Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player

The DVP642's progressive-scan functionality allows compatible TVs to display the even and odd numbered lines of an image in a single pass. This minimizes screen flicker, which is easier on your eyes.

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.

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.

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.


How To Make It "Region Free"...   November 25, 2005
Vladimir Ratner (Upstate NY)
207 out of 214 found this review helpful

This review is for Philips DVP642 DVD Player. It is the same as DVP642/37 DVD Player. It is also the same as DVP642/37 Code Free DVD Player, or Region Free, or whatever else you want to call it. Philips has ONLY ONE DVP642 model, but it may come with different firmware versions, depending on when and where the player was purchased. It doesn't matter though. I repeat, it is the SAME player. So there is absolutely no need to pay extra dollars for something you can easily do yourself. This review highlights some of the features of this DVD player, as well as provides instructions on how to make it Region Free (pay special attention to Format Support section). So, read on...

Let me just start by saying that if this DVD player was anything over $100, even $80, then I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. But it's definitely worth $50 that I spent on it. I bought it on sale at CompUSA. I believe Walmart is the cheapest place now, where you can buy it for just under $60. But back to this player. After using it for over 2 months, and having it compare to my other three DVD players (Sampo, Cyberhome, and Oppo), I have come up with a short list of Pros and Cons. So, without further ado, I give you Philips DVP642:

PROS:
Format Support - This alone probably worth all the "stars". It supports virtually all formats, including Divx. And it DOES support DVD-R's as well, although it's not documented anywhere. MP3's, Picture JPEG's, original DVD's, burned DVD's with AVI's, MPEG's, etc. - I have tried it all, and it handled everything without any problems. Add the NTSC/PAL conversion capabilities to that (simple "7 8 9 OK 0" remote control hack with an open tray will make it "region free"), and you've got yourself one hell of a DVD player. "You have it, we play it" is the slogan of this player, and it is, indeed, true.

Design - I like the nice and sleek design of this DVD player. It's thin, and the nice matte silver color nicely compliments my Sony Wega TV that I connected it to.

Price - Just as I mentioned before, I bought this player for $50. I think it's well worth it, especially if you have a lot of "homemade" DVD's.

CONS:
Picture Quality - One word to describe it - Average... at best. My 5 year old Sampo produces a better picture using S-Video, and without Progressive Scan. Cyberhome is better too, when using component connection. I'm not even going to mention Oppo.

Support - One of the worst I have ever had to deal with. First of all, Philips website has very minimum information about this player, and not a word about firmware updates. I've tried to contact them by phone, but only wasted my time pressing buttons and holding for "available representative". I finally decided to send them an e-mail, but have yet to get a response back after two weeks of waiting period.

Summary:
If picture quality is what you are mostly looking for in your DVD player then this one is not for you (if you own or planning on buying an HDTV with DVI or HDMI inputs, then I strongly suggest you check out OPPO). On the other side, if you are not too picky about picture output, but do care about various format support, and don't want to spend too much money, then this player certainly makes a good choice.


perfect for what I need   January 6, 2005
Michael O. Byrd (MEMPHIS, TN United States)
93 out of 96 found this review helpful

This is not the best DVD player ever for picture quality etc, but it is Region Free. It will play PAL discs to my NTSC TV. I got it as a Christmas Present and I immediately ordered Blake's 7 from Amazon.co.uk and it plays just fine. You can tell that it had been opened and adjusted, but it was put neatly back into the box and I have not had any problems with it. It also plays all my other Region 1 disks as well (including Region Code Enhanced disks) so if you aren't too particualar about the quality (which is not terrible) you could probably just use this player for all you DVD playing. For me it will do to play my non-region one discs, but I'll keep my Sony for Region 1 stuff. I am very pleased with this product.


PHILIPS DVP642 WARNING to DVDR/W - DISCS/MOVIES OWNERS   May 17, 2004
66 out of 187 found this review helpful

This unit plays divx 3.x through 5.x, svcd,vcd,mp3,cd,mpeg1 and mpeg2,dvdr/w+, but be forewarned it DOES NOT PLAY dvdr/w- discs.
You would think that PHILIPS with their technology and reputation would go this far in bragging about their product being able to play anything you throw at it but will not support dvdr/w- discs. I contacted customer/service help deptartment and technical department. Not only is there not a firmware to make this unit capable of playing dvdr/w- discs but PHILIPS WILL NOT support this format in the future for this unit if the format is decided to go to dvdr/w-.
Owners of DVDR/W- MOVIES... I suggest you get a back up dvd player APEX AD2600 $50 if you can still get your hands on one this model was discontinued,this unit supports everything but divx(mpeg4) movies, .mov and .avi formatted movies. My advice get you a dvd player capable of supporting dvdr/w+ and dvdr/w- discs. Consumers have no idea which standard will stay or go
and getting one that supports + formats only is taking a risk.