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: One More Fan
Summary: 5 Stars
I was initially nervous about this player due to some older negative reviews. I wanted one that could handle all my DivX & .avis, etc., and this one seemed to be the answer. Finally, when my current player finally gave it up, I figured it would be worth the risk.
I tell you I love this thing. So far I've only run into a couple of CDs that won't play (ugly CODEC Not Supported message). In each of those cases, I used AVS Video Converter and recoded it to a supported format. I had a little loss of quality, but the original wasn't perfect either.
The feature I REALLY appreciate is that when you include subtitle .srts or whatever on the disk, the player reads them and plays them with the film. I have quite a few foreign films with separate subtitle files and this makes viewing them on my TV possible. It also reads DVDs with multiple movies recorded as data files (avis, etc.)and the menu lets you chose which one to play.
I read a few reviews that criticized the interface/menu and all I can say is.. Big Deal! Its pretty simplistic, but very straightforward. No fancy colors, but it works just fine.
Ahh.. I did have one incident that worried me. A CD got out of the carrier and went inside the box. I suspect my son was the culprit, but it was easily remedied by opening it up and retreiving the little devil.
Picture quality is great too. I probably should buy another one, just in case this one fails someday. At this price and with the ability to play all my movies & TV shows on CDs, its an unbeatable combo.
Customer Review: Best dvd player ever
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok I'm sure it's not the best ever but for the price is amazing. Most people focused mainly on the divx stuff in their reviews but didn't mention much about the regualr features. Well I can say that the picture on this thing is stunning. I have it hooked up to a 51 inch Sony HDTV and the picture is beautiful. I put on Attack of the CLones and did the THX setup and it looks even better now. I've noticed absolutley no digital artifacts at all even in scenes with lots of motion and colors. THe audio on it is excellent as well. I have it hooked up to my receiver with a digital coax and the 5.1 sound is the best I've ever gotten out of my stereo by far. I played a Megadeth dvd audio disc and it sounds like I'm standing in a rehearsal studio with the band, this thing really makes each part of the music stand out. As for ease of use that's great, it's very easy to set up. I haven't played any kind of divx or mp3s but I have played a burned dvd+r and it plays perfectly. Over I think this is a great addition to any home theater and at the price I can't think of a better dvd player out there. One last thing that i Really love about this player is the fact that it converts PAL dvds automatically so you can play them on an NTSC tv. It also converts the other way around too and you can also change the output to PAL if you have a PAL tv. So now I can finally order the Guano APes dvd I've been dying to see. YOu can also set it to be region free as other reviews have mentioned.Customer Review: Very happy with this DVD player
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.
Very highly recommended. Cheerios.
Customer Review: Not much else to say...
Summary: 5 Stars
I, of course, read virtually every other review on amazon for this product before purchasing it, and nearly everything has already been said. This is a great player, and I'd expect to pay two or three times as much as the asking price for its functionality.
Some caveats:
o No, not every DivX file will play. Hardware-based players aren't able to keep up with all of the incarnations of codecs like software can, and most DivX-player applications allow quite the tolerance for poorly-encoded files. If a file is encoded fine, it will play like a DVD with full fastforward, rewind, seek, and zoom support. Other files will play fine, but you can't seek at all, and still others simply won't play. My advice: buy a single CD-RW for testing. Burn your files there first, and if they don't work to your satisfaction, use mencoder to re-encode them (part of the open source mplayer project). That's it.
o As many people have said, the menu systems are aesthetically poor, but functional. This isn't the player to show off the pretty menus to your friends, this is the player to show off those brand new DivX titles on your bigscreen TV.
o No, the remote doesn't have an eject button, but holding down "Stop" for about a second accomplishes the task.
Aside from that, this is an amazing player: Any-region DVDs, DivX/XviD/MPEG4, (S)VCD, MP3, JPEG... what more could you want for this price?
Customer Review: Great DVD Player with minor flaws
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased the Philips DVP642 DVD player and I am quite pleased with it. I have a lot of files in .avi format, and it takes me several hours to encode them in DVD, SVCD, or VCD format to play on a DVD player. Now, with this player, I can just put my .avi files onto CD-Rs, pop them in the DVD player let the machine do the rest.The quality that AVI, DIVX, and MPEG-4 are displayed in is amazing. The files play much better than they do on my home computer. This is thanks to a "smart" technology that the player uses to enhance compressed video. Many scenes will appear in almost DVD quality.
Many users have complained about the sloppy interface. I tend to disagree. Although other DVD players offer far better interfaces, this one holds up quite well. It will not distract from the overall experience you will have with this product. The remote control feels more like a television remote, though.
This unit is not perfect. It doesn't play Nero Digital MPEG-4s. There isn't any sound on non-VOB structured MPEG-2 files, nor is there any sound when miniDVDs are played (but who uses those anyways). However, a simple file conversion program will solve most of these problems allowing you to keep up to 2 hours of very good quality video on one CD. No DVD players are perfect and the bottom line is for $70 this unit is a steal. If you have a lot of video files laying around on your cpu and a cd burner, this player is a must buy.