Philips DVP642 DVD Player

Pros: Will play just about anything. Good value in my humble opinion.
Cons: Have had to switch on/off when trying to access a really large collection of files.

The Philips DVP642 is a great DVD player. It's easy to get it region free, it plays just about any media I've put in to it. Your living room too far from your wireless LAN, put your song collection on a DVD and play it on this machine.

Great quality in video playback (I'm no audiophile - but it does everything I've wanted)

Pros: Cheap.
Cons: Unreliable. Capacitor 316 burns out.

Bought the Phillips DVP642 last November 2005. Played maybe 3 discs a month until yesterday December 2006, when it died. NO DISC error.

There is a forum on Yahoo, explaining how you can change a capacitor - look up
no disc dvp642 or blinking dvp642 on Google. I changed the capacitor just now and it still doesn't work. Trashing it.

Be aware, these have a history of dying at 6-12 months. I hardly used mine and it happened.

Pros: Multi-format capabilities, price, size, style.
Cons: Erratic behaviour.

Bought this primarily for its low price and PAL and DVD+/- capabilities. It will play PAL format multi-region disks, but will not play the one disk I have marked "2 PAL" (for region 2 - Europe).

The remote is not intuitive and takes some getting used to. I have 5 other remotes and they were much easier to "learn" than this one. It does have all the useful features like zoom, A-B repeat, and fast and slow speeds for reverse and forward.

The machine does seem to get easily "confused" and will shut off for no apparent reason. An example is using 8X fast forward then pressing "Play". Other combinations will cause it to shut down also. I've read other reviews and nobody has mentioned anything like this. I wish I were making this up, but unfortunately I'm not.

For the money, I'm satisfied with it, but I would have expected better from Philips.

Pros: PAL, DivX... you name it, sharp picture, great sound, loaded!
Cons: Small display, no eject on remote.

I went to buy a DVD player with optical audio out and component video out. Ho, how much more I got for very little cash!!! Check this out: I popped in a PAL format European region DVD, and the new love of my life PLAYED IT through my NTSC TV! Not to mention the other formats everyone is raving about. That alone is worth the money, and it wasn't even mentioned on the box! This puppy converts almost everything into your TV!

I've only had it for a couple of hours, but the Lord Of The Rings never looked better on my little widescreen. I heartily recommend it, Philips is a solid brand, and you won't have to regret.

Pros: Price, appearance and remote features.
Cons: Stops playing and starts frustrating after a few weeks. Complex on-screen menus and worthless manual.

About: Philip's DVP5140/37 bought in mid- November from WalMart... for $45:

I'm a heavy DVD user...about 100 hours monthly... mostly due to Netflix membership.

The Philip's was on sale...and I was desperate and IGNORANT.

The Philip's worked great for TWO weeks.

Then it started to fail rapidly.

"Loading" began to take forever...followed by too many "no disc"...and "unknown disc" notices to count.

I returned it yesterday...BEFORE WalMart's 30 day no hassle policy ended...but only after calling the Philip's hotline and getting NOTHING of value re the machine's constant failings.

It seems that under $100 DVD's are to be regarded as disposable! Not worth mailing back and repairing.