Buying a Divx DVD player.....Which one to buy.

[Hank Kinsley]

I need to buy a Divx DVD player. HDMI is not a big deal as it won't be used on HDTV. It will be used almost entirely to watch Divx TV shows (eg. Sopranos), Divx movies, and regular DVD movies. Price must be below $70 ($80 CDN - I'm in Canada). I'm near places like Walmart, Futureshop (Best Buy), The Source etc.. so it has to be from a relatively standard outlet (no shipping). The person receiving it knows nothing about DVD hacks and that kinda stuff but I could

What is the best/most reliable Divx DVD player available, taking the above info into account.

I apologize in advance for being so general but I was overwhelmed by the number of choices there are out there. I appreciate your help.


Thanks

[redwudz]

Have you checked out our DVD Players list? <<<<<< You should be able to input your requirements and get back a list of possible players. Just me, but I would stick to major brands and you should have less 'surprises'.

[Hank Kinsley]

I checked it out but received too many results! I also didn't realized that there are chipset differences and stuff like that. I just want to be able to burn Divx videos and watch them without sound lagging or any other problems.

I was kinda hoping that someone from Canada or USA might be able to help me find a good one that is at a Walmart, Futureshop, Superstore, Best Buy location.

I actually bought a Toshiba SD-4000, thinking that by sticking with a big name I would avoid problems. In the DVD player search on this site (and on other sites), ppl said they had sound lagging problems!

[budz]

Check out the PHILIPS DVP5982/37 from BEST BUY.

Here's a PIONEER one at WALMART for $59.87 but it's online only. The PIONEER can playback DIVX & it's also NTSC & PAL.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4939515

I have a portable PHILIPS DVD PLAYER that plays DIVX very well with no problems.

Here's a PHILIPS DVP3960 from WALMART for $44.87 available instore.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5584897

[Hank Kinsley]

The Philips dvp3960 looks pretty good. Philips Divx player seem to be the best in general too. Any reason to stay away from Philips?

[budz]

The Philips dvp3960 looks pretty good. Philips Divx player seem to be the best in general too. Any reason to stay away from Philips?

If you search in this forum site you'll see many good comments about the PHILIPS DIVX DVD PLAYERS. Any brand will have it's pros and cons. I've read good reviews from those who own PHILIPS DIVX DVD PLAYERS & also from those who own a PIONEER DIVX DVD PLAYER. If you don't like the PHILIPS model you can always return it to WALMART. A few weeks ago my friend picked up the PHILIPS DVP3960 from WALMART. He said he was lucky since it was the last one on the shelf. Price is so reasonably inexpensive that if I needed a new dvd player that could play DIVX I'd buy the PHILIPS DVP3960.

[TBoneit]

The seem to have variable quality. And the remotes are very basic.

[BCdave]

Future Shop has the LG LDA-830 on sale for $60 this week, and it seems to have everything you want. It appears to be a new model, but the single buyer's comment on the Future Shop website indicates that it can be easily hacked to be region-free.
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10085860&catid=

I don't have this player, but I have 2 LG recorders which I love. LG's build quality is exceptional, and Future Shop has a good 30-day return policy if you don't like it for some reason.

[Krispy Kritter]

You can also check out the Divx certified player list at divx.com

You should also point out to the person(s) that will using the player, that it will NOT play all files. Many people are under the mis-impression that a Divx player will player any file they put on a disc. That is not the case. Better to let them know in advance.

[jman98]

As TBoneit points out, Philips seems to have a strange idea of quality control. My old DVP-642 STILL works after almost 3 years and I've read here about others who had them die after 1 month. I've also not seen some of the playback issues on mine that a few other people reported.

To follow up on Krispy Kritter's post, here are a few things that may be issues for Divx playback on any DVD player that supports the format. It's best to avoid these things unless you have tested it and know that your player supports it.
1) QPel (Quarter pixel)
2) GMC
3) Resolutions greater than 720x576
4) Packed bitstream
5) Video bit rates higher than 2000 Kbps. You'll need to test with your player, but if you use bit rates over 2000 Kbps, AC3/DTS audio may not play correctly. If you use bit rates over 3000, the video itself may have playback problems.

You can download and install Gspot for free and use it to look at your videos. If your Divx videos violate even one of the things I listed above, you may have playback problems. It would certainly not be a good thing to buy a player and then afterwards realize that all your Divx videos have QPel and you can't play them back. You can re-encode to fix all of these issues, but in each case except for packed bitstream (this is easily fixed without really re-encoding), you'll have worse quality if you have to re-encode.