Philips DVP642 arrived! Questions.

[blued888]

I ordered a Philips DVP642 that'll be arriving next week. Got a few questions regarding it.

1. Does it play XviD right out of the box?
2. What DivX/XviD subtitle types does it support? (.idx + .sub/ .srt / etc.)
3. What is AC3 5CH/6CH supposed to show on a receiver? DD5.1/DD6.1?
4. Does it continuously play 2CD movies like BSPlayer? (i.e. playing the CD2 file after CD1 is done?)
5. Does it play RiTEKG04/G05 flawlessly?

Thanks guys!

[james636]

1. Yes
2..sub and srt. Not sure about .idx
4.No. It plays each CD as a seperate clip. Try mutiplexing
5. Yes, as long as the disc itself isn't damaged.
Hope this helps.

[canadateck]

4: It does for me,hit start on the first clip,will keep playing till all clips have been Played. you would have to burn them in the order you want them to be played.


is that what you mean?

[james636]

Canadatek's correct, it will play the second cd after the first one is done as long as you have them in that order.

When he said continously, I thought he meant without the pause in between the clip change.

[blued888]

I see. So basically it's like an MP3 CD player? Enter a folder, play the first, and continues on until all files in the folder are played back.

No answers to #3?

EDIT: Follow-up question regarding subtitles. Are they loaded along with the movie or do you have to manually enable them?

Does a DivX/XviD file resume where it left off? I mean when you stop the playing and do something and then get back to the movie again.

Thanks again guys.

[ejp]

I ordered a Philips DVP642 that'll be arriving next week. Got a few questions regarding it.

1. Does it play XviD right out of the box?
2. What DivX/XviD subtitle types does it support? (.idx + .sub/ .srt / etc.)
3. What is AC3 5CH/6CH supposed to show on a receiver? DD5.1/DD6.1?
4. Does it continuously play 2CD movies like BSPlayer? (i.e. playing the CD2 file after CD1 is done?)
5. Does it play RiTEKG04/G05 flawlessly?

Thanks guys!

I see. So basically it's like an MP3 CD player? Enter a folder, play the first, and continues on until all files in the folder are played back.

No answers to #3?

EDIT: Follow-up question regarding subtitles. Are they loaded along with the movie or do you have to manually enable them?

Does a DivX/XviD file resume where it left off? I mean when you stop the playing and do something and then get back to the movie again.

Thanks again guys.

1. yes, it plays xvid out of the box; well, there are some problems, but it does play xvid-encoded video. if you check the dvd players forums, you'll see that sometimes, depending on how the movie was encoded, you'll have bleeding-picture movies, which is fixed by pressing the system menu button twice (to turn it on then off). however, for me, after i do this, at every keyframe, it looks like some sort of grid is over the whole screen, but slowly goes away.

i also found a solution to fix that. it has something to do with the ess chipset, which is what the dvp642 is equipped with. nowadays, i just encode with AutoGK because i can't be too troubled with using regular GordianKnot (not sure if default settings in GK will produce the same bleeding effect). anyway, during AutoGK installation, there are two settings that should be checked: Support for ESS-based standalones and Bitrate spikes control. these two options really help with mpeg-4 playback with this particular player. i'm not sure about how these settings can be enabled with other encoders though.

2. my dvp642 manual came with some sort of quick sheet to tell you how to enable subtitles and the supoorted subtitles. as of now, it will only accept SRT, SUB, and SMI. no graphical formats (SUB/IDX) are supported. also, i'm aware that SMI has formats, such as color, position, etc. SRT also has capabilities for position as well. however, none of these will matter with the dvp642, as it will only use its own default subtitle settings.

3. i'm not sure what you're asking here. having a hard time with the grammar. but the dvp642 will only support DD5.1 and DD2.0, not 6.1 or DTS. it'll even take MP3 (didn't check MP3 Surround yet) and MP2. it'll play it with or without a reciever.

4. 2CD movies? as in, two avi files on the same CD? well, they're usually backed up to 2 CDRs, so i'm assuming you're putting them on DVDR, which will also work. yes, it will play the first file, then the 2nd, alphabetically, as it was burned on the CD in the first place. you'll have the check the dvd players forums for instructions on how to get subtitles to run for the 2nd avi without having to go through the whole enabling-the-subtitles process.

5. as said, those'll play.

6. that quick slip in the manual also tells you how to enable the subtitles. first put the CD in. make sure to press the title menu button. this'll display all the files on the CD. go down to the subtitle file, it'll have a notepad-type icon next to it. press the subtitle button the remote, the screen will say "divx subtitles loaded" or something. then go up to the AVI file, then press enter. the subtitles will then be displayed. however, you have to look around the forums to see that there are some problems the subtitles, but nothing major enough to not enjoy the movie.

7. when you press stop during the movie, there is no resume. there is resume only for s/vcd and dvd. for mpeg4, you'd have to fast forward, or a better solution is to press the display button and enter in the time of where you left off in the movie.

[blued888]

Thanks for the informative answer ejp!

Btw, does anybody know if it is able to output DTS sound on XviD/DivX files through optical?

[jman98]

I was able to get SRT subtitles to work with DivX. Follow the instrucitons in an earlier post. SUB is supported, but I have learned that there are many different types of subtitle files with this extension. SUB files from VobSub are NOT supported! Subtitles have to be in either Latin based character sets or Cyrillic in ISO-8859-5 (!!!) format. ISO-8859-5 is a pretty bizarre requirement. Other character sets aren't supported for DivX subtitles at this time.

[blued888]

My DVP642 already arrived! I have the following questions/clarifications:

The screen appears to be slightly cut off at the right-hand side. Is this normal? If not, how is this problem fixed? I'm using the 4:3 LB setting which supposedly puts black bars on the top and bottom of the screen in order to properly fit the video on the television screen. (Based on the manual) Included is the illustration of what is not seen on the TV (highlighted in red), and I think that's a fairly substantial amount. Movie dimension is 800x336.



Is pixelation (is this the same as bleeding?) on some XviD/DivX files a sickness of the player? (i.e. when an actor moves, semi-transparent blocks of his trail movements appear) Is this really only solved by double pressing on the system menu button?

The picture is also more grainy than our Pioneer DVD player.

How come some of the XviD/DivX files look better when outputted (to the tv) from my PC via video-out on my R9800? Isn't the image quality supposed to be on par or better with video-out from the PC?

How is the "go to time" function used for XviD/DivX?

In the Philips website " 4x video upsampling for improved image quality" is stated. Is this automatically enabled on the player?

Btw I use an S-Video cable. Thanks! Any help/responses would be greatly appreciated.