Phillips DVDP642 player

[Darksol]

I recently bought a Phillips DVDP642 player and it is awesome:

Here is everything it does :

Movies: DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, VCD, SVCD, MPEG-4, and DivX 3.11/4.x/5.x
Music: CD, MP3-CD, CD-R and CD-RW
Pictures: Picture CD (JPEG) with music (MP3)

Can also play XviD and AVI/MPEG files directly.

Right now it lives up to its promise. The player is also firmware upgradeable by just burning a burned cd with the firmware in the drive , and it can easily be made region free as well as switch from NTSC to PAL if need be.

This is all for $70. I had to wait a month for it to arrive after I ordered it. It seems to be the DVD aficiando's wet dream right now.

Anyone on this forum got experience with this drive ?

[Shane R. Monroe]

I've had one for some time. Bryan has one as well. Pretty much all of my close friends get them when they can find them.

You are correct in your evaluation.

There are just a few caveats to the unit.

1 - It can be NOISY. Noticably noisy. Mostly with discs that AREN'T pressed DVD-VIDEO discs. Xvids are really noisy.

2 - Not all Xvids will play right. I've run across one or two that simply HANG about 1/3 of the way in.

3 - The remote isn't the best laid out thing in the world. I constantly find myself hitting wrong buttons because they just aren't laid out intuitively.

Aside from those little things, the unit performs very well. Its cheap - so I expect one year TOPS before it craps out.

Honestly, now that my whitebox is back in the living room - I have little need for it outside of playing PAL/Region X titles (it plays PAL FLAWLESSLY - even stretches good).

[Darksol]

I definitely agree with your assessment about the remote control. Its definitely weak.

[Bryan 'KidHype' Smith]

Yeah, I love mine so much I bought 2

But Shane is right, I bought the Phillips because it can play mpeg files without converting to DVD first but I am so spoiled by what the white box can do, I rarely, if ever, burn a dvd full of files to play on the phillips.

Also, going back to the Liteon issue i talked about on another thread, the Phillips will sometimes hang on burns i've made with the Liteon even though they play fine on my pc.

I have no problems with the remote. After using the GE's very unfriendly remote, this thing is like heaven. Very easy to jump back and forth with the remote but I am sure my wife will defend Shane when it comes to the remote as he saw her lose her fuck-ing mind trying to play dvds when he was down here.

[Shane R. Monroe]

The GE remote was an abortion to be sure... And the Philips is a good deal better ... still sucks.