Philips DVP642 DivX-Certified Progressive-Scan DVD Player
Nice try but needs to mature.
I purchased this player on the spot the moment I saw it for the first time even though I was not shopping for a DVD player. Excited about being able to watch all the great DivX and MPEG-4 stuff without having to convert it to MPEG-2 made it a compelling impulse buy and at $70 it was worth a shot. However, I was very disappointed with the experience. First, the remote sucks the poor button layout and slow response made it frustrating to use. Next, I had problems playing DivX and XviD files. For some reason the player would only identify some files as MP3 and would only play the audio, no video and when some of the files that did play were out of sync with the sound or skipped several times per minute as the unit tried to catch up. They should provide the ability to classify files if the system selects the wrong type.  Only 70% of the files would play correctly, not acceptable. I will say that it did accept every type of disc I tried (CD, CD/RW, DVDR+/- and DVDRW+/-, etc..). <br /> <br />The onscreen list of files is also bad, I am sure that DVD makers can find a way to display more text on screen so that you can identify one similarly named clip from another. The final straw that turned me off to this unit was the out of box failure of the component outputs, after connecting this unit to my TV using my component cables I discovered that they did not function correctly, the image on screen would only display in blue monochrome. I check my wires and plugged in my old DVD player and everything worked fine. It's the Philip's unit that was bad. <br /> <br />I will return it and will wait for a better unit from another company. <br />