Rating: 
Summary: I love this DVD player!!!
Review: I bought this player a couple of months ago and I am so thrilled that I did. I download a lot of TV shows from the internet and in the past I spent hours converting them from DiVx format to a playable VCD. No more!! I just burn that TV episode I missed, pop it right into the player and it plays flawlessly. It even plays the XViD format which wasn't an advertised compatible format! The files look so much clearer in their original format compared to when I convert them to VCD.
It of course plays DVDs well and CDRs, MP3 discs, etc. I mainly got this for the advertised reasons that it plays so many file formats...and it does. I was not disappointed.
I love it and have recommended it to many of my friends who burn their own files to watch.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best, but...
Review: I do not agree with the other person that this one is the best player. It lacks few features. Suppose, basic things...no play,pause, rew, fwd buttons on the player. Then if you stop the DVD, it won't start again from that scene, it will start from the very beginning, which is not a good idea to fwd all the way to that particular scene where you stopped! It doesn't "Resume" from that scene. The best thing is it can read Dvix! NOT ALL Divx! Sometimes it takes time to read the disc & the whole player start to shake/vibrate like a cell phone! To me it is a good player among Divx players in the market. The price is very reasonable in some stores, Wal-Mart is selling in few stores $69.99 and also available online store. Target is also taking the same price. This is gonna be my extra player just to run my few hundreds Divx movies and Pioneer(DV 333) would be my primary DVD player for the DVDs!
Rating:
Summary: The best price/quality/features
Review: I got this dvd player 2 weeks ago and I like it. It played all movies I had on my PC.
Good:
- small and nicely designed
- plays a lot of formats
- a lot of outputs (optical/digital/composite/s-video/...)
- read a lot of DVD formats including DVD-R/RW
- low price
Bad:
- doesn't show remaining time for .avi
- doesn't allow to jump to the particular time for .avi
- missing network card to play movies from PC. Would be nice to have it for this price. :)
I would recommend it for everybody.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a substitute for a good CD player.
Review: I have been very pleased with this player, and agree with the previous reviews regarding its ability to play almost anything that will fit in the tray. Watching avi files on the TV works really well, and it will play burned DVD's that older players choke on.
The quality seems better than usual for a mass-market/price point product.
One word of warning: Like most consumer audio/video equipment made today, the Phillips' audio DAC is not very good. The high trebles in classical music are horribly thin and tinny. My 15-year old midrange CD player has better sound.
If you want a quality CD player a $600 entry-level audiophile unit is really your only option now. Wasn't free trade supposed to INCREASE consumer choice?
Don't worry about this griping unless you are a sound nut. I've been very satisfied with the Phillip's sound for movies and pop music. Just don't try to play Wagner on it.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs much better DVD playback.
Review: I installed the newest firmware, and DVDs still appear very pixellated. I can watch the same DVDs on my X-Box and they are MUCH clearer. I have both players connected by component cables, but I tried with basic RCA video on a non-HDTV and the pixellation was still horribly apparent. It does play a lot of formats, but I've found that Divx or Xvid usually looks better if I convert it to a DVD using dvdSanta and watch it on the X-box. For your video files not worth a whole dvd, or to fit over 30 hours of 256k quality MP3s on one DVD, it does the job. Maybe with firmware it will get better. Also, its goes real jittery and even the menus flicker spastically if in progressive scan mode. The web site suggests turning off progressive scan mode, yet this is still advertised and labeled as a progressive scan player. Play a lot of stuff for cheap, but it shows. Especially DVDs.... I thought if nothing else DVDs would look good on a Philips player. They look better on my friend's Apex which is cheaper.
Rating:
Summary: Great player - been waiting a long time for this
Review: I never write reviews, but I feel obligated to tell everyone that this player is great if you are looking for what I was:
* inexpensive
* excellent picture quality for divx
* variety of formats supported I have had no problems at all with this player... have had it for a month. I may end up buying two more of them.
Rating:
Summary: DIvx great, others OK
Review: I pretty much summed it up with the title. THe DVD is easily tolerable, the divx capability rocks. Has read all but 1 disk I threw at it. The MP3 player well, sucks. It kind of gives you a graphical menu to browse the files, but nothing fancy like shuffle mode or long file name support. Overall, I'm happy. If you are a frugal type, this is for you. If you want the best, you probably have a dedicated media PC and don't need it anyhow. If the MP3 program were better, I would consider removing my media computer from the living room now.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent buy to play your DivX collection with ease
Review: I purchased this DVD player a few days ago and have been nothing but pleased by its performance. It is a great deal for what you get: a stylish and attractive design, complete audio/video outputs (s-video, digital/optical audio, analog, etc.), full DVD player capabilities, and most of all, the ability to play DivX/Xvid (MPEG-4). I've tested all kinds of media with this player and have been thoroughly satisfied. I viewed some high quality DivX-compressed movies on CD-R's in outstanding clarity without a hitch, played mp3 cds (not many features but OK), and watched DVDs (if you're clever you can even make the player region-free). There's already a firmware upgrade for the player which expands its capabilities to support subtitle files (srt, sub, smi) alongside media files. It was a quick and easy process to upgrade the firmware, and I tested many DivX movies with subtitles and they worked fine. Hopefully in a future firmware upgrade they'll upgrade the menu system, which I found a bit clumsy. I have two issues concerning the playback MPEG-4 files: occasionally, a movie file encoded with less popular audio codec (like OGG or PCM) will be silent; also, you can only rewind/fast forward at 8x and you cannot skip to a specific time in the movie. Overall, this player is extremely capable and is a GREAT deal for its price. I'd strongly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: This DVD player does not decode DTS
Review: I purchased this DVD player because I wanted to be able to play divx movies. The ad stated this player did decode DTS. Well to my suprise it didn't I called Philips to verify this and they told me it was not designed to decode DTS sound tracks. Also the picture quality is terrible my old Pioneer DVD player has a much better picture output and it isn't even a progresive scan player!
Rating:
Summary: Great DVD Player with minor flaws
Review: 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.
| 
