Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
Better stay away
That was not my intention to write a review. However browsing a few other reviews I found one that resonates well with my own experience (please see Tully M. Pick review, May 10, 2006).  What a coincidence - I also bought one DVP642 probably 18 month ago or so and it stopped working after less than a year. Well, I was optimistic and bought another unit in September 2005. Today it stopped working as well. In both cases players could not be controlled - just erratic blinking of buttons. You even cannot get back a DVD after that without disassembling the unit.   I'm not going to buy another unit of Phillips. But not sure if there are any better (more reliable) models out there.  To be fair to Philips there were four other divx players that died on me: including Liteon, LG and a few other less known brands. All lasted half a year more or less. There is no other appliance I can remember that would be so short lived. Be that CD/DVD drives, VCRs, TVs or digital cameras. And even if they die like Sony camcorders it happens after at least 3-4 years.  I'm really puzzled now. Maybe hard drive based solutions would be a better alternative but who knows.    Just my two cents.    [May 17, 2006]: Unbelievable! Thanks to DamienDMX6 (May 13, 2006). This model has indeed a faulty capacitor (C316) that can be easily replaced. I fixed both players.  Now I feel sorry for the thousands of other consumers that are just not aware of the fix.  Still I think the design of the unit is flawed and otherwise nice player fails so miserably.