OK, since I have bought this player about 4 months ago when it first came out, I have extensive experience with it. Here's the complete low-down on the DVP642 from my experience with it (I have tried hundreds of different types of CD's/DVD's on it): Features: Regular DVD's (fully supported, should play all) DVD+R/RW (not fully supported, may or may not handle all, depends heavily on the media brand you are using). DVD-R/RW (not fully supported, may or may not handle all, depends heavily on the media brand you are using). VCD (not fully supported, should handle all VCD 2.0 and 3.0 though). SVCD (same as VCD). DivX 3.11 (not fully supported, could present problems with some AVI's encoded in 3.11, difficulty handling high video bitrate files). DivX 4.x (fully supported, should play all films encoded with this codec). DivX 5.x (not fully supported, since DivX 5.x is one of the few codecs out there that can implement QuarterPixel (QPEL) and S-VOP (GMC) and no DVD on the market right now supports QPEL and GMC). XviD (not fully supported, since it's open source it may change from time to time, but should handle 85-90% of your XviD files). Regular Audio CD's (fully supported). MP3-CD's (fully supported, this means MP3 files on CD-R/RW). MP3-DVD's (fully supported, this means MP3 files on DVD-R/RW). CD-R/RW (fully supported). Picture CD's (JPEG only) with music (MP3 only) simultaneously (fully supported). Progressive Scan for both NTSC and PAL. 4x video unsampling. 192KHZ/24bit Audio DAC. Smart picture (customising of brightness/sharpness/color/etc...). MP3 files ranging from 32 to 320kbit bitrates (not fully supported, cannot handle certain variable bitrates at times, only 11 character viewable). Zoom function for DVD/VCD/SVCD/DivX/XviD is x2 maximum. Pan & scan feature. Letterbox feature. Anamorphic WS feature. Internal AC3 and DTS decoders. Multi-region (easily hackable via remote). Firmware upgradeable through Philips' website. Subtitles support after firmware update (not fully supported, cannot handle all languages but should handle most of the major languages, only .sub/.srt/.smi formats supported at the moment). By the way the DVP642/17 and DVP642/37 are the exact same player with the exact same features. The DVP642 cannot be purchased outside north america (USA, Canada) and very recently Australia. If you wish to purchase this from europe your best bet is off eBay. For europeans, the DVP630 is the exact same player as the DVP642 with the exception that the progressive scan is for PAL signal only in the DVP630 and the DVP630 also features an RGB on Scart. So basically, if you don't live in north america or australia you should go for the DVP630 since there is no noticeable differences between it and the DVP642. I have tested and seen both, I currently have the DVP642 but a friend of mine has the DVP630 and there's very little difference in features (as presented above).
Hello, kress: What is the frame rate of your DivX files? That would be helpful to know, as my DVP642 chokes on 29.97 fps and I am trying to find out whether that is universal. Thanks!
Most of my DivX files are encoded in 25 fps. I do have several that are 29.97 fps and the DVP642 does have issues with high fps and high video bitrates. However, it mostly depends on what codec version your files are encoded with. I have a couple of DivX 3.11 files encoded in 29.97 fps and the DVP642 can barely handle those. But at the same time, I have a couple of DivX 4.x and DivX 5.x files that are encoded in 29.97 and the DVP642 handles them beauifully. So basically it's more a matter of what codec version you encoded the files with. Like I said in my earlier post, the DVP642 have some difficulties handling DivX 3.11 and a few files encoded in 5.x.
I bought the Philips DVP642/17 online from WalMart about four months ago (software rev 0301) and have pretty good success with it myself. Plays old junk I downloaded off the net or via P2P. But (and this is really the best part) while it is DivX 3.11/4.x/5.x certified I love the fact that it WILL play my MPEG2 stuff without having to make it into DVD-Video first! This means that when I record stuff from cable using BeyondTV in MPEG2 format (at about a 1.2GB/hr rate) I can just burn the files to a DVD disk and play it on the DVP642. I used to be a little more concerned about trying to get DivX formats, but my hardware encoder does MPEG2 and, while I can transcode to DivX (it does take a long time), DVD+R or DVD-R are cheap (<$1/disk in bulk).
Hi, thanks to the help in this forum i installed the firmware to my dvd. But there is a problem with the subtitles... with some avi files works and with others dont. I tried with smi, sub and srt. I read somewhere that i must save the srt file first to ASCII. But how can i do that? Thanks to everyone...
Hello cla_z This question has been answered in this thread before... In the interest of preventing repetition, you should review the previous posts and then if you have more specific questions ask those.
Hi estebbins, i look... and look ... and look but i don't find the ansqer to my problem.... As i said, with some files work and with others dont... what could be the diference... i already try copy all the subtitles that dosent work to the ones that works and still nothing.... How can i save the srt file in ASCII format?
Hi I had problem with dvp642. When I played an avi file I found the voice stream is not matched with the picture stream. The reason that I cound not find this before is that I have always used dvp642 for DVD What is problem?
It work! It work! someone wrote: "default Nero does work .. Mode 1 (CD-ROM) / ISO Level 1 (8+3) / ISO9600 / Joliet but only if it's plain text (no bold, italics or underline fonts)." Finally... i can say that i can play the subtitiles in my dvd player. It dosent matter if i have to resize the avi file so i can see the subtitles... its ok 452*256 and i can see all the letters. thanks!!
Has anyone been in touch with Customer Support as to wether or not the "overscan" issue will be addressed in future firmware releases?
Can the DVP642 DVD Player play photo slide shows creted in Either Windows Movie Maker, or Microsoft's Plus! Photo Story 2? The final product is a WMV (Windows Media Videa) file, and I haven't seen wmv files mentioned anywhere :/ . Thanks, from a Super Noobie!
I'm not a 100% on this, but I'm pretty sure it does play WMV. When you look at the list if creates of what's on the media you feed it, there are icons next to the file names, telling you the kind of file. I've seen, VCD, MPEG, And this little windows flag. I'm guessing the windows flag is for WMV, but then again, I didn't actually check. Maybe someone else can confirm.
No, the DVP642 cannot handle WMV files. I have tried WMV and WMA files in the past, neither have been successfully played on the DVP642. Again, this is just my player so don't take my word for it, try it yourself.
Hi Cla_Z Sorry that I misinterpreted your original question. ASCII refers to a regular text file. If you have any question about whether a file is ASCII, you might try copying the text into Windows notepad and then save it using the ANSI encoding option. This will leave you with a plain text file with no formatting, in a very basic character set. Either save it with the file extension (exampe .srt) or change the file extension from .txt after you save it. If you find the file is too big for Notepad, just use wordpad.exe only make sure you are using the "Text Document" when you save.
Quakes: [bold]"I need a clarification... does the 642 come with DTS?"[/bold] I only have one movie in DTS and it did not play the audio on my player. Although I did not use Gspot or naything to confirm it, DTS is in the title of the movie. I also had to update my AC3 codec (which can now decode DTS) on Windows to get sound out of this file in WMP, so I am pretty sure the DVP-642 will not play DTS. Can anyone else comment on DTS for this machine?
Regarding subtitles not working when burning on Mac instead of using Nero/Windows: Had the same problem on Linux. There's a slight difference between the Joliet filesystem created by Nero, and the one created on Linux. Maybe it's the same with MacOS... So either you turn off Joliet when burning CDs, or... There's a patch for mkisofs on Linux to solve the problem (see http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php?select=Philips+DVP+642). This is definitely a problem with the player firmware (I have the DVP632, but I suppose it's the same on the 642), as no system ever complained about this slight difference mentioned above. /a
First time here... I have been creating DivX movies with the AC3 sound track. After vitual-dubbing, I use AVIMux_GUI to interleave the AVI and ac3 file. This has been working great for me since I play the movies right off my computer with a 5.1 sound card connect to a projector. I get 5.1 surround sound out of my receiver while watching the DivX movie projected to screen like a home theater. It's like have a movie server. Now that I have my own DVP642, I had hope to play DivX with ac3 on it, but the darn thing keeps locking up when I try. I was wondering if anyone else has tried this. I don't want to sacrifice the 5.1 surround sound.
Must be something with the way you're encoding your AC3. I don't know if it's the same thing, but I've downloaded plenty of stuff on AC3, and played it back fine. Sorry, can't help you much.
Most of my Divx/Xvid files are AC3 as well and I have not had any problems with them either. I'm not at home right now so I can't post detailed file info from Gspot but I can if you like to compare your encodes with known good ones for the DVP642. Also, kress if you are still reading this. I just re-read this thread and notice you have been successful with DTS audio. Can you confirm and possibly post a Gspot on a DTS file that played on this machine? If indeed it does play DTS, then I would be really psyched!
