Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
by Philips
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List Price: Our Price: $42.00 You Save: $37.99 (47%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
Customer Review: Absolutely NO EXCUSE Not To Have One, Folks.
Summary: 5 Stars
Let's get this right out of the way: the whole schpiel about multi-region or region free/worldwide DVD players being "finnicky", "overpriced", "prone to failure", "impractical due to the inavailability of imports to watch in the first place" and "needing to be sent all the way to Malaysia to be repaired" is a myth perpetuated by Best Buy supervisors who have been indoctrinated to do one thing: Sell DVD players that only play the DVDs they sell in their stores. It's a bogus myth, and this player is proof.
I'm a cult film buff and not a geekanoid tech nerd so pardon me if I pass over a technical evaluation of the deck: It plays any DVD made anywhere on the planet regardless of region code, converts PAL to NTSC and vice-versa, has S-Video and component output capacity, *LOVES* DVD-R media (even PAL DVD-R), and you can bring it home for a reasonable enough price to have some coinage left over to buy some Region 2 PAL releases to go with it. Like, stuff not available in the US. Get it?
If you love movies, take your viewing needs seriously and resent having the media companies decide what you can & cannot watch, then you need a multi-region player. Period. This is a good one to start with: I concede that we are only watching our stuff on a standard 4:3 analog TV set without a DTS or surround setup (though both are supported) and just use it to watch movies. Not sure what else one would need a DVD player to do, though I will admit a certain amount of chagrin at the maximum 8x FFWD advance speed. Even my $30 K-Mark Apex deck has 16x but if you get hung up on how fast you can skip through your movies I would recommend getting a life or something.
It plays any DVD right out of the box, no need to "crack" or modify anything, supports a bunch of other media formats, and has yet to do anything hostile like throw a brick at me or try and cheat at checkers. It plays all of the DVDs in my library just as well as the deck I paid $350 for in 2003, and having one will instantly quadruple the number of DVDs you can watch.
Why settle on the crap movies they sell at Best Buy? Once you watch your first Japan made Region 2 NTSC format DVD of an ultra-obscure Spaghetti Western you will wonder why you waited on getting yourself set up to make up your own mind about what you watch, and why you let yourself get suckered into thinking that DVDs made in Germany were like, weird or something. This DVD player is liberation and I would recommend it to anyone who loves watching movies. The End.
:-)
Customer Review: Things that others didn't mention
Summary: 5 Stars
Let start with the good part:
Things that amaze me:
- If you have a CD with a div-x avi file and one or more subtitle (text files) on that CD, you can select one as the subtitle. So you can have subtitles like for a DVD in different languages and with fonts for languages as Russian, Romanian,.. displaying specific letters found in their alphabet (of course if the text file has them)
- If you put a data DVD with mp3 or/and avi (mpeg1,2,4 div-x, PAL/NTSC ) or/and pictures you can play them all. I had a DVD back-up of my hard drive and I was able to browse , watch and listen all media files on that DVD. Imagine a DVD with mp3: to play all files once will take 60 hours of music! Or you can have six div-x movies with subtitles on a data DVD, all this with a PAL/NTSC conversion.
I will not repeat what others said about how good or great it is (it is true), I just want to say regarding affirmation made by others "this will play everything you put in it" this is not true it will play only files that are in specifications. That might be all that you have. If video or audio is not as in specifications then the file will not be played or it will be played without sound or without video.
Problems that I've noticed:
- On a DVD when jumping from the last file in a directory to the first file in the next directory with a lot of files it stopped taking commands - I had to press Stand-By. After powering up again everything was ok I could go select and play files from that directory. Maybe I didn't wait enough or the disc was dirty ?.
- On a certain CD with a div-x file in play mode at a certain time the DVD player will freeze (every time) and resets: "Loading disc" message appears. If 2 seconds before that time index I press play x2 and a few seconds later play normal everything was ok. Probably a disc error or a file error (downloading error ?) .
Overall this is a great DVDplayer and you can do and play things that you can not with others DVD players. I can achieve more only by putting a PC in my audio video center. Also is the cheapest div-x player that I found and it has a great video and audio quality. I think that people who complain about bad sound or image they have some wrong setting in audio or video - read the manual (could be a defective unit too).
One more thing: There are people charging you $50 more just because they made the unit region free: All they did was pressing a combination on the remote control I don't think you should give them that.
Customer Review: Great buy
Summary: 5 Stars
I must be stupid, because I can't seem to train my cat to change out DVDs, which is something everybody here complaining about the lack of an eject button _on the remote_ must have done. Question: Who cares if the remote doesn't have an eject button? You have to get off your duff to swap discs anyway.
But, seriously, on to the review. I've tried in this player DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD+R bootyped as -ROM, CD-R, and CD-RW. All worked.
In regards to formats, I've tried vcd,svcd,mpeg,avi,dvd video, DivX, Xvid. I'm not 100% positive that last one was in fact a true Xvid, but pretty sure. Of the DivX I've done two channel and digital surround. All worked with the exception of two of the PC's formats: one, encoded with 2-channel sound, did not play sound, and one played, but its video was funkily downgraded to 256 colors or something and all blocky. This is out of trying probably 15 movies (old and new). My guess is that those that didn't work were just encoded badly, so it was not the player's fault.
I have a poorly burned DVD movie on a disk that was very jumpy on my 9 month old koss player, and in such bad shape that my nec 3500 burner would not even rip from it (I wanted to rebuild it), no matter what I did. I was going to use it as a frisbee. However, this Philips player played it and there was zero sign of stuttering.
Three complaints I have about this are:
1) X8 is the fastest FF. In reality it seems to go faster, ie. it does not take fully 10 seconds to get through 80 seconds of footage. Still, I don't know why they had it go so slowly.
2) Seems that pressing display is temporary. I can't leave it on to see the time on the disk if I'm forward winding through it. You can see the time on disk on the display on the player, but that's still a bit silly.
3) Remember disks...if you press stop, you can resume later. However, if you take out the disk and put it back in, the player will lose where it was. My old cheapy 9 month old Koss (mentioned above), would remember disks. In fact you could watch disk 1 half way through, watch disk 2, then it would resume disk 1's spot. This player is supposed to remember as far back as 5 disks, but mine doesn't.
All in all a great deal though, especially at Amazon's prices. Not spending the 1-2 hours required to convert a DivX into DVD format is _very_ convenient. If I wasn't so cheap, I'd buy a second one.
Customer Review: Updated review: plays Divx fine, but has trouble with VCDs
Summary: 5 Stars
This Philips DVD player not only looks good, weighs little, but is one super hero of a DVD player. Everything you've read or heard is true: it can play not only video DVDs, VCDs, CDs, and JPEG pictures, but can play DivX and MPEG4 files with grace. In fact, with the latest firmware, you don't even need to navigate any folder menus to play DivX files: just put in the disc and the DVP642 will automatically start playing (after about 30 seconds to a minute, though).
And, yes, this player can play DVD-R and DVD-RW just fine, even though the user's manual only mentions DVD+R/RW compatibility.
The user's manual is one of the better ones I've seen for a DVD player, even though it's printed in China. At least the writer could write in proper English. Best of all, this manual explains pretty much everything about the DVD player, except its video upsampling capability.
The remote control is minimalistic and as other have pointed out, lacks a dedicated open button, although you can just hold down the stop button for 2-3 seconds to get the same effect.
When I took this player out of the box, my significant other, who's more of an artistic bend but ignorant of technical details beyond "put-in-the-disc-and-it-should-play" variety, was wowed by its super-thin profile and general good looks. This player is so good, that I'm getting a 2nd one just as a backup.
Highly recommended. Cheerios.
UPDATE
I would have changed the rating to 4 stars, but Amazon doesn't let me. Two areas of disappointment after some heavy usage:
1) The dvp642 has trouble with many VCDs that play fine on other players. A friend of mine recent returned from a trip to the Far East with dozens of VCDs. I thought I was going to have kungfu filmfest, but was disappointed that almost 25% of the VCDs couldn't play at all on the dvp642, even though they played fine (albeit with hiccups) on my Cyberhome DVD300 and even my 6-year-old Panasonic. The dvp642 is also not gracious if your DVD is scratched. This is NOT one of the more forgiving DVD players out there.
2) If you have an HDTV monitor, you'll be disappointed at the image quality, or at least it didn't meet my expectations. The Denon 755S, costing just $200, gives great video quality, but the dvp642 is definitely not a "high-end" player. Its 4x upsampler doesn't seem to improve video output.
Customer Review: Great player for the price
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered the Phillips DVP642 a few weeks ago and I am very impressed with its performance. I actually received the 642/37 (some places charge extra for the region-free pre-hacked version). Here are the pros and cons:
Pros:
1. It plays DivX/XviD (without QPEL/GMC) and MP3 files with great quality.
2. It has progressive scan 480P output.
3. It is "hackable" to be region-free by opening the tray, pressing "7 8 9 OK 0", then closing the tray and powering off. It can play NTSC and PAL DVDs on NTSC and PAL TVs. I am buying a second one for relatives in South America for the region-free ability alone.
4. Great price tag (<$70).
Cons:
1. Only displays 8 characters of the DivX/XviD filename. "moviename part 1.avi" becomes "movienam.avi" then "moviename part 2.avi" becomes "movie000.avi" and is displayed BEFORE "movienam.avi" due to alphabetizing, making the play order the opposite of what it should be. This can be remedied by burning discs in ISO 8+3 mode renaming beforehand, but long filename support (Joliet or UDF) would have been a huge bonus. I find it no surprise because I am not aware of any DivX/XviD DVD players with long filename support for under $200,besides my hacked XBox ;)
2. Subtitle files (.srt and .sub) are supported, but don't always work unless named the same as the .avi (recommend 8+3 again) and selected before playing the movie. Many people in forums have reported issues with subtitles in foreign languages, but I only have experience with english subtitles.
3. When you insert a DVD+-R with DivX/XviD files, the player takes a long time to bring up a menu with all the filenames for play selection (about 20-40 seconds). This is enough of a wait time to be mildly annoying. Hint: Always use the "stop" button to return to the generated menu, not the "Disc Menu" button.
4&5. The drive can be VERY noisy when reading DVDs. Some people have returned their players for this reason. In my opinion, this is the player's biggest drawback as it can be very distracting while listening to the movie or music. No other player that I have encountered makes this much drive noise.
In Summary:
I recommend this player to anyone looking for a great priced progressive scan, DivX/XviD, or region-free DVD player with the only major drawback being a noisy drive.