I appriciate your help, i really do. Thanks. And the last part was just lame, sorry. How was the quality of that pal dvd you played? Did the picture stretch out?
Hey Snapok Glad we could bury the hatchet. Well, the quality was similar to the original, i.e. it looked fine. One thing that I failed to take into account was that I used a small downloaded low-bitrate file in the interest of making a quicker test, so it wasn't that great of quality to begin with. The real test would be to rip a PAL DVD (which I can't do anymore due to the RPC on my current DVD firmware even if I had a PAL disc, which is a whole other can of worms) and make a backup of it, or reencode a high bitrate NTSC rip into PAL and burn it, which I'll do tonight unless anyone else can step up to the plate and comment on the PAL->NTSC conversion quality...
estabbins, i apologize if i sounded rude in any way because i really thought i didnt., I was just asking a question, i dont know how that turned into being rude. But, what region pal was it? I am planning on buying region free pal dvds from russia and someone suggested that cyberhome is the best dvd player to play them. Is that true? I read many negative comments about it. I found philips in my local target, how exactly did you make it play pal dvds? Do you need a special hack or can you change the regions using a remote?
Thornfr, I wrote an article about the unit, including all the needed links and such, but the website seems to be down at the moment. I'll post the relevant data you've requested sometime tomorrow. I'm supposed to go out to a function, so if I can't get to it during the day, or if the site is still down, I'll post everything later tomorrow night, as soon as I can get to it. Kurgan
Hey Snapok, Don't worry about it, all is forgiven. Again, it is very important to note that PAL is not a region, it's a video standard. The player will play PAL discs without a hiccup... as will your computer. It's just the strength of a more powerful processor to do the video conversion. Think of region code as more of a "copy protection" type of device. Region codes are simply meant to prevent people from importing discs from other countries before the DVD is actually released in their country. I can't emphasize enough that it's not related to NTSC or PAL in any way. So it sounds like you have no worries. If your discs are region free, they will definitely play on this player.
thanks alot for your input. I just went out and bought this dvd player in target for 75 buckd including tax. So i just have to wait til my pal dvd arrives. Cant wait
when you say strength of a more powerful processor to do the video conversion did you mean that this dvd doesnt have a powerful processor?
Snapok- Not at all. Most DVD players won't do PAL to NTSC conversion but this one does. SVCD... I'm not even going to touch that one, unless you are referring to downloaded files. I have thrown all manner of downloaded files at this player and haven't had a problem with it playing back yet. Same goes for Divx. If you have a problem with Divx files, then you need to read the rest of this thread to find out if your files are encoded using the proper codec. You should burn your files as a data disc using whatever burning app you have, and they *should* play on this player. However, please reference videohelp.com for more info, this is sort of beyond the scope of this thread.
Hey snapok and estebbins, you should just go for a beer and resolve your marital problems without dragging us into this mess.
Here's the answer on PAL DVD's. I just got back from Las Vegas and I have a "Video Postcard" from there. It happens to have NTSC on one side and PAL on the other. EXACT same content on both sides. I live in the USA and I am playing this on a Panasonic 50" flatscreen which (the TV) does not support PAL. The DVP642 is set to NTSC not Multi. I just watched both. Result...no noticable difference. Hope this answers the question.
Hey Wyntre- Wow, the perfect test DVD! Thanks for the input, that's really cool. And Zorc, Thank you as well for your helpful and constructive comments.
Just got DVP642 today, seems to be playing divX just fine. Having trouble with a DVD-R I burned, but my Sony was a cranky about playing it too. Philips seems to have redesigned their website and I can't find the newest firmware now. Anyone got a good link to it, or can post it for download? Thanks!
Nevermind, I found it.... http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/...lg=ENG&SearchTxt=dvp642&grp=&cat=&sct=&tmplt=
Hmm. It doesn't seem able to play PAL SVCDs correctly. [bold]Video: 25 FPS, 480x576 MPEG2 1834 Kbps avg bitrate Audio: 44KHz, 224 Kbps MP2[/bold] Fairly typical PAL SVCD. Comes out quite scrambled on my Sony Wega. Tried NTSC, PAL (nothing on straight PAL, which was to be expected) and Multi. NTSC and Multi played about the same. It actually looked like a badly scratched DVD - Very pixellated and a little skippy, and then just stopped. I tried burning just the MPG files to a DVD+RW - same thing. I tried burning the SVCD to a CD - same thing. I'm certain it wan't the quality of the optical media, as I used the same DVD+RW a few minutes later for a DivX backup I made, and it worked fine. The SVCD plays fine on my PC (of course).
Through much of the conversation between snapok and estebbins, I feel my inquiry may have gone overlooked and I'd like to bring it up again. I consolidated my DVDs into a DivX movie server. To preserve the 5.1 surround sound, all of my DivX movies are encoded with the ac3 sound track that I demux off the original DVDs. For some freakesh reason, everytime I try to play these DivX files on my DVP642, the unit locks up! However, when I encode DivX with mp3 sound track, I have no problem playing them on the DVP642. I am wondering if I am improperly demuxing the ac3 from the DVD. Is there anyone who has created DivX with ac3 from a DVD and is able to play it on DVDP642? If so, would you mind enlightening me on your process? Thanks much.
