DVD-player-filter: Philips 642 alternatives?

November 27, 2005 1:31 PM

DVD-player-filter: Alternatives to the Philips DVP 642?

Time to switch gear again - the Philips has the ability to play DivX AVIs, MOVs etc without the need for transcoding into DVD format. Also does PAL & NTSC out of the box. But in reading the specs, it doesn't do DTS format DVDs.

Curious to know of a player that does what the 642 does and DTS...thanks.

posted by omnidrew to technology (18 comments total)

For the second time this week I'm going to plug the Momitsu V880 (N). It's what I got rid of my DVP 642 for. The specs say it handles DTS.
posted by Gortuk at 1:53 PM on November 27, 2005

DVD-V880 vs DVP642... $200 vs $40. Or can you get the Momitsu cheaper?

Are we talking about DTS pass-through (which I thought the Philips did), or on-board DTS decoding?
posted by meehawl at 2:19 PM on November 27, 2005

For what it's worth, my DVP-642 tray started sticking after a year of light use (it broke 12 days after the warranty expired). It ended up in the dumpster... I'm back to my old Panasonic unit again.
posted by rolypolyman at 2:26 PM on November 27, 2005

DTS pass-through...hmmm....thanks mechawi -- on second thought the receiver (Denon 1705) has DTS, so therefore it doesn't matter if that feature is on the player (I am currently outputting digital audio + component video to the receiver)...?

And where can you get a DVP642 for $40? Best price I saw today was $59.
posted by omnidrew at 2:30 PM on November 27, 2005

I just played a DTS audio track with mine. Worked fine.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:33 PM on November 27, 2005

My DVP-642 was great until I ended up with a big solid black line across the bottom of the screen. I've heard of that happening to more than a few.

-
posted by Independent Scholarship at 3:29 PM on November 27, 2005

The question didn't specify price... but I hereby amend my answer to "If you want something that does everything the DVP 642 does, plus DTS output, plus a whole bunch of stuff extra, plus costs $160 US more, check out the Momitsu V880". And if there's anything in the DVP 642 price range that does what it does, I'd love to hear about it (seriously).
posted by Gortuk at 3:44 PM on November 27, 2005

what about a Cyberhome 300 then?
posted by forallmankind at 4:26 PM on November 27, 2005

meehawl definitely makes a very good point -- if you have a decent receiver, it is much likely to do a better quality job decoding (not just dts but dd/ac3 as well) than the actual dvd player.

I had to hack my pioneed dvd/ld player to do dts-passthru, but honestly that thing is a dinosaur (regardless of its kickass cd transport. ok, and the fact that it plays laserdiscs heh.) and just about any modern dvd player will do it just fine.
posted by dorian at 4:41 PM on November 27, 2005

where can you get a DVP642 for $40?

I got mine for $40, about a year ago.

Looking today, I see that, yes, $55-$60 seems to be the standard rate.

Surprisingly, when I searched FatWallet, I saw that last week there were a bunch for $40-$50. Amazon had it for $50, now it's $60+

The price of this player seems to be very volatile.

I like it, except that it does not display long filenames or MP3 tag data. And getting it to playback subtitles on DIVXs is somewhat fragile.

List of players with DIVX playback reported.
posted by meehawl at 4:53 PM on November 27, 2005

Now all I need is a player where the User-Operation-Prohibitions can be turned off, so that the @#^$! machine isn't ever the boss of me.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:55 PM on November 27, 2005

turning off uop is the holy grail. computer with a dvd drive is the best thing I can think of offhand.

plus I'm sure it'll get even worse when the mpaa makes the us gubmint pass some stupid bill forcing hardware mfgrs to support drm. (then again it was not too long ago that certain chinese vendors e.g. malata, were like "ok that's fine we just won't put the 'dvd' logo on the front of our players, so there." heh.)

the philips would have been my next player of choice, but I am definitely intrigued by the networking capability of this momitsu...
posted by dorian at 7:19 PM on November 27, 2005

computer with a dvd drive

er, computer with a dvd drive and a non-stupid operating system and non-stupid dvd playback software, meant I.
posted by dorian at 7:21 PM on November 27, 2005

I am definitely intrigued by the networking capability of this momitsu

Players reporting DIVX and Ethernet.

DIVX/XVID HD.
posted by meehawl at 7:50 PM on November 27, 2005

nice links, thanks!

heh yeah a hacked xbox is still nothing to sneeze at. altho I have heard the dvd drive can be picky.
posted by dorian at 8:09 PM on November 27, 2005

I absolutely hate my DVP 642. The whole thing seems cheap, and my divx movies never play correctly.
posted by matkline at 9:40 PM on November 27, 2005

matkline, for what it's worth, any divx movies that havent played correctly for me were "fixed" by pressing the menu button a couple times to toggle back and forth from the video to the menu. I'm not sure why that works - it obviously shouldn't be that way.
posted by whatisish at 5:32 AM on November 28, 2005

My Oppo is awesome
posted by rxrfrx at 6:40 AM on November 28, 2005