Philips DVP5160

The Philips DVP5160/12 is a very cheap DVD player that I bought for a relative:

To my utter surprise, this Eur.65 toy happens to be able to play just about everything I could throw at it on short notice (MPEG files, old DivX files, some iTunes video podcasts and even a quick MP4 test I put together by running some stuff through VisualHub).

The device was able to read 640x480 MP4 files encoded with the “All devices” profile in the iTunes tab in VisualHub, but not H.264 files. My guess is that we’re a year or so away from that happening…

Better still, it can do so from a standard USB pen drive (it has a standard USB port), thereby making a mockery of the notion of home networking. Who needs a home server when you can just plug in an external HD?

The UI is on the poor side of spartan (so no fancy thumbnails, even for JPEG files) but I can see this sort of thing becoming popular.

• Firmware upgrades
• VideoHelp page for the 5160
• VideoHelp page for the 5960 - an HDMI capable model that is a little more expensive (but still under Eur.100)
• Philips DVP5960 DivX page