For years I’ve bought bleeding edge tech devices. In 1998 I bought the first ever MP3 playing CD player, imported all the way from a back alley in China. I bought a 6 gig Archos MP3 player which held a charge for all of 2 hours in 1999. Hell, I even had an Apple Newton 130, bought off a BBS for $480, which I connected a modem to so I could send email from it in 1995.  I’m no stranger to the not-so-perfect technical solution.

Last month our standard DVD player stopped working. It would boot up but would not read a DVD. It would just sit with a “Loading” message flashing. I used the opportunity to upgrade to an upscaling DVD player. I’m not ready to drop any serious money on any next-gen DVD technology. I’m not convinced that it’s worth the money yet. I’ve heard good things about upscaling players, which take a normal DVD and “upscale” the video resolution to that of modern HDTVs.

I ordered up the Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD Player  from Amazon for $65. The upscaling works well. It’s a nice player, simple and nice. The video quality of my existing DVDs looks awesome through the player.

But when I got it I noticed it had a USB port on the front. I can plug something into it.  Hmmm…

I read through the manual and discovered the player was aslo capable of playing Divx movies from a USB drive. In the past I’ve tried hundreds of methods to play Divx videos on my TV. I’ve connected my laptop to the TV, transcoded the video to VCD format, streamed them to my Wii, etc…None of them had worked even the slightest bit well. I was skeptical. And if I was skeptical, imagine what Courtney thought.

So I hopped on the internet, found some interesting Divx videos, threw them on my thumb drive, and plugged it in. In an awe inspiring moment the DVD player played the movie. It did more than play it too, it played it well! It just worked! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had finally found a technology that worked without some cumbersome, poorly implemented, feature set. Thank you Philips.

Last night we sat down to watch a show I had downloaded. Court looked at me and said, “This isn’t going to stop half way through is it?” She knows me too well. I assured her that it wouldn’t…Well, I assured her that I hoped it wouldn’t. To my delight, it played all the way through.

Chalk up a win for me. I’ve found a diamond in the rough. It took me 15 years, but I finally found one.