Philips DVP642
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"Died after 4 Months" on
Pros: worked great with any kind of format.
Cons: It Died four months after purshase. I call Philips and they had a hard time to help me. They couldn't give me an exchange, they want me to pay fees but are not able to tell me the exact amount. I am going for a Sony or samsung. That is it for me with Phil
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"Plays it all, but still buggy" on
Pros: Plays everything I can throw at it. Allows you to upgrade player with new firmware.
Cons: Doesn't work with all TVs. My JVC dvd player plays great on my tv w/ a component cable, but this Philips only shows shades of blue when playing videos. Works fine on another tv, but why not all?? And depending on what kind of media you use, there could b
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"Good when it works" on by songbookz
Pros: It does play a wide variety of file formats when it works.
Cons: It has a problem with color. When you turn it on, one time it will be in color and the next it will only show black and white.
Summary: Right out of the box (I hate to return things) it had this problem where one time you will insert a disk and it will work fine and the next it will only display in black and white. Often, if you turn it off and on a few times, it will eventually display color.
It does play a wide variety of formats when it works, both Divx and xvid seem to work well -- but the other problem is a hassle - I won't buy another Phillips product. -
"For simple needs, just the ticket" on by dawn_treador
Pros: Region-free, error-free, optical out for DTS support on my receiver
Cons: No cons as of now
Summary: After years of suffering with the maddening flakiness of a Sony DVP-300, I decided enough was enough. I wanted a stable, simple DVD player that had an optical output so that my receiver, a Sony STR DE915, could decode DTS-encoded soundtracks. I was also hoping for a region-free player. The Philips DVP642 has filled the bill perfectly.
I picked it up at a Best Buy on 12/31/05, and as of today it has worked very well. It's played USA discs perfectly. A Chinese-region disc played flawlessly though the indexing was off by one (so finding a chapter meant entering one higher number than desired). More important to me, the DTS playback is perfect.
I am also impressed with the picture quality it provides on our standard RCA 27-inch TV. The picture appears to be more vibrant than a similarly priced Toshiba unit (that had no optical output).
I paid $69 at a local Best Buy for the unit, a bit more than I was hoping for, but am very satisfied with its performance. -
"Too good to be true... After 5 months, goes down hill" on by johntab187
Pros: Plays a wide range and variety of formats
Cons: Powers itself off randomly and plays divx format very choppy
Summary: Like everyone else, I bought this DVD player because it was the cheapest DIVX player I can find. First off, after 5 months I noticed if I am rewinding or fast forwarding or even paused and then I press play, half the time it powers off on its own. If I am playing the divx format, it plays very choppy. Like stop and go effect. I tried encoding with smaller bitrate like 600kb/s and that improved it but that means I can't watch high quality divx smoothly which is terrible. The laser reader is too slow. And last, when I play either VCDs or just mpeg format, sometimes the video does not fill the entire screen. Imagine if your screen is divided into 4 invisible boxes, then the video would play in the top left box and the rest is all black. Philips support was absolutely no help, they did not even understand half the things I was telling them and yes I have the most up to date firmware. I would recommend skip this one.
