Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
Great bargain, not perfect.
I have to agree with the reviewer that said that as a straight dvd player it rates 5 stars.  It plays every disk I throw at it including DVD+R and DVD-R.  Using component cables, the images on my Sharp 32\\" LCD were outstanding and as good as the DVI images from my home theater PC.  I even thought that the svideo output was pretty good and would be more than OK on a regular TV. <br /> <br />As far as the \\"specialty features\\" go, I found them uneven.  Simply playing MP3's from a CD-RW or CD-R was easy.  The menuing system is simple and adequate.  JPEG's, however, were very inconsistent.  Some of them came out fine, but others were squeezed so that I had to change the Sharp's view mode to \\"stretch\\" to get them properly proportioned.  It could be that this is a setup issue although I couldn't find anything in the manual to deal with this.  Finally, I tried playing a VCD disk and it was highly pixelated.  The disk played fine on my PC. <br /> <br />Overall, I am not disappointed with this DVD player as I planned to use the PC for pics and music anyway.  I bought this as a convenient way for my wife and me to run DVD movies without having to boot the PC if it is off.  If you just want to play DVDs and MP3s you won't be making a mistake in buying this.