Philips BDP5200 Review
When the going gets tough, the tough get going! With the competition increasing in the air, the companies have been taking great efforts to provide a product that marks a niche for itself in the big queue. Most of us these days prefer a bucket of popcorn on our cozy sofa and a home theatre environment to watch a movie, rather than watching it in a theatre with the same effects. Naturally, when a blue ray player can provide great quality and effects all that the user has to do is, be wise in investing his hard earned pounds in a product that is worth it. One such worthy product by Philips is the BDP5200 player. This 3D capable blu ray player has a number of features that make it special and gives satisfaction to the users who buy it. Want to know about the positives and negatives of this Philips BDP5200? Then do not stop, continue reading.
Design and Ports:
Packed in a neat rectangular box, the Philips BDP5200 presents itself as a black and grey product. Philips has taken good care of the design because the player looks really good with a glossy touch on the front alone, while the other areas are matte. Since the front is glossy, the clear display adds to its upside. Besides the disc tray, this side also holds an interesting feature, the USB port at the right corner. There are few control buttons at the bottom. The power button glows in red for indicating that the device is on and this could be useful because when the users are at a distance from the player, they could still easily check out whether it is on or off. At the right bottom there are three other standard control buttons that could be found in almost all the players, for eject, play and pause.
The BDP5200, like any other player, has its most important audio, video and internet connectivity plugs at the back. This Philips product has coaxial, audio and video connectivity plugs and below that are the HDMI, RJ45 LAN and SD card reader slot. The spacing of these ports is good so that the users will have no spacing problem even when they have to use all the ports at a time. It has good looks and also a great appearance that definitely makes it worth of being placed at the desk along with your HDTV and sound system.

Remote Control:
Philips gives a choice of two remote controls, but this choice is available only to those lucky iPhone users. The normal remote is nothing but a normal technical gadget that has the necessary controls placed at the right positions. It is always a blessing when the power button is present separately at the top of the remote. While many of the companies follow it, few do not. This Philips player fortunately has a power button at its top that lets you switch on the player for inserting the disk and watch your favorite movie. The control buttons for play, pause and stop are at the bottom below the numbers. There are also options and back buttons. It is a wonder at times to think how the technology has been seeing a vast development but yeah it is growing indeed and the proofs for these developments are right before our eyes. For instance, while the ordinary remote that is controlled using the Infrared light has nothing exciting about it, those proud owners of the iPhone can use their very phone for controlling the player by downloading the application. And another wonder is the application being able to control the other Philips networked devices too. That is, if you have other Philips devices like the TV, then you can actually control them all using a single iPhone.
Amazing Features:
Good looks and presence of all the features alone would not suffice. What the player actually holds is unfolded here.
Subtitle Shift:
One interesting feature of this player is its ability to shift the subtitles. Often, the subtitles appearing at the bottom of the screen seem to irritate us by hiding a part of the video that is playing. In order to help the users avoid this problem, Philips has a feature that helps move the subtitles either up or down and this can be done with the remote. Another problem is the subtitle itself getting cut off due to the aspect ratio. Without changing the aspect ratio to fit the subtitles within the video the users can actually shift it and read it clearly.
DVD Upscaling:
When DVD players have been updated to the better blue ray players then why not update the disks to the blue ray disks? DVD upscaling feature does this. All the old and new DVDs can be upscaled to be played at the best 1080p HD resolution so that you will know no difference between the blue ray disk and the normal DVD. Since the player’s 1080p resolution is topped by the HDTV, definitely watching movie or video would be a wonderful experience and you would have no intention of stopping.
Wired Connection and Wi-Fi ready:
Like any other player in the market, it supports the wired connectivity. Since the player has Internet Video capability, the user can just connect to the internet by plugging in the RJ45 cable and then streaming videos from the net on to your TV with best clarity. Moreover, one of the prominent features of this player is the availability of the latest standard Wi-Fi n.
3D, DLNA, and EasyLink:
The BDP5200 is 3D compatible and therefore with a HDTV and your glasses on, you are all set to enter into the world where even the screen talks and jumps into action. 3D compatibility is now becoming a common feature and it is definitely useful. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) established initially by Sony, allows the users to create a link between the electronic devices so that all the images and videos can be transferred directly by using just the link. So if you have any audios, videos or photos in your cameras or cell phones or your laptops you can access them easily using this feature. Moreover, with the EasyLink feature, the users can control all the connected devices using only one remote. The key point is the HDMI CEC protocol that helps us bring about this connectivity. So the users need not switch off each device separately, instead they can use their single iPhone or the infrared remote to switch off the entire system.
Absence of onboard memory:
Given the ports and the features, it is obvious that the player does not include an inbuilt memory of 1GB to download the BD-Live contents. So now the user has to actually rely on the USB device or the SD card plugged in to download the contents. This absence would have gone unnoticed if only the player had another USB port. The player can also play the contents of the USB device directly at a very good speed. The Universal Serial Bus is also known as “plug and play” device because it can be attached, used, detached and then reattached easily without any trouble and the contents of the device can be played the moment it is plugged.
Remarkable audio and video functioning:
The player has the DivX Plus HD for excellent video playback and in addition to that, it has the Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD for its amazing audio playback. The audio and video quality of this player are really too good. The 7.1 channel surround system is provided by these audio systems while complete High Definition display of the video is delivered by the DivX Plus feature. The users can make the best use of the services offered by Net TV with these good audio and video features.
Execution and Performance:
The BDP5200 is a player that has a reasonable price and excellent promising features. Net TV provides great service to the users and to make browsing through the net easier, Philips has facilitated the use of USB keyboard to search for the required video or audio. The wonderful audio and video qualities are added up by the 3D capability. Philips has ensured that the 3D quality also be delivered at its best by recording the images separately for the left and right eyes. Moreover, there is one interesting feature that enables the user to resume playing from the disk exactly from the place where it was stopped and this is quite appreciable.
Power:
This BDP5200 player consumes 18W of power generally while that reduces to about 0.18W when the player is in standby mode. So it is obvious that compared to the other devices this player performs really well with optimal watts of power.
Warranty:
The standard warranty period is one year but then, this can be extended further to 3 years too.
Verdict:
Thus the Philips BDP5200 blue ray player has been found to have a number of great features. It is 3D compatible and has excellent audio and video features. The price of this Philips product is also very nominal. In Philips’ words, if you want to “see more, hear more and engage more”, then you can definitely purchase this one.










