Philips DVP642

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.