over the Samsung, the Sammy just seemed to be to glitchy and problematic. I still love my Philips, great playback and picture and no problems yet.

I'm not an expert at all, but I do note several good things about the Phillips. It loads DVD's quickly, the picture seems great, it was cheaper at $550, it seems to do a great job withs standard DVD's, and Netflix will supply us with Blu Ray movies. So I have been very satisfied. Also it looks nice in black with the faint blue light behind the DVD tray. I bought this because of all the advice from this thread and I thank you all

Will our Philips be "obsolete" for BD-J come the end of the year, or is the fact that the Philips is able to do BD-J in the first place a sign that the player will be able to handle updates, etc.?

I'm loving this player, it really seems to be flying under the radar but does an excellent job.

Hope you enjoy the Philips, it really is an under rated Blu-ray player.

Does anybody know if it can be made region-free?

I've been wondering about this for quite a while myself, I did a search on this website and a Google search and never quite turned up anything concrete.

Does anybody know if the Philips has a 100-240 volts power supply for world-wide use? I just bought the American version of this player and i live in Europe. Will i be able to use it without a stepdown converter? Any European who has this player please confirm. Thanks in advance!

Heads up to anyone in the Toronto area, I saw two of these units at my local Wal-mart for $498. I don't know whether that's a good price...

^you can get the sony BDPS300 for that price. Def not a good deal

Our Wal-Mart (Midwest USA) had these players on clearance a month ago for $350 (USD).

They kept lowering the price, so I grabbed it when the 5 free movie promotion started. They never sold the last two that they had, but shipped them to another store or something.

I just picked up one for $280.00 at a local Walmart. It was on clearance. They had 3 of them.

I just picked one up from Walmart on clearance too! Great Deal. But I am wondering how this player handles burned Blu-ray disks? I have a video production company and I need to have a player that can handle Blu-ray disks authored on my PC. Anyone know of the compatibility with this unit?

Thanks. I need to determine if it plays them soon as it will be going back if not.

Hooked it up last night and it seems to be a very solid player. I immediately updated it to the latest firmware (7/25/07). The only problem I have had is with the component out. If I use the component out it constantly loses sync with my projector- the screen blinks on and off and the projector keeps displaying the resolution. If I switch to HDMI it works perfect.

Also, the first BD movie I bought was POTC: Black Pearl. It took forever to start the movie, the menus were slow, and I could not go directy to the movie's menu without fowarding through the trailers. I assume this is not typical of most BD movies- just the Disney ones? I found it very annoying.

Thanks for mentioning the firmware. I check fairly often had not seen the new version yet.

I remember reading that Philips owners were flashing the Samsung firmware to there machines because it was newer. I wonder if Samsung owners will be flashing to this newer Philips firmware...

Also, out of the 13 movies we own, none of them seem to have problems like the one you mentioned. Of course, I do not think we own any Disney films on Blu-ray.

EDIT: I just tried the new firmware. One thing that it changes is that it allows you to force a resolution. The Westinghouse LVM-42w2 sends its EDID information incorrectly so previously the player would only allow 1080i and below. Now the player will let me force 1080p and displays a message telling how to reset the players settings in case the resolution is not supported by the display.

Thanks for the info on the new firmware.

Received the player 2 days ago and using a LVM47W1, the 1080P was grayed out. after upgrading the FW the 1080P is selectable.

...from Ebay for $380 shipped. I'm officially format nuetral now, as I also have the Toshiba A2. I noticed today that there was another one posted for $300...a great price to jump in.


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HDDVD'S - 5
BLU-RAY'S - 0

I've only watched about 4 Blu-ray movies on mine- but it has been perfectly fine for me. SD-DVD playback has been perfect. The only issue has been the long load times for the POTC blu-ray discs. The uncompressed PCM soundtracks sound great on the discs that have them. For $280.00 brand new, I can live without True-HD or DTS-HD. I don't really care about extras-as long as the player will play the movie I will be happy with it for a while. I don't anticipate getting a new player.

I'm with you about the audio...I just use the digital fiber-optic on my A2, and when I select Dolby TrueHD, I notice a significant difference. That will probably be the same route I take with the BDP9000.

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42" Panasonic EDTV
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD
Philips BDP9000 Blu-ray
Yamaha HTR-5930

You will only get stereo out of this player if you are using optical (for blu-ray discs). For SD-DVD you need to use optical in order to get surround.


From what I have seen, this player has exceptionally poor video quality for standard DVD (when comparing to our HTPC).

I picked up one on Ebay for $299. Although a very sturdy and relatively fast loading machine, it will NOT play any of my DVD-R discs.

Fortunately, I have the Phillips 3960-37 ($44 from Walmart) that plays just about anything (AVI, DIVX, MPG, DVD-R/ RW, etc.)

Makes you wonder though, how much would it have cost Phillips to include the necessary circuitry to play the other formats in their Blu-Ray player.

Strange, I haven't had any issues on mine, I have had fairly recent firmware versions on it, though.


I'll check tonight to see if I have any issues with others and see if it'll read my DVD+Rs and DL DVD+Rs, supposedly has limited functionality w/DVD+Rs... -TD

On my 42" Panny, SD DVD's look phenominal. Try putting your tv through one of those THX Video Optimizer tests that you find on certain dvd's. I used Fight Club to do mine, and it produces excellent results.

About the audio for BD's, that's wrong too. All you have to do is go into the audio settings and change the digital out to bitstream...then you get digital 5.1 and dts. I guess reading that manual really paid off!

The SD-DVD quality of the Philips is pretty close (maybe slightly softer) to my Toshiba HD-DVD player and Oppo 970HD. I would have no problems using the Philips exclusively for SD-DVD playback too.

I actually find the upconverting of my BDP 9000 preferable to that of my HD-A1 (it's running into a Panny AX100U). I really love the Philips, it may not have some of the bells and whistles of some newer Blu-ray players, but to me it's still a great Blu-ray and DVD player

Ok, I just tried it again and I was wrong about this for the most part. I thought this was true for all sound tracks. Now I realize that this is only true for the uncompressed soundtracks (which is a limitation of SPDIF). This is why I have it hooked up in analog.


This is not a calibration issue on the display. In my opinion, the MPEG-2 decoder of this player is inferior to software decoders in our computer. I admit that we have no other standalone players, so all I can compare to is the computer running on the same display.


I just put some DVD+R in our player and they work fine. Note that these discs all have the booktype set to DVD-ROM however.

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Has anybody been able to get this player to recognize an SD card? I put in an SD card with pictures and MP3s, and I cannot get it to do anything useful.

Also, does anybody have any idea what DACs are used in this player? We just watched Remember the Titans (24 bit sound track) and was wondering if we were getting the benefit of the full bit depth or if this is downsampled internally and passed to 16 bit DACs.