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Philips 642 Progressive Scan DVD Player $69.99 at BestBuy.com

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Originally posted by: BatmanNate
I dug through the PDF's on Philips' site about this player, and for any who might be curious it does NOT support DiVX that has been encoded with either GMC (Global Motion Compensation) or Qpel (Quarter Pixel).
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isn't that kind of standard for standalone DVD players?
 
Received an e-mail reporting that mine has shipped. Looking forward to checking this unit out. I still can't believe how cheap it is. Will report back after a few tests.
 
Originally posted by: The_Dude8
target b&m has the 642 also for 69.99.
how is the quality of decoding the PAL to NTSC?
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Looking for a PAL disc, but on the Philips 727 it was great.

FYI, the remote for the 642 is fairly dinky. A step back from the 727. And as BatmanNate noted, it doesnt like Qpel. I didn't even know I had a Qpel disc until the player told me. Strange that it know its Qpel but wont play it. Hopefully its something that can be fixed in firmware.
 
"FYI, the remote for the 642 is fairly dinky. A step back from the 727. And as BatmanNate noted, it doesnt like Qpel. I didn't even know I had a Qpel disc until the player told me. Strange that it know its Qpel but wont play it. Hopefully its something that can be fixed in firmware."

If I'm not mistaken the 727 dicn't play avi, divx, or xvid, but did play raw mpeg files. Sort of makes up for the remote not being the greatest if you asked me. BTW- WTF is Qpel, I know I don't have any.
 
I meant the remote was a step back. 😛 In everything but the remote the 642 kicks butt. Don't really know what Qpel is, but one movie I popped in wouldn't play because of it.
 
I bought 2 of these off of Bestbuy.com's website (fearing that it would go out of stock) then dropped by about 3 different Targets and CompUSA stores. No players were found but my local Walmart had one left...so...naturally I bought it (yeah, I just can't wait). Now I have 3.

Well...not to disappoint people's hopes in this product (it is a great product, especially at $70) but I was unable to properly play half of my video collection (contains DivX, Xvid, OGG, and some WMV).

Read closely and you will find that it supports a wide array of formats, unfortunately it doesn't do the latest version of Xvid, any type of OGG, and does not do SRT subtitles (or any other external-file-based subtitle formats). Most of my stuff are foreign movies (Kdrama, HKdrama, etc.) and most of them use SRT subtitles. Also, many of the new ones are encoded using the latest version of Xvid, which this player does not support, yet. The good thing is this player is Firmware upgradeable. There's already a firmware update for it but it doesn't contain any new codecs. I'm waiting for another firmware to be released with the latest codecs.

Other than the complaints above, this is a great multimedia player (not to mention solidly-built). The only other player that can beat this unit is the LiteOn 2002, which is so hard to find now (PCClub used to carry it).

Oh, and one other complaint, the internal drive is a little noisy.

...and I'm returning 1 out of the 3 units that I bought. Don't need a third.
 
I just picked one up yesterday, and I have to say I am quite pleased. For those of you wondering, it does support Divx all the way back to 3.1.1 - so even my old encodes give me no problems. So far nothing I have put into it has had a problem except a small video clip of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog that I grabbed from a friend. I've thrown at least a dozen disks into it. I'm loving this thing. I expect some of my stuff that was encoded by other people may have issue, but it just means I need to re-encode it.

The drive *is* a little noisey. Thankfully, I can close the door on my cabinet without blocking the IR sensor, so this is no big deal. The remote sucks ass. It feels cheap, and the controls are not very intuitively placed, or at least not separated from each other well, so things like the down navigation button is a little too close to the play button. (it doesn't help that every other remote I own puts the function of a button *above* instead of *below* the button, so I could hitting that down navigation button by mistake)
 
Originally posted by: passivex

Read closely and you will find that it supports a wide array of formats, unfortunately it doesn't do the latest version of Xvid, any type of OGG, and does not do SRT subtitles (or any other external-file-based subtitle formats). Most of my stuff are foreign movies (Kdrama, HKdrama, etc.) and most of them use SRT subtitles. Also, many of the new ones are encoded using the latest version of Xvid, which this player does not support, yet.
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The 642 does support the latest builds of Xvid if the files were encoded with the "packed bitstream" option unchecked in the B-VOP's section. I've encoded a few films using Keopi's 4/05 build and they all played fine as long as the "packed bitstream" option was unchecked (its checked by default).
 
The 642 does support the latest builds of Xvid if the files were encoded with the "packed bitstream" option unchecked in the B-VOP's section. I've encoded a few films using Keopi's 4/05 build and they all played fine as long as the "packed bitstream" option was unchecked (its checked by default).
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Doh! Well...I don't really have time to sit there and re-encode all my movies with the "packed bitstream" option unchecked.

Hopefully a new firmware would be released soon to correct this problem.
 
Received mine today and played a couple of CD avi discs and one CD xvid disc. Experienced some minor stutter at the beginning of each avi disc and the a/v was out of sync on the xvid, but I'm certain that the xvid problem is in the encoding and not the player, as I have had the same problem on almost all of the xvid files even when playing on my computer. Picture quality is exceptional and the audio seems to be very good. Will have to play a lot more discs to determine its versatility but I am very pleased so far.
 
This drive can be hacked to become region free. Here's how (copy&pasted from DivX.com forum):

Philips DVP642 Region Free
1) Turn on player and open tray.
2) Use remote: 7-8-9-OK-0 (0 is region free, use desired region number)
3) 0( appears on lower left of TV to indicate that your player is now region free)

Tip: Hold down 'stop' button on remote for 2 seconds to open/close tray. On 724 unit, it was the '1' button...

This is a great player for 70$. Picked it up at CompUSA the other day. Plays every DivX movie on CD-R I throw at. Only one MAJOR flaw I see is that it does NOT support external subtitles (*.SRT). I'm disappointed b/c I have a lot of foreign and anime movies. Hopefully they will have support for it in future firmware upgrades. Also, they really need to work on using LONG FILE NAMES... 11 chars doesn't cut it.

IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO UPGRADE THE FIRMWARE FROM VERSION 0113 (January 13th) TO VERSION 0409 (April 09th), YOU NEED TO BE AWARE THAT ONCE YOU FLASH THE PLAYER WITH THE NEW FIRMWARE, IT WILL SET THE PLAYER TO PAL (instead of NTSC) BY DEFAULT - THUS CREATING BLACK AND WHITE JUMPY SCREENS.

TO FIX THIS:
1. Turn on your player.
2. With your remote, press Menu (System)
3. Press arrow down twice. (Highlighted 'Video')
4. Press OK. (Highlighted 'TV Standard')
5. Press RIGHT ARROW (Highlighted 'Multi')
6. Press DOWN ARROW ONCE (Highlighted 'NTSC')
7. Press OK. (Window will ask if you can see.)
8. Press OK to confirm.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

NEXT PROBLEM WITH FIRMWARE UPGRADE: SINCE IT WOULD SET YOUR PLAYER TO PAL BY DEFAULT, IT ALSO SETS YOUR PLAYER TO ONLY READ REGION 2 DVDS (as opposed to REGION 1). TO FIX THIS, READ THE ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS.

*Note: this is because the only firmware update available right now is the "dvp642_17_fus_eng.zip" file. Note the "eng" ending. That means its for England thus your DVD player will be set to PAL and region 2.
 
I have the Lite-On 2002 and I have to say that this is a great player. It does have problem playing the old Divx3 stuff, but all my DivX5 and Xvid works great. It also plays PAL dvd's. I should check to see if there is a firmware upgrade so that it can play the old Divx3.
 
Originally posted by: Onizuka
I have the Lite-On 2002 and I have to say that this is a great player. It does have problem playing the old Divx3 stuff, but all my DivX5 and Xvid works great. It also plays PAL dvd's. I should check to see if there is a firmware upgrade so that it can play the old Divx3.
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The problem withe the LiteOn is that it looks like ass. I'm talking about the actual machine, with that blue crap on the face.
 
Hey, I'm considering purchasing this but I'm worried about some of the DVD playback image quality concerns that have popped up. Is the image quality when playing DVDs really noticeably worse than on a Sony of Toshiba? What kind of TV's are you guys running on? I've got a Sony 27FS100, so if anyone knows please reply or PM me. Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: conehead433
Yep, looks like this progressive scan player will play almost anything thrown at it. Saw this at Ben's and couldn't resist. I may delay building a media center PC if this plays everything claimed. The price is unreal considering that the Lite-On players that would play almost everything were easily $50 or more higher. Will report back to this thread after I am able to check mine out.

Best Buy Philips 642 DVD Player

DVDRHelp DVD Players Go here and type in Philips 642
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I don't mean to thread crap but from the reviews I've read this thing is only SUPPOSED to play everything you throw at it. Actually doing so however, has been a different story. I've heard numbers as low as 30% of the Divx/Xvid's you throw at this machine work properly.

Personally, I went with the RJ Tech rj1500 and it literally plays EVERYTHING I've thrown at it without a hitch. Never a stutter or anything. Plus, with the rj1500, you can FF and Rewind divx files.

The downfall is that it's significantly more expensive. You get what you pay for I suppose...

Linky
 
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