Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
by Philips
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List Price: 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: Doesnt play all DVD+/-R but here's how to make region-free
Summary: 2 Stars
I use Cicero DVD+R blanks and a friend uses Memorex DVD-R. Cicero is Future Shop's #1 selling blank so clearly it has a lot of users and support. Obviously Memorex is also an extremely popular brand. I'd have expected a top brand name player to be able to handle popular brands such as these. We each bought a 642 and neither machine would play our discs despite a very large claim printed on the box, that "If you've got it, we play it". The picture freezes repeatedly and very often and skips ahead. The Philips help desk stated quite flatly that these discs were incompatible and added to the sense of frustration by quite stupidly telling me I should transfer my discs to a brand name such as Maxell, Memorex, TDK etc (at this point he had no idea that my friend was having the identical problem with Memorex discs). What a good practical solution - copy $1000 worth of DVDs to another $1000 worth of new blanks to save the price of a $120(Cdn) machine! I wonder how many people take this advice? I also wonder how many other brands it won't play? We've both taken our machines back for a refund.
BUT ... it CAN be turned into a Region-Free player. As it comes to you out-of-the-box it has been pre-set at the factory to play only Region 1 discs. You just have to know what to key in with your remote to change the code from a "1" to a "0". Here's how to do it (takes just a couple of seconds):
1. Turn on player and open tray.
2. Use remote to key in the following sequence: 7-8-9-OK-0
(The number 0 means region free)
3. The machine is now region free ... go ahead and play something on it.
There is no "eject" button on the remote. Tip: Hold down the 'stop' button on the remote for a couple of seconds and this will open/close the tray.
It does an OK job with store-bought PAL or NTSC discs but I found the 642's picture not quite as sharp on PAL discs as on my old CyberHome 300 machine. After returning the supposedly more up-market Philips I went out and bought another dirt-cheap-but-does-the-job-really-well CyberHome (which can also be coded to make it region free).
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: Fix for the "no disc" problem
Summary: 4 Stars
Apart from not being able to play DVD's after a few months, this player is great. I'd give it five stars if I could've gotten some info other than "send us money and we'll send you another player" from the manufacturer. Philips customer service being no help, I looked around until I found this on another forum, and it worked great for me:
chrish434
Date Posted: May/21/2005 5:59 PM
I realize this may belong more in the deal discussion, but I decided to put it here because I know more people read this forum. And for those having the "No Disc" error, this may be considered a hot deal for them. After owning this DVD player for about four months, I started getting the "No Disc" error and it would not read any desks. It would play CDs, but no DVDs. Because it was past the 90 day warranty and it was going to cost $40 to get a replacement from Philips, I decided against repairing the unit. After searching on the Internet, I found a lot of other people were having the same problem. On one of the Yahoo forums, someone mentioned they opened their unit up and could wiggle the black, red and white wires that are to the right of the drive and get their unit to play. I opened the case on mine and wiggled the wires and noticed the part (not sure what it does....guessing it's the laser assembly) behind the disc would move in and out under the disc as I wiggled the wires. As I was wiggling the wires, they came unplugged from underneath the drive. Since I was not pulling on the wires when I was wiggling them, I suspected that the plug-in under the drive was loose from the factory. I removed the four screws holding the drive in place and was able to reach underneath and plug them back in. I put everything back together, and I have not had the problem since. I have tested it with probably 20 DVDs and all of them read where before all of them were giving the "No Disc" error. I have no idea if this is the problem with all of the units giving the error but I am guessing mine is not the only one so hopefully this info will help some of you.
Customer Review: A must have
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't want to start a detailed review here, it has been done by other reviewers very well, especially by the guy who listed all pros and cons (that review should show up first as "most helpful"). What I want is to add a few points from my personal view.
I have been using this product for 1.5 years and had not a single problem with it. No, it doesn't play ALL formats (the notorious QPEL codec is too much for this player, as well as some kinds of XVID, not to mention Micro$oft's compression - WMV, ASF - no one ever is going to support those because of licensing fees I believe). But I did not expect it to play EVERYTHING, that only happens in dreams. As it is, it plays about 95% of whatever I put in it, and that is as good as you are going to get in a $70 unit.
I do find the interface clunky and an utter disgrace for a company that respects itself. Philips is a great innovative company but in their efforts to undercut the market and bring us the newest technology at lowest price (I believe it's their philosophy, opposite to Sony's - another great innovator, the current low prices for DVD-players is mostly Philips' - the DVD inventors btw - doing) they compromise the quality of their products and sometimes come out really CHEAP. That what happened here, I don't think the UI was ever "designed", they just cut costs that way and it is quite embarassing. It is, however, still usable so I can live with it.
What really pisses me off is the 90-day warranty. Since when new electronics items get only 90 days? Again I have to mention Sony who's been pushing this lame deal on us for years (and you know you are paying EXTRA for a "Sony") but I didn't notice that the other manufacturers have "followed the suit". Bad, bad companies...
That said, I have to say that the player is still EXCELLENT for the money you pay and it plays so much more than your regular DVD-palyer that IT IS A MUST-HAVE. I got one for everyone in my extented family and am getting another one for my brother-in-law as I am writing this.
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.