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: Plays anything you throw at it
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this gadget. I have a lot of Divx, Xvid, Mpeg and Avi files which I wanted to watch on my bigscreen TV. The options were: A lousy long cable from the computer to the TV and no remote, an expensive wireless transmitter between the computer and the TV or this DVD player. Was an easy choice! I should admit I was skeptical because of the price. Now it seems the risk was well worth it. This very thin and sleek looking DVD player plays everything you throw at it. Normal DVDs, burnt DVD+ or DVD- disks, CDs, VCDs, MP3 disks, and any windows compatible vido data DVDs. I am yet to have a problem after nearly a year.
Long story short here's the skinny :
PROS:
-Plays ANYTHING
-Plays both NTSC and PAL formats. If you have any DVDs from abroad, just plug and play!
-Very thin and sleek look
-Has everything expensive ones have (5.1 DTS, optical, component inputs, MP3 capability)
-Small and simple remote control
CONS:
-Somewhat simple interface for data video menu
-Limits filenames to the first 9 letters
-You may need to hit the menu button twice to access the menu for real when playing video data (Xvid,MPEG etc.)
Overall the cons are nearly nothing compared to the pros. I bought 3 of these units, 2 as presents.
Customer Review: Philips DVP642 and DTS 5 Stars
Ok, I researched the web up and down and decided to buy this unit. I got alot of conflicting reports on wether DTS worked or not but now I can verify it does! My surround sound receiver is a sony strde945. The 642 does not have a built in decoder so your receiver needs to have one but the player will pass the signal through. You also need an optical or digital coax connection in order for DTS to work. So far I have tested burned +dvr with no problem, I also put some mp3s on a cd and the player read them with no problem. As for video quality it is as good, if not better than the sony unit it replaced. I also tested the region hack and played a region 2 dvd easily. Search the web for the hack, it just requires pushing some buttons. This was important to me because I have been looking to pick up some Ali-G dvds from Britain and I cant find them in region 1. Next I will put some digital photos on a blank dvd and see if that works, I know they work on cd. I also checked some divx titles on e-bay and they are dirt cheap, like 40 movies for 10$. This unit also plays divx and xvid. So right now I am thrilled with unit. I bought it for 69$ at Target, Walmart had it to but I prefer not shop at the evil empire.One complaint is that the interface with data files could be a little nicer.
Customer Review: I have been waiting for a dvd player like this for years
Summary: 5 Stars
As soon as I heard that this product was available I wanted it. I was a little hesitant because I have read several reviews and some people didn't like it at all. After I got it though, I don't know how anyone could not like it. I tried to play every type of disc I had and pretty much everything works with it. Over 90% of all my downloaded videos worked on this player.... the only downloaded video that didn't work were some very short videos that I think were from windows media, 2 tv episodes and 1 movie that the sound didn't work but im fine with that because I have the movie on vhs anyways. Everything else worked with it and I had no trouble with regular dvds either. I've only had it a couple days and I've only watched about 4-5 hours of stuff on it so far but I am extremely happy with it so far. My brother was really skeptical about it before I bought it and now he wants to borrow it. I have read that this dvd player can play any regional dvd from anywhere in the world(after a simple adjustment) and doesn't have macrovision meaning you can record onto vhs tapes. In conclusion, this dvd player can do things that most of the other players can't and for the lack of price your paying that would make this item a must have and I totally recommend this.Customer Review: great value
Summary: 5 Stars
The DVP642 is a terrific value. Nothing in its price range comes close ($65 currently). You'd need a much more expensive and cumbersome Home Theater PC to do what this puppy does. DVD, Divx, Xvid, mp3 etc etc... It plays DVD-R and +R media fine. The picture quality is superb. I think the people who complained about picture quality do not understand that Divx movies are often encoded at very low bitrates. This causes lots of pixel noise which has nothing to do with the player. A poorly encoded file will look bad on any player.
[...]
It works great. I did notice that if I fast forward and rewind consecutively back & forth during Divx playback that the player will just shut off. It's probably a bug, some sort of fallback safety feature to keep the thing from locking up completely. That's a minor nuisance as I rarely do that. It's nice that the DVP642 supports jumping to arbitrary time points within a movie. So if I've watched half of a Divx or Xvid movie one day and later want to resume from there, I just enter that point in the movie's time and it goes straight there.
The DVP642 offers great performance at a low price. You just can't beat that. It's much easier to use than my HTPC, thank goodness.
Customer Review: Flawless
Summary: 5 Stars
Is there any reason why almost every single review here has to use the words "everything I throw at it". I mean come on people, get creative and stop using the same phrase over and over and over again. In any event, this machine performed flawlessly no matter what I threw at it. I can confirm that DVD-R and DTS work fine, don't know why anyone had problems with it. Amazing unit for the money, no more having to watch DIVX movies on my computer!
I've played many Xvid disks as well with no problem. Just want people to know that as of November, Amazon was shipping this unit with the LATEST firmware already installed, the one that allows subtitles, so no need to track down and install the firmware yourself, it's already included. Also, all the complaints about the remote are unfounded. Sure, it's simple, but it works. There is an eject button (STOP for 2 seconds), and the menu is simple, but who wants a complicated menu? Also, make sure you go into the menu manually and choose composite or S-Video for your output as it won't automatically do it for you.
Great product for this price, my only complaint is the 8x fast forward speed, seems this is an issue that can be fixed with a firmware upgrade.