My personal Philips dvp-642 review

[SpItoS]

Hi there, I'm pretty new here and I probably won't post much but I thought writing a small review of this wonderful dvd player.

For the price it's the best dvd player I've seen and I don't think that the picture quality is any less then any other dvd player. It's macrovision free out of the box and can be region free easily.

I didn't test a lot with it but it played some divx really fine as well as some kvcds my other dvd player would have trouble playing them. All my kvcds would skip a lot on my older dvd but they play fine on this one so that's really great.

Another thing I saw someone complaining about the rew and ff speed well it doesn't matter much since when you press display you can skip directly the time you want. Someone said you couldn't but I tested and it works. I tested it on a divx and I told the player to go to let's say 00:58:00 of the dvd and it would go there.

For me it's the best dvd, simple remote but still functional, firmware upgrade went fine and the audio and video options are ok too. To anyone looking for a good dvd player it's the player I would recommend since I looked at liteon or rj-1500 reviews and other divx dvd players they all seem to have defaults way more annoying then the small Philips dvp-642 ones.

I hope you like the review and that the player works as good for you as it does for me. I don't think I could find anything better for the price. I hope this review helps, I couldn't find any real review on the internet so I wasn't sure if it was good enough but I decided to buy it anyway and I'm glad I did.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Nice one SpItoS and welcome to the forum,

Yes there's no doubt that this player, for the price, is a classic in the making.

For anyone living in Euroland, don't forget the equivalent DVP630.


Cheers

[castellanos]

How about the DVD 737?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by castellanos
How about the DVD 737?

It's a fine player too... But as you already know, it can't spin Mpeg4 streams in .MP4

[castellanos]

So, please tell me what you recomend to buy the DVP 630 or the DVD 737 one? only 7 € difference from each other.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by castellanos
So, please tell me what you recomend to buy the DVP 630 or the DVD 737 one? only 7 € difference from each other.

Personally speaking... and I mean "personally speaking" I would buy the DVP630.

The main reason why I would choose this player, is it's abilities to spin Mpeg4 in .mp4

Other reasons include, it's PAL progressive. MacroVision free (apparently - little wonder then, why ESS has been attacked by the MPAA!). It can spin jpeg images. It's small. It's shiny!

Here's the Philips DVP630 specification: -




Cheers

[castellanos]

Good! Thanks a lot for you opinion, I got a little confused, when I saw in the specifications only DivX, and I wanted to have a player able to play XviD too, but as "bond" already said:

technically a "divx" player is a player that is able to decode mpeg-4 video streams, which includes xvid, 3ivx, nerodigital, quicktime mpeg-4 aso...

but there are two problems:
1) not all mpeg-4 features are supported by all players, like qpel, gmc aso... so make sure your encodes dont use these
2) most players support only the .avi container, which uses a fourcc system, which automatically makes every mpeg-4 stream from different mpeg-4 encoders incompatible unless the player supports all fourccs exisiting, which is not the case of course

so as all players support the divx fourcc, you can make such a player play all mpeg-4 streams (no matter what encoder used) when you change their fourcc to divx too

So, I am right on it!
Greetings!

Edit
The possibility to play avi files is on CD only, or can be in DVD too?
(sure not bigger than 2 GB).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Mpeg4/mp3 (in .AVI) on DVD will spin. But I'm not sure about the 2GB limit!

Maybe SpItoS can provide more information in this regard?

EDIT: I would be very interested to know whether 2GB+ Mpeg4/mp3 in .MP4 files would work...


Cheers

[castellanos]

Nice, How about Mpeg4/ac3 (in AVI) on DVD? (-2GB).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by castellanos
Nice, How about Mpeg4/ac3 (in AVI) on DVD? (-2GB).

Yep... I can't imagine the player would have any problems with this stream combination either.


Cheers

[castellanos]

Good. Thanks a lot. No more questions, your Highness!
Greetings!

[SpItoS]

Well... I have no dvd burner but someone said that you had to cut the .avi to less then 2gb if you wanted the movie to play right. So I guess if you put let's say 2 .avis of about 1.75gb of size it should play fine I guess...

Edit: Just for some info I just burned an Xvid at 1214kbps with Ac3 192kb/s in 624x336 and it plays just fine at a really nice quality. It was 2 cds of 700mb each.

[minolta]

Just thought I'd comment on the 'resize' and 'interlace' behaviour of this player (I have the 642):

1. Player does not swallow all mpeg4 aspect ratio flags. In fact, setting a custom PAR (i.e. 20:11 for 352x480) will not play (black screen; extra 16bits screws it over). Other non-custom flags (4:3 NTSC, 4:3 PAL, 16:9 NTSC, 4:3 PAL) will play, but are ignored (assumes 1:1 square). I use Motiah's MPEG4modifier to set PAR to 1:1 before burning.

2. Player in fact can resize, but is 'logic based'. Not sure of exact logic, but encoding with widths of 720, 704, 480, or 352 are automatically fullscreened. Other sizes are played 1:1 using black bars. Sort of annoying, but useful knowledge that can be exploited.

3. Interlaced mpeg4 files play fine and field order is obeyed (tff or bff; tested w/ divx and a modified xvid).

-Minolta