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

[superfob99]

Originally posted by: gshock888
Amazon is selling this for 66.49, no tax no normal shipping in most states
so hot, i bought one even when I already have a divx-dvd player already.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000204SWE/104-4952666-0615145?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Thanks for the heads up on amazon. This thing's been sold out for quite sometime. Best buy now has it listed at 79.99.

 

[Murph74]

I got one a few weeks ago and LOVE it.. there's only one file that it hasn't played for me-- and I'm sure I'll go back and test the file to see what the prob is. In general, it's a great player for the dough-- where else can you put 4-6 movies on 1 DVD-r and watch em like they were store bought that way!?

BTW-- theses are on the shelf at CompUSA and Wal Mart in STL... both at $69 plus tax.

Murph

 

[dman]

I've noticed that these units have been flying off the shelves of the targets I've been to. I saw one one day and skipped it,next time it was gone. I grabbed one yesterday though... still need to unpack it. Finally upgrading my Apex 660 Unit.... has served me well, hope the 642 gets as much mileage.

 

[conehead433]

Ok so I am finally adding my thoughts about this player to this thread. A few avi files on full CD discs stuttered somewhat at the beginning of the disc. A QPEL encoded file would not play. The few MP4 files I tried would play, but with no audio. The picture quality is good averall on all of the files and DVDs it plays , but I don't have a HDTV monitor to further evaluate the picture in that regard. I also had an XVID file that played but the audio was out of sync with the video. I have not upgraded the firmware so I am unsure of any changes in what the unit will play.
Unfortunately I am still thinking that a PC media box is a better alternative if you want something that actually plays everything and I will probably go ahead and build a cheap PC just for this purpose. All things considered this is a good player for the money and I highly recommend it. Hopefully firmware upgrades will correct some of the aforementioned problems. For the price alone this player gets 4 stars and for being able to play most avi, divx, xvid, mpeg files I have to add another 1/2 star, so that's 4 1/2 stars out of five for a very good DVD player. In spite of any shortcomings of this player, I am one happy customer.

 

[Murph74]

Originally posted by: conehead433
I also had an XVID file that played but the audio was out of sync with the video.

I had this problem too... it's not a firmware fix yet, but can be solved by just rewinding a seond or two in the few cases I've noticed it.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I find this works great instead of a MMPC. There's very little boot time, it doesn't take up alot of space, it isn't noisy, and it's remote works well.

 

[Slickone]

Originally posted by: Childs

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?

Looking for a PAL disc, but on the Philips 727 it was great.

I wanna know this too (about the 642). I see it has a region hack. Did the 727?
I've been looking for something with a region hack and PAL->NTSC ability, but not an Apex, or cheap Chinese players. Also DVD-A would be awesome, but I imagine I'll have to get an additional player for that. I doubt I'll ever play video files from the PC.

 

[Slickone]

^

 

[Slickone]

A comment on dvdrhelp.com says about the 642:
"I bought this to replace my Philips DVD-724. The DIVX feature is what brought me in. The PAL conversion is not nearly as good as my 724. I put in a copy of The Old Grey Whistle Test Vol. 3 with region set to 0 and it played no problem. Looking closer, it appears to cut off the edges of the picture. Checked it against my 724 and PC and sure enough, it does. It's going back. I'll wait for DIVX player that doesn't cut off the picture when converting PAL to NTSC. Newer not better.'

Has anyone else experienced this? Would the problem only be when playing DIVX, or also with PAL DVD's?
And the 727 would be as good or better than the 724 wouldnt it?

 

[Strider63841]

Mine crops alot of divx anime fansubs I have also. Problem not too bad, subs are still readable. BTW I got it late last nite at a CompUSA in Atlanta. They still have 3 in stock at 69.99 and these comes with the new ROM version 470 already in there.

 

[gshock888]

before you consider getting this from amazon, be careful. they're OOS and mine wont ship till next week. (i ordered last week)

 

[cds10247]

Hi all,

I have been reading a lot of forums, and looking up guides, but no where has anyone explicit said what needs to be done with Nero or any other DVD burner to get divx on to a DVD-R/W. I think I have the following issues:

1. Trying to use DVD-RW and CDRW so as not to waste too many disks
while experimenting. But I have trouble with Roxio to "Finalize the disk".
I only managed to finalize a session.

2. I know I need to use Nero or Roxio and burn data disks. But do I need
to put the files in a particular directory structure? For example, I've tried
putting everything at the root, didn't work. I put a divx file under a directory
called divx, didn't work. Please let me know what the structure should be.

3. Use of Xvid codec that I am not all that familiar with. And I also got the Qpel
message before.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

-tk

 

[TimothyX]

i got an APEX 3 disc dvd player a year ago and am not pleased with it......maybe its time to move on......dam you forum posters, im not made of money yet have no self control. your deals are driving me poor. ps 100 posts...w00t!

 

[Childs]

The picture quality is subjectively better on the 727, but other than that the 642 is essentially 727 with Divx/xvid support and a somewhat inferior remote. I bought one for my uncle and made a DVDR with 7 movies, and they could not tell the difference between those files and regular DVDs. For the purist it may not have perfect picture quality, but for $69 and divx support its better than anything else out there IMO. The 727 was exceptional in what it did, and I'd say the 642 is great.

 

[stokey7873]

anyone feel like opening up the player and checking what chip they use to do the decoding? if you find that out, you could prolly find out what it "should" be capable of doing.

 

[Superartus]

I think target has the same player for the same price. Can anyone confirm?

 

[oddjob303]

1 left at the target in louisville, co. Just bought mine =D

 

[sihostk]

Looks like a good deal, but I really need the subtitle function.
Will this thing recognize subtitle files like .srt, sub, smi files?

 

[simcole]

I got mine from walmart.com for like $5 more than amazon. It took 4 days to get here and I love it. It plays EVERYTHING and clearly. I highly recommend this player.

 

[kosstamogen]

Does anyone know if it will play a DVD with a bunch of 700mb Divx movies burned on it, allowing you to select the movies?

 

[SoylentGreen]

Originally posted by: kosstamogen
Does anyone know if it will play a DVD with a bunch of 700mb Divx movies burned on it, allowing you to select the movies?

Absolutely

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: SoylentGreen

Originally posted by: kosstamogen
Does anyone know if it will play a DVD with a bunch of 700mb Divx movies burned on it, allowing you to select the movies?

Absolutely

Does it do an adequate job playing Divx files? Reading posts it seems that jerky play with Divx is the major knock on this player. Is that the files' or the player's fault? A few people said they were returning it because of their dissatisfaction. I plan to get a DVD burner, edit some video on my PC and burn DVDs, and I want to be able to play them with my DVD player.

Looks like this player is $10 more than in the thread title now. Right now it's $79.99 at Best Buy. When I tried the link in the OP, I am blocked - get a message that my browser's not allowing cookies! Never got that before. Well, I have "medium" security in my IE 6.0. I made an exception for www.bestbuy.com, so I figured I'd get in... no dice! So, I went to BB home page, did a search on DVD players and found it that way:

Is this it?

 

[Z80]

Originally posted by: kosstamogen
Does anyone know if it will play a DVD with a bunch of 700mb Divx movies burned on it, allowing you to select the movies?

Yes, it will definitely play DVD's burned with multiple DIVX movies and/or MP3's. Mine came with the menu/folder list option turned off by default so it immediately started playing the DIVX movies. Once you turn the menu/folder list option on, it presents you with a list of the folders and files on the DVD and let's you select the one to play. Six DIVX movies on one DVD is awesome. I watched over 10 DIVX movies on this player and found the quality to be excellent, no jerkyness or pixelization. I'm recommending this player to all my friends.

 

[SoylentGreen]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: SoylentGreen

Originally posted by: kosstamogen
Does anyone know if it will play a DVD with a bunch of 700mb Divx movies burned on it, allowing you to select the movies?

Absolutely

Does it do an adequate job playing Divx files? Reading posts it seems that jerky play with Divx is the major knock on this player. Is that the files' or the player's fault? A few people said they were returning it because of their dissatisfaction. I plan to get a DVD burner, edit some video on my PC and burn DVDs, and I want to be able to play them with my DVD player.

Looks like this player is $10 more than in the thread title now. Right now it's $79.99 at Best Buy. When I tried the link in the OP, I am blocked - get a message that my browser's not allowing cookies! Never got that before. Well, I have "medium" security in my IE 6.0. I made an exception for www.bestbuy.com, so I figured I'd get in... no dice! So, I went to BB home page, did a search on DVD players and found it that way:

Is this it?

I've played about 40 different AVI files so far in the months that I have the player, and only have had 2 spit back because they were QPEL encoded. The players manual states that QPEL isn't supported, makes sense since a lot more CPU power is needed to decode those files.

I found some info at cdrinfos forums about a tool that can read and tell you if a file is QPEL before going through all the trouble of burning. I don't have the direct link but search QPEL there.

 

[Muse]

I just ordered this at Amazon.com for $66.49 shipped (free shipping). It says "In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served." So, I don't know when I will get it. I'm not in a hurry.

The page is here.

Edit: After ordering, I got the confirmation email which stated: "Delivery estimate:July 29, 2004 - August 14, 2004". Well, I'm in no hurry for it. It will come just around my birthday.

Best Buy seems to have it at $79.99 right how, shipping and tax unknown.

Later Edit: Cancelled my order at Amazon.com (weeks after making order) and bought it at The Good Guys for $69.99. Getting $20 back MIR from GG (GG coupon on DVD players good until about 8/20/04), $5 MIR from Pricegrabber for writing a review.