Philips DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player $60

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Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player $54.99

Amazon.com has the Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player for $54.99 with Free Shipping. Great all around player. Plays just about everything you throw at it.

Product Details

Features:

    * PAL-to-NTSC format conversion--great for viewing non-region-encoded European discs
    * Measures 17.1 x 1.7 x 9.3 inches (W x H x D)
    * Plays DVD-Video, video CD, audio CD, JPEG image CD, and CDs loaded with MP3, MPEG-4, or DivX 3.11/4.x/5.x files
    * Progressive-scan output for seamless, flicker-free images on HD-ready TVs; SmartPicture and 4x video upsampling enhance all outputs
    * Optical and coaxial digital-audio terminals pass Dolby Digital and DTS surround signals

      View the supplementary guide (Download: PDF, 193KB)
      View the data sheet (Download: PDF, 129KB)
      View the product manual (Download: PDF, 897KB)

Technical data

    * Color: Silver
    * Disc capacity: 1
    * Progressive scan: Yes
    * Region playback: Compatible only with discs coded for Region 1 and for All Regions
    * Progressive scan: Yes
    * Switchable 480p/480i: Yes
    * 3:2 pulldown detection: No
    * Memory card slot: No
    * Playback formats: DVD-Video (NTSC, PAL), VCD, SVCD, DVD+R, DVD+RW, red book CD, CD-R, CD-RW, MP3 CD, JPEG picture CD, Kodak Picture CD, Fuji color pictures, MPEG-4, DivX 3.11/4.x/5.x
    * PAL/NTSC conversion: Converts PAL signal to NTSC, converts NTSC signals to PAL from VCD discs only
    * Horizontal resolution: PAL: 625 lines; NTSC: 525 lines
    * Aspect ratio control: Yes
    * Dialog enhancer: No
    * Integrated receiver: No
    * Front-panel operation: Yes
    * Quick play: No
    * Multi-angle viewing: Yes (with applicable discs)
    * Black-level adjustment: No
    * Picture enhancements: Smart Picture for personalized image settings
    * Video DAC: 54 MHz/12-bit with 4x video upsampling
    * Audio DAC: 192 kHz/24-bit
    * Audio signal-to-noise ratio: 105 dB (at 1 kHz)
    * Audio dynamic range: 100 dB (at 1 kHz)
    * Audio crosstalk: 105 dB (at 1 kHz)
    * Distortion plus noise: 90 dB (at 1 kHz)
    * Chapter preview: No
    * Custom bookmarks: No
    * Frame advance: Yes
    * Still/freeze frame: Yes
    * Jog/shuttle dial on unit: No
    * Karaoke: No
    * Multilingual support: Yes (English, Spanish, French)
    * Remote control: Universal
    * Parental controls: Yes (disc lock)
    * Picture zoom: Yes
    * Random play: No
    * Recording capability: No
    * Repeat play: Works with DVD/VCD/audio CD/MP3 CD: chapter/ title/ all, or track/all; DVD/VCD/ audio CD: A-B repeat)
    * Resume play: Yes (last 5 discs; works with DVD/VCD/audio CD)
    * Track programming: Yes (tracks, chapters, or favorite track selection)
    * Reverse-frame step: Yes
    * Screen dimmer: No
    * Screen saver: Yes
    * Slow motion: Yes
    * Text display: No
    * VCR capability: No
    * Audio outputs: 1 stereo analog (left/right), 2 digital (1 optical, 1 coaxial)
    * Headphone jack: No
    * Video outputs: 3 (composite-, component-, and S-video)
    * Surround-sound output: Dolby Digital 5.1-channel passthrough
    * Simulated surround sound: Yes (3D Sound)
    * THX-certified: No
    * Power input: 110V, 60 Hz
    * Power consumption: Less than 10 watts (standby: less than .8 watts)
    * UPC: 0 37849 94601 5
    * Item width: 17.1 inches
    * Item height: 1.7 inches
    * Item depth: 9.3 inches
    * Item weight: 4.4 pounds
    * Shipping weight: 6.6 pounds
    * Warranty: 90 days exchange; 91 days to 1 year reduced-cost exchange
    * In the box: DVD-Video player, remote control with batteries, a user's manual, and an analog audio/composite-video interconnect
Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
Tap into multimedia fun with Philips' broad-format, high-style, and ultra-slim DVP642 DVD player. The DVP642 is not only a high-end progressive-scan DVD player equipped to offer scintillating images on high-definition and HD-ready TVs, it's a tech-savvy player that spins your MP3- and JPEG-encoded recordable CDs (as well as Kodak's and Fuji's variants of the same) and CDs loaded with MPEG-4 and DivX video (3.11, 4.x, and 5.x files), perfect for viewing Internet-sourced content in your home theater. Want more? The player also converts Region 1/All Region PAL-formatted discs (the video standard in Europe) for viewing on standard NTSC televisions (and vice-versa, if only for video CDs).
The player will play JPEG images one by one automatically, letting you zoom in, rotate, or flip the picture vertically or horizontally. For MP3 playback, the player offers track time display, album and track selection, and repeat (disc/album/track). The DivX media format is MPEG-4 based video compression that lets you save large files like films, movie trailers, and music videos on recordable media.

Philips' 4x video upsampling offers smoother images even when viewing interlaced (nonprogressive) signals through the player's component-video, S-video, or standard composite-video outputs. SmartPicture provides optimum picture settings for color, brightness, saturation, contrast, sharpness, etc., to enhance your overall viewing experience at all times.

The player will play JPEG images one by one automatically, letting you zoom in, rotate, or flip the picture vertically or horizontally. For MP3 playback, the player offers track time display, album and track selection, and repeat (disc/album/track). The DivX media format is MPEG-4 based video compression that lets you save large files like films, movie trailers, and music videos on recordable media.

A set of left/right analog-audio outputs channel audio to Dolby Pro Logic receivers and stereo televisions. Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround-sound signals can be routed through the player's digital-audio outputs (one each of RCA coaxial and Toslink optical) for direct connection to a full-featured
audio/video receiver.

What's in the Box
DVD-Video player, remote control with batteries, a user's manual, and an analog audio/composite-video interconnect.

Product Description
Philips DVD Player, 3.2 Progressive Scan, Plays DVD, DVD-R, DVD+RW, Mpeg4, DIVX4

Product Description
You have it, we play it!

Dreaming of a player that plays practically any disc format and at the same time enjoy flawless,true-to-life picture quality? Now you can! With Philips DVD players, staying home has never beenbetter as the promised movies and music entertainment experience will be delivered right to you.

Superb audio and video performance

    * Progressive Scan for razor-sharp and flicker-free images
    * 4x video unsampling for improved image quality
    * 192kHz/24bit audio DAC

Plays practically any disc format

    * 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)

Ultimate convenience

    * Smart Picture for personalized image settings

________________________________________________

Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the DVP642 stands ready to deliver the full potential of your DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.

Playback options include five-disc resume, which lets you pick up where you left off on your five most recently viewed DVDs (not applicable for MP3 or JPEG CDs), disc-lock parental controls, and picture zoom for magnification of select images.

Anonymous_2

Spotlight Customers' Reviews

- See how some other old customers view it.

1) 474 of 491 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars Does what it promises, hope firmware is fixed for 1.5x zoom, September 7, 2004
       
Reviewer:                   FERNANDO CASSIA "-Writer and Computer Geek-" (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
                  
First of all, let me say that this unit is very well worth the money. As "just a dvd player" I give it FIVE over FIVE points (or ten/ten if you wish).

The unit comes locked for Region 1 DVDs, but can be easily unlocked (just google for the asnwer) to make it region-free. I have tested my unit purchased on amazon.com and unlocked with Region 1, region 2 dvds purchased from Britain, and region 4 DVDs purchased in South America. It just works.

The unit's COMPONENT-VIDEO output is superb, even if you use an CRT TV. I recommend you get a quality component video cable and use that instead of the "composite video" output.

When playing MPG and AVI files, the component video output shows pixelation and artifacts on low-quality or low-resolution avi/divx/mpg files, but when playing back the same files and switching the tv to component video, these problems go away!.
Component video, it should be noted, is superior to "s-video" (which just separates color information from luminance), as each basic color (Red-Green-Blue) travels on a separate shielded cable.

Now, the "extras" besides basic DVD playback

1. DIVX and XVID are supported. But some .avi files will play back with NO SOUND if the original file was encoded with a "codec" (compression algorithm) that is not supported by this unit. Just because a file plays back ok on your PC with "Windows Media Player" it doesn't mean it will playback in this unit.

2. DVD-R media *IS* supported. You might need, however, to update the firmware (it's available for download from the philips.com web site. You have to download a .iso image, burn the data to a cd-r, press a key combination on the remote and then insert the cd-r disc).

Now the problems:

1. Even while DivX is supported, mpeg4/divx files compressed with the Divx Pro software using the "QPEL" (advanced motion optimization and prediction) will NOT PLAY on the unit. The unit will display an ugly "QPEL CODEC NOT SUPPORTED" message and stop there. There's no way to play back QPEL encoded files on this unit (it would require a much faster processor inside).

2. ZOOM LEVELS ARE INCONSISTENT. On DVD movies, zoom levels featured are 1.5x, 2x, 3x, 4x. However when you are playing back ".avi" (mpeg4/divx) files, you will find that often the only zoom levels available are "normal" (no zoom) and "2x", and that's it!. There is no 1.5x zoom level when paying back mpg and divx files! So forget about watching that wide-screen (4:3 format) movie in full screen by switching to 1.5x zoom mode. If it's a DVD movie you can. But if it's a DivX/MPEG4 movie you can't!.

3. A-B loop doesn't work most of the time on DivX/AVI files. Sometimes, when it does work, after you selct an a-b loop, you turn the feature off by pressing the a-b key once again, and when you want to create another a-b loop, the feature no longer works! (unless you press STOP and PLAY the file once again). VERY annoying.

4. PHILIPS doesn't seem very interested in updating the firmware. The last update is dated May 2004, and there has been no update since then, even while the number of bugs is high (see above).

However, even after all this, I think that for ~$70 dollars or less including Amazon.com's free ground shipping, you can't go wrong with this unit, as DVD playback is superb, and the ability to play most (but not all!) .mpg / .avi (DivX/MPEG4/Xvid) video files is just a nice extra to have in there as a "bonus".

Burning .avi and mpg files to DVD recordable media also works.



2) 177 of 194 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars Great DVD Player with minor flaws, July 16, 2004
       
Reviewer:                   An electronics fan
I recently purchased the Philips DVP642 DVD player and I am quite pleased with it. I have a lot of files in .avi format, and it takes me several hours to encode them in DVD, SVCD, or VCD format to play on a DVD player. Now, with this player, I can just put my .avi files onto CD-Rs, pop them in the DVD player let the machine do the rest.

The quality that AVI, DIVX, and MPEG-4 are displayed in is amazing. The files play much better than they do on my home computer. This is thanks to a "smart" technology that the player uses to enhance compressed video. Many scenes will appear in almost DVD quality.

Many users have complained about the sloppy interface. I tend to disagree. Although other DVD players offer far better interfaces, this one holds up quite well. It will not distract from the overall experience you will have with this product. The remote control feels more like a television remote, though.

This unit is not perfect. It doesn't play Nero Digital MPEG-4s. There isn't any sound on non-VOB structured MPEG-2 files, nor is there any sound when miniDVDs are played (but who uses those anyways). However, a simple file conversion program will solve most of these problems allowing you to keep up to 2 hours of very good quality video on one CD. No DVD players are perfect and the bottom line is for $70 this unit is a steal. If you have a lot of video files laying around on your cpu and a cd burner, this player is a must buy.


Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars


3) 5 out of 5 stars Excellent DVD player!, August 24, 2005
       
Reviewer:                   Hugh T. Nguyen - See all my reviews
                  
This DVD player plays all the video files I have. I love it!



4) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars Great stuff....., August 22, 2005
       
Reviewer:                   Eric Laporte - See all my reviews
                  
This DVD player is awesome ! You can play almost everything and it's easy to get it zone free.... That's the third I bought !!!


5) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars Sleek and inexpensive multi-region player (with free code), August 22, 2005
       
Reviewer:                   Nathan Knight "KnightLanguages" (Berkeley, CA) -
                  
I've had this player at least several months now and bought three of them from Amazon because it is well built, plays Divx encoded discs, sounds great with music CDs, and can be made region-free with a simple remote control code. To make the 642 region-free the method to do is: Powerup the system. Open the tray & keep it open. Press 7,8,9 - then OK - then 0 on the remote (7,8,9, OK, 0). That's it, your player is region-free. It will show a small 0 (ZERO) in the bottom left hand corner of the TV screen. Put in a DVD disc from anywhere in the world. It will play PAL or NTSC discs and automatically convert them to NTSC (American standard). Read the manual if you want to output a PAL signal to connect it to a European TV. Also read the manual for switching to 16X9 and component output.

You can find NON-region-1 discs at Amazon's other sites such as their France and Germany site. It's a good way to learn foreign languauges.


6) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars does for me what my sony and samsung won't, August 21, 2005
       
Reviewer:                   stumblingblock (california desert) - See all my reviews
yes, it is a more than adequate dvd player
yes, it is a nice size and appearance
yes, it plays lots of stuff "other" dvd players won't
no, it doesn't play every video codec
yes, it is easily made region-free
yes, it appears to play ntsc or pal
yes, the price is right.
so i have bought a few for self and friends. maybe paranoia that some features will not be available in future if powers that be have their way.
overall, a really good deal


See all 328 customer reviews...

im008

这个推荐一下，很方便!

我去年买了一个，以后就很少租碟了... :lol:

Anonymous_2

... can be made region-free with a simple remote control code. To make the 642 region-free the method to do is: Powerup the system. Open the tray & keep it open. Press 7,8,9 - then OK - then 0 on the remote (7,8,9, OK, 0). That's it, your player is region-free. It will show a small 0 (ZERO) in the bottom left hand corner of the TV screen. Put in a DVD disc from anywhere in the world. It will play PAL or NTSC discs and automatically convert them to NTSC (American standard)...

IM008,

Does this trick work?

The region codes of a computer DVD-rom can only be changed 5 times, which is quite @#$^%&**. Non-sense. $$$$$$$$  

To get computer DVD-rom region free, there is some trick introduced on the net. i.e. Play a CD burned with some codes from internet, then DVD-rom would be region-free. Anybody tried that?

im008

哈哈，如果您老人家用中文，我会回答的快一些。

你说的那个只对个别型号dvd有效，最有效的方法还是买一个全区的DVD。  :roll:

估计这么说要被骂s。

另一个方法是重写ROM。等等我找找资料，我做过一个DVD-ROM, 很愉快的弄成了全区的。 :P

im008

1. Turn on the player.
2. Open the tray.
3. Press the following sequence on the remote:
       7 8 9 OK 0
4. The number 0 will appear on the lower left side of your screen.
5. Your player is now region free! Put in a DVD and enjoy! :)

昨天作成功了! 这个是最简单的方法

eBay上帮人改一个收120刀呢，我...，断人财路了  :evil:

Anonymous_2

以前买了个AIWA的DVD PLAYER, $200美元呢. 还只能放NTSC的碟子, PAL的不行. 这个Phillip的? 只好王(望)菲新(兴)谈(叹)了, 谁叫九哥是趴耳朵呢!

Anonymous_2

It's available at Target store for a regular price of $79.

Anonymous_2

好像该机寿命不长, Made in China!