The DVD960 is a video player targeted at the hi-fi market. It costs around £550, Philips underlining the fact that it has a dedicated 'audio board'. There's no surround-sound decoder. The DVD956 has Dolby and MPEG decoders, aimed at the home theatre market. 

The DVD960 has digital outputs for Dolby and dts, needing an external AV amplifier for surround sound. The analogue outputs carry Dolby Pro logic for external decoding, plus TruSurround pseudo-surround from stereo speakers. Ours was a Region 2 only European player.

The DVD960 has a 24-bit, 96kHz convertor, it says in the handbook specs. Philips make no mention of this on the box or elsewhere in the handbook, for good reason I was to find. Audio-only 24/96 discs are rare, but they give better sound quality than CD. DVD needs an on-board 24/96 convertor to handle movie sound tracks recorded to this quality standard too.
Tests showed the DVD960 was not able to properly reproduce 24/96 recordings, band limiting to 21kHz, unlike a rival Sony DVP-S725.

On the video side the Philips handles Video CDs and DVD video discs. It has a minimum of controls, just enough to remain functional if the remote goes walkies, as they tend to do. It falls behind Sony's DVP-S725 which has both a jog dial and skip knob on its fascia. Philips put these useful functions on their remote control. There's camera angle, parental control, still frame, step frame, manual jog and slow forwards or back, auto slow motion at x1/8 or x1/2, plus fast at x2, x4 and x32. Thatís quite a selection. 

I made connection to a tv through SCART. The DVD960 also outputs CVBS, S-Video and Component video. The video performance was fine, spinning through The Matrix without problems and getting Angela's Ashes onto wide screen with automatic panning. But the splash screen says GRUNDIG, not Philips!

As an audio player the DVD960 wasn't easy to use. The main problem is a crude Fast Forward system initiated by holding down Track Skip. The handbook refers to a Fast Forward symbol that doesnít exist (?), even in Philips own diagramming. Track Skip itself was slow, promoting unnecessary button pushing, and the fascia display small, being illegible from a distance. Jog and shuttle don't work with audio.

In contrast, sound quality was excellent, with both normal CD and high resolution 24/96 discs. Carlos Santana's sleekly expressive guitar work on Supernatural was finely etched and crystal clear. The sense of detailing was superb and there was no glare. Overall, the '960 offers concise but delightfully clean treble. Strummed guitar at the opening of 'Put Your Lights On' was brightly lit and vibrant with detail. A strong, rumbling bass kicked in with fundamentals that seemingly came up from my basement. The presentation wasn't as cohesive as NAD's sonically excellent T550 but the '960 is sweeter and more finely etched than Sony's player. 

With 24/96 recordings the sound opened out. Rebecca Pidgeon's vocals in the Scottish folk ballad, MacDougall's Men, had a presence and a dynamic beyond the capabilities of ordinary CD. The DVD960 delivered the smoothness and dynamics of 24-bit, but it could have done better if the harmonics in these recordings had not been heavily truncated above 21kHz. Our spectrum analyser quite clearly showed the Sony was better.

The DVD960 offers good CD quality, that's for sure. The ergonomics, facilities and handbook could usefully be improved at the price. Video quality and trick-play options were fine but the 960's inability to fully exploit 96kHz sampling rate recordings was disappointing. Philips can manage better than this. 

WORLD VERDICT
Works well and gives good CD sound, but awkward to use and does not play 
24/96 properly.