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 enlarge | Brand: Philips
Category: CE
List Price: $79.99
Buy Refurbished: $64.98
You Save: $15.01 (19%)
New (4) from $79.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  1035 reviews
Color: Silver
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Memory Type: Unknown
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 17.1 x 9.8 x 1.7
Warranty: 1 Year Limited Wrranty
MPN: DVP642
Model: DVP642
UPC: 000000000000
EAN: 0037449946019
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: FACTORY REFURBISHED LIKE NEW!! Fast holiday shipping!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Crappy product with even worse customer service March 28, 2005
54 out of 61 found this review helpful
I bought this player about 6 months ago for our bedroom as a backup player to the Sony in the den. We have played less than 10 DVD's on it and it is now dead. When I put a DVD in, it comes back with the "No Disc" message. I have tried numerous DVD's and they all give the same message. It will play CD's. I did some research on the internet and it seems this is a fairly common problem. I also read somewhere that you could bump it while loading and it would play. I tried that and got it to work once so I am guessing something is just out of line.
Anyway, I called Philips over the weekend and after going through their standard troubleshooting script, they informed me it was out of warranty but could be exchanged for a fee. As I discovered, the warranty is only 90 days free replacement. From 91 days to a year, there is an exchange program for a fee. I guess I should have known the warranty was only 90 days but I never even looked at the warranty. In my experience, if electronics work out of the box, they don't fail in 90 days. I now realize that is true for quality electronics but not Philips electronics. I asked how much the fee was and the lady said the fee was not listed on her sheet. She gave me a claim number and told me to call back on Monday. I called on Monday and went thru a similar experience. This time the lady put me on hold to call the RMA department to get the fee. After three attempts (the line was busy), I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. The supervisor came on the line and I explained the situation to him and asked for consideration on the warranty. He said there was no flexibility or exceptions with the warranty. I expressed my dissatisfaction with the product and lack of consideration. I then asked to speak to someone higher up in management. He flatly refused to provide me with any other contact information. He said it was his department's job to "give the bad news to the customer" and not to pass them on up the chain. He then asked if I was interested in paying the fee or not. I asked him how much it was. He said they had still not gotten in touch with the RMA department because the line was still busy. He seemed oblivious to the significance of a long wait for someone in RMA. He told me he would try to get in touch with them by at least tomorrow. Obviously they are having more product problems than they can effectively handle.
From the other reviews on here, apparently this is a pretty good player when it works. I wouldn't know since I only played a few DVD's with it. My advice is to avoid any products from Philips, especially this one. With their short warranty and lousy customer service, it's obviously a gamble doing business with them. Electronics should last years, not days.
PS..Almost forgot. When I was talking to the Philips customer care representative, he asked me where I bought it. I told him Amazon. He then went on to tell me that when you buy Philips products online from places like Amazon and Overstock that you are buying refurbished units. I told him it was advertised as new and that I knew Amazon would not misrepresent the product. Amazon had also shipped it to me within 2 months of the manufactured date so I didn't believe him. He just repeated his statement. I called Amazon after getting off the phone with Philips. The Amazon customer care rep was very friendly, professional and assured me the product they shipped was new and she did not know why Philips would be saying that. I also must add what a contrast in customer care experiences between Amazon and Philips in the span of 10 minutes.
 DEFINITELY A MUST HAVE October 27, 2004
52 out of 66 found this review helpful
BEATS ANY IF NOT ALL DVD PLAYERS OUT ON THE MARKET NOW!! 100x BETTER THAN APEX. LEAVES APEX DVD PLAYERS CHOKING and spinning and spinning your disc until its on fire and still no movie comes on your tv which leaves APEX EATING DUST.
Item exactly as described in-fact even BETTER! Firmware upgradeable/flashable. So I guess if any new format comes out, it will also be 100% playable and compatible.
I FED THIS PLAYER the following, AVIs, MPGs, DivXs, WMVs, XVids, and more but lazy to type them all out, and it stunned me and nearly gave me a heart attack that it successfully played all of them FLAWLESSLY.
As for brands and types of DVD media, it will and should play all DVD discs that are manufactured from ALL ASIAN countries including DVD-Rs, DVD+Rs, DVD+RWs/-RWs, CDRs/RWs.
As for region, I KNOW and CONFIRM that it plays REGION FREE DISCS. Philips is asking for a challenge of "WHAT THIS DVD PLAYER CANNOT PLAY?"
You won't be sorry, worth every single penny of my hard earned slavery money. No complaints, this is a absolute MUST-HAVE!! I bet you TSS show will show it soon but by that time, too late. LoL
Super All-Region, All-Code DVD Player October 1, 2004
42 out of 42 found this review helpful
Just tried out this Phillips player with DVDs ordered in France and from Hong-Kong. Works great, good picture and no problems. Can't understand why reviewer Susanne Heidt of Los Angeles said she had problems -- in spite of what the manual says, this player works fine on other Region/Code DVDs.
 Doesnt play all DVD+/-R but here's how to make region-free January 3, 2005
32 out of 36 found this review helpful
I use Cicero DVD+R blanks and a friend uses Memorex DVD-R. Cicero is Future Shop's #1 selling blank so clearly it has a lot of users and support. Obviously Memorex is also an extremely popular brand. I'd have expected a top brand name player to be able to handle popular brands such as these. We each bought a 642 and neither machine would play our discs despite a very large claim printed on the box, that "If you've got it, we play it". The picture freezes repeatedly and very often and skips ahead. The Philips help desk stated quite flatly that these discs were incompatible and added to the sense of frustration by quite stupidly telling me I should transfer my discs to a brand name such as Maxell, Memorex, TDK etc (at this point he had no idea that my friend was having the identical problem with Memorex discs). What a good practical solution - copy $1000 worth of DVDs to another $1000 worth of new blanks to save the price of a $120(Cdn) machine! I wonder how many people take this advice? I also wonder how many other brands it won't play? We've both taken our machines back for a refund.
BUT ... it CAN be turned into a Region-Free player. As it comes to you out-of-the-box it has been pre-set at the factory to play only Region 1 discs. You just have to know what to key in with your remote to change the code from a "1" to a "0". Here's how to do it (takes just a couple of seconds):
1. Turn on player and open tray.
2. Use remote to key in the following sequence: 7-8-9-OK-0
(The number 0 means region free)
3. The machine is now region free ... go ahead and play something on it.
There is no "eject" button on the remote. Tip: Hold down the 'stop' button on the remote for a couple of seconds and this will open/close the tray.
It does an OK job with store-bought PAL or NTSC discs but I found the 642's picture not quite as sharp on PAL discs as on my old CyberHome 300 machine. After returning the supposedly more up-market Philips I went out and bought another dirt-cheap-but-does-the-job-really-well CyberHome (which can also be coded to make it region free).
Very Pleased with Features September 2, 2004
30 out of 32 found this review helpful
As a college sophomore, I like to enjoy watching my shows and movies with my suitemates. However, as most of our videos are in DivX or similar formats, we were stuck watching them on the computer.
The Philips DVP642 changed all that. Initially, I placed an order with Amazon.com, but after waiting 4 days and as it was still not in stock, I switched over to Circuitcity.com.
The unit arrived 2 days later. So far, I have tested DivX, Xvid, and SVCD formats on DVD+R amd CD-R disks and have been very pleased with the results. However, some versions of Xvid encoded media files have problems. For example, my Family Guy DVD Ripped Xvid back up copies would play for 8-30 seconds, then skip to the next track. This drove me nuts.
Secondly, while I did not find the remote to be too cheap as others have complained, I also would have appreciated a better layout and a stronger signal to the DVD player.
I have tried the all-region "hack" [7,8,9 ok 0] to of no avail. However, the [5,6,9 ok] worked fine. This may be due to a difference in firmware versions. I also don't know why the "hack" is needed, as the Philips DVP642 is advertised to a be a region-free player in the first place. I have not had any problems so far with regional dvds [regions 1 and 3 tested].
Overall, the Philips DVP642 is an excellent player for the budget-minded consumer who enjoys a sleek, compact, and extremely compatible player. For the price, the DVP642 has few faults and the constant firmware updates are a welcome addition to ensure the extended life of the product.
Update 9/06/04:
Noticed that the DVP642 crops video files. I never noticed it before since everything I played was widescreen, but when I began playing my anime full screen TV shows, I noticed that the top and bottom sections were cut off [ie no subs!]. I will search the forums for a solution [there must be one] and hopefully update soon.
Update 9/16/04 - Player not good for Anime fans.
Small change of heart: a big thumbs down to the automatic cropping feature of the Philips DVP642. While most people may not notice this--it becomes very apparent to those who are anime fans. If the show is not in widescreen format, subtitles are cut off by the DVP642. Unless Philips releases a firmware update that will fix this issue or unless anime fansubbers start placing subtitles higher, this is a pretty big deal for people who buy this unit to play their anime fansubbed shows.
Philips has been hiding their firmware update page, I know at least I had a really hard time finding it. For your convenience, here it is:
http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/d/dvp642_17/
Update 9/25/04:
Regarding the skipping issue I experienced with my Family Guy Xvid encoded back-ups I noted above, I had the same experience with DivX 5.11 encoded files. I am not sure if it is a problem with my burner or if the DVP642 just acts screwy when there are over 30 files per disc.
Yesterday, my suitemate watched the movie Old School which was encoded in Xvid and there were no problems at all. To my credit, I had also burned those Family Guy episodes three times as well. I will try burning the Family Guy episodes on regular CD-R instead of cramming them all on DVD+R and see if it makes any difference. If it does make a difference, that kinda sucks since it means I have to walk ALL ten feet over to the DVD player and open the disc tray to switch discs every 4 episodes ;-).
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