Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Philips DVP-5992

This is our third Philips DVD player and it is the best so far. It played anything we would throw at it and all with excellent quality. There are very few scaling artifacts when scaling DIVX to D1 resolution. It creates smooth picture with perfect edges, not blurry at all. I have not complaints about picture quality but I have not tried hooking it up to HD tv since I don't have one.

Menu system is intuitive enough and easy to navigate. Player supports disabling region code using remote control so it can play DVDs from Europe or Japan.

Remote control is very nice. It has a nice weight to it and it also looks good. Ergonomics are very good and you can easy operate it in the dark.

By far the best feature is USB2.0 support. Now you can just put your movies on USB Flash Drive or USB Hard Disk (formatted with Fat32) and play them directly from that media. No more wasting recordable DVDs to preview movie you just made. It plays flawlessly without any hiccups.

Of course this player is not without shortcomings. The biggest one is not supporting long file names. Even if it supports them it does not display them. To work around this problem I add a number in front of the video file so you can see which file it is.

Also player locks up on certain movies. The lock up is bad to the point that you have to disconnect power to get control of the player back. It only does it with certain DIVX videos but still. I hope Phillips releases new firmware to remedy this problem.
Startup time is also not too stellar. It takes a long time to read dvd and until it recognizes the disk USB is useless. I wish it could remember the last media it played from and came back to that media on power on.

Other than these shortcomings Philips made nearly perfect DVD player. It looks good and works good and it is cheap to boot. What else would you want?

Sunday, November 23, 2008

My Experience With Sonata

It has been 3 months since I am driving my new Sonata and I wanted to share experience that I had with it. Hopefully it will help some people decide whether to purchase the car or not.

*** Day to day

I still like driving it day to day. After the initial break-in period I started to drive it a little faster and my mileage suffers as a result. I still get close to 32 MPG on average but nowhere near 35.5 which I was getting earlier. Seem like the optimal speed for best MPG is 45-55 MPH. Unfortunately this is not very practical on CA freeways.
I found that white color is not as practical as I originally thought. It definitely stays cool in the summer but it get dirty and marks easily. Also somehow it seems that paint on the Sonata is very thin and chips off easy or maybe it is just noticeable on the white car. Ether way I need to get some touch-up paint to prevent any rusting. Chips are not big just noticeable more than on our silver Camry.
I have purchased a cargo tray for the trunk and it fits well and helps keep the trunk clean. If you like to keep your car clean I highly recommend it. We have it in all of our cars and it worth the expense.

*** Maintenence

I changed oil in Sonata for the first time. Although first oil change is not due until 5K I like to change oil twice during the first recommended interval. Clears out any metal particles from oil that may have been in the new engine.
The procedure was relatively painless. The oil plug is located in the back of the engine so you have to raise the car or access it blind. I choose the second option. There is an aerodynamic plastic cover under the engine which prevented my old oil pan from fitting under the car. I had to get new shorter oil pan. I did not like my old pan anyway so this was not a big problem.
I found that all of the service manual are available online from Hyundai just for registering. This is great if you like to maintain your car yourself.
The OEM oil filters are available on eBay for reasonable price but are expensive from a dealer (surprise). There is a Wallmart brand Super Tech filter which is around $2.30. Reviews online say that if it made in US it is relatively good. It is made by the same company who made Mobil1 filter and shares some of the components with it.