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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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
Customer Review: An excellent DVD player
Summary: 5 Stars
I previously owned a Panasonic DVD that broke after four years of use. I wanted a replacement player and wanted some of the updated features. These are the features that I wanted:
- progressive scan
- mp3 player
- mulitiple formats(CD, DVD, etc.)
- digital audio
I do not currently own a progressive scan television and I am using a Sony Wega television, I use the component video for the picture and the picture is excellent for the casual movie viewings.
I wanted to be able to play my music from one disc. I have a small collection of mp3 songs that I put on a DVD-RW and play on occasion. One minor "feature" that I don't like is the player will display only three places for the track numbers. So if I use a disc with 1000 tracks, yes that's a lot of songs, then the first number is displayed as letters for songs over 999.
This player plays many of the common formats, there are some "nice to have" feature, I wanted CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD and DVD-RW.
The last feature I wanted was digital audio for an ONKYO HT-R510 receiver. The sound reproduction is great for entry level systems. The player supports digital but not Dolby Digital EX.
The installation for this player was easy. I had never used digital audio or component video on my system so I had to buy separate cables. The component cables were required some force to insert and I thought that it may damage the equipment, but it seemed okay. The digital audio was simple, just plug it in, though I had to make some configuration changes on the receiver.
The player has an on screen menu for navigating and selecting tracks on an audio disc. I created my mp3 DVD on the computer. All of the songs are organized into directories corresponding to each album. However, keep the names short or create directory names where you will know what the album is based on the first few words because the names will be truncated if you navigate the disc through the menu.
Overall the player is a great deal for the price and the features. I've used the player for about 9 months and it is still working. Philips is a well known name in the electronics industry and one that I trust.
Customer Review: Outstanding product; brings new life to DivX collection!
Summary: 5 Stars
I consider this to be the best $70 I have spent to date. A very slick low-profile design fits in perfectly with any room's decor and looks even better with a silver TV.
First and foremost, it's ability to play DivX, XviD and other format videos from CDRs is amazing. So far out of my rather vast collection of DivX movies only one has yet to play right, but that was a bad CDR eitherway, so I'm not blaming the player. It loads up a new movie right away if there is one file there or will show you a list of files to choose from if there are more than one. DivX playback quality is absolutely great. Perhaps better than when I was using my laptop's composite out for watching DivXs on my TV.
DivX movies encoded with AC3 audio instead of an MP3 stream play on the either optical AC3 or coaxial S/PDIF connections on back. If not connected to an AC3 decoder, the sound is muxed into two-channel stereo.
A nice feature of this player is that it converts PAL to NTSC (and vice-versa I believe) on the fly, allowing you to watch European DVDs without any compromise. An added bonus to an already outstanding deal.
Installation is a breeze and is truly plug-and-play, I was up and running in two minutes watching my favorites movies come to life again.
One downside that I can learn to live with however, is the poor design in the remote. It lacks intuitive organization of buttons and I sometimes end up pressing the wrong button. Too bad my Wega remote doesn't support Philips DVD players.
Another small, but less bothersome downside is that you can't do slow playback of DivXs as you would on DVDs. But that is a minor moan when you consider the amazing deal you got.
I give a full 5-stars, since I DARE you to find a better deal for a superb DVD player that plays every format you can throw on it. My parents and sister were so impressed when I got this player that we went and bought two more today and now we have three total around the house (avid DivX watchers).
Cheers to Philips.
Customer Review: This DVD Player is AMAZING!
Summary: 5 Stars
I just got this DVD player for Christmas and it's really great. I'm not a videophile by any means... I just wanted something that could play my DVDs, CDs and MP3s for me. I shopped around for DVD players and ended up asking for this one for Christmas, because it also plays MPG and DivX AVI files. I've got a LOT of MPG and DivX videos, so I thought that would be a nice perk. Well, it does everything I wanted it to... and the "perk" has turned out to be even more fun than I expected it to be. I've been burning videos from my PC onto discs and watching them in this player for days now, just because it's so nice watching my TV shows, music videos, etc on the TV instead of my PC monitor. Even better yet, it plays the PAL DVD my friend sent me a long time ago that's been collecting dust on my shelf, because I didn't have a player that could convert PAL to NTSC. This one does it with ease.
I've heard some people talk about the player being slower or noisier than other players. Like I said, I'm no videophile or anything... so I may not be as particular as some other people, but I haven't noticed any kind of problems like that at all. The player takes a moment to load the menu for a VCD, but no more than my PC's CD-Rom drive does. It's also no noisier than any other DVD player I've had.
People have also complained about the remote, but I have no problem with it. Some buttons may be configured a little differently here, but it's easy to adapt to and I actually like the small size of the remote. It fits in my smaller hands much better than some other remotes. Also, I don't miss the eject button at all. I don't have much need for it (I think the average person probably doesn't need to eject their DVDs from across the room, since you'd have to get up to pull the DVD out, anyhow) and even if I DO want to eject something, I don't see where the problem is in holding the "Stop" button for a few seconds.
Bottom Line: This is an awesome DVD player and I definitely recommend it - especially if you want to play VCDs.
Customer Review: Begin watching those DiVX movies in style
Summary: 5 Stars
This unit is made for those electronics fans who want the most for the buck they spend like myself. This player is perfect if you have an average 25" tube TV, possibly with some stereo speakers and perhaps even with component video input. The player provides both stereo output, S-video output(which looks kinda like computer PS/2 mouse jack). Then there are 3 component outputs, which I didn't get to test, but you might be able to take advantage of. Now, all the DiVX movies that I tried played almost flawlessly. One of the movies in DiVX 3.11 format showed notable image aberrations, with some parts of the frame looking as if they were shot on some grainy film. I guess the video chip couldn't keep up with the video bitrate, or the file encoding was corrupt. After pressing Stop and Play buttons didn't fix this problem, I tried pressing Menu button, then pressed Play back, and voila, the image became as clear as it was supposed to be.
One drawback I noticed is that version DiVX 3.11 movies support only 4x fast forwarding, while other DiVX movies(as well as DVDs) can fast forward at 8x, which is pretty good, but not as fast as the usual 32x for standard DVD players.
One time the player didn't want to read a CD-R with a small video on it, saying there was 'No Disc'. After I finalized the disk in Ahead Nero, the player was able to load and play the disk back.
I also tried a homemade DVD-R, which worked as expected, with all the menus/subtitles, you know, the whole "DVD Experience".
I have to add I was pleasantly surprised by how cool the player looked, with a nice bright LCD(which doesn't have a lot of information on it, just a playback counter; still, it's a nice improvement over my old cheapo Apex DVD player, which looks pretty dull without the LCD), a very thin sleek silver(though pretty large in width) case and a nice ergonomic remote control.
All in all, it's about time for you guys to shell out those $60 and start watching DiVX on a big TV screen. You won't regret buying this awesome affordable and quality gadget.
Customer Review: KiSS who? what? 600 dollars?? KiSS My..
Summary: 5 Stars
i totally envy how Philips took an enormous dump on KiSS' profits with this bad boy. almost 100% of the functionalty (sans network port, but who cares) at 10% of the cost! you can't beat this thing.i've noticed that a lot of people are pissy about the supposed neglect of DVD-R. let me tell you right off the bat, it works. flawlessly. i think what most people's problems are coming from is that they're buying princos off of ebay and expecting them to work. hey, you get what you pay for, and if you want to use flimsy media on your important backups and movies, you can watch them on your computer.
i threw everything i had handy at it- vcds work, svcd is supported but i didn't try it (tried an m2v, didn't recognize the extension..stupid me.), mpeg1 .mpg's work fine, divx's (AND XVID, YES.) work great, etcetera. tried a cd with both avi's and .mpg's.. absolutely pristine. i think this thing even supports .wmv's, i saw a windows icon next to a file on an old cd i burned, i don't remember if i tried it or not. not that that's a big deal, if you use windows media codecs then there's something wrong with you in the first place, but it's a nice little addition to have anyway..
to the customer below with the gelatinous looking movie: 800kb/s? are you serious? ever heard the term sh** in sh** out? the only 800kb/s's i have are the vhs's i've backed up that i could care less about other than fitting onto one cd.
on the other hand, the menus ARE a bit clumsy. especially the file browser, which stutters a bit and can be a pain.. and the character cutoff point is kind of trite as well. both extremely small prices to pay for this slim and sexy beast.
just be happy you no longer have to pay $300 and up for an earlier-named piece of junk that apparently crashes more often than windows ME ever collectively did..
pick this up while you can. i was lucky to find the last one, they're literally flying off the shelves at wal-mart.