Josh Nichols

So, I didn’t get a region-free DVD player

After my little rant on how much I dislike DVD players that don’t let me skip the F.B.I. warning of doom or anti-piracy ads, I decided it was time to actually put my money where my mouth was and buy one that would let me skip that stuff. I didn’t go as far as buying a region-free player from Hong Kong, but I got pretty close with a box at Best Buy.

Since upgrading to high definition TV, my old 5-disk DVD player had to go. It didn’t have progressive scan capabilities and the signal it put out looked like ass. I was using my Xbox360 to play DVDs for a temporary solution and it looked pretty good, but I wanted to play .avi files and see if I could find something that would up-convert DVDs to HD.

I read reviews and couldn’t find any mentioning anything about being able to skip the crap at the beginning of the disk. Most of the reviews complained of the players breaking down after six months. I guess that’s sort of the way electronics have gone — disposable. I decided I needed a cheap one.

When selecting a DVD player there really wasn’t any difference between the brands and models out there. For me it simply came down to the cheapest one that didn’t look awful. I went with the Philips DVP5960 since it met the previous requirements and it also played .avi files with subtitles.

In a nutshell, the player worked great. It played any .avi file I put into it and DVDs looked sharp. The bigger problems I had with it were the remote being really clunky and cheap and the damn player would only up-convert through the HDMI cable. I use a component input switch, so no HD through the component cable just sucks. I was going to take it back, but I discovered a nifty feature: I can skip the stuff at the beginning of DVDs!

So, back to my earlier rant and how I wasn’t going to buy another un-skippable player: Since I couldn’t find one that specifically stated anywhere that it let you skip stuff, I figured I’d just settle with a little trick I conveniently forgot to mention in my rant. You can skip all that F.B.I. B.S. if you immediately hit ‘stop’ after you put the disk in and before it loads. Then hit ‘menu’ to go straight to the disk menu. This little trick has worked with every DVD player I’ve ever tried it on.

The neat thing about the Philips DVP5960 is that you can skip that F.B.I. junk by pushing the ‘next’ button. Other buttons still give you the “operation prohibited by disk” crap, but at least the one works. This might be a feature on all new DVD players, but I know my old one didn’t let me do it. Because the ‘next’ button works and it’ll play every .avi file I throw at it, I’ll overlook the HD only through HDMI and keep the thing.