Philips DVP-642 and DivX subs?

[jliles]

Hi,

I am interested in the Philips DVP-642, but one thing that I am very interested in knowing is how it handles DivX subtitles. The DVD player info/rating section on this site seems to indicate that it does play them, but other posts claim it doesn't. Has anyone tried playing subs with a DivX (or similar) file? If you got it to work, how did you get it to work? (What sub file format, was there anything special you needed to do to get the subs to play?)

Any info is appreciated...

Julie

[boroda]

It doesn't recognize .SRT files, that much I know.

Basically, if you want to play a DivX file with subtitles, you are going to have to re-encode the movie and burn the permanent subtitles onto it.

[jliles]

Hmmmmmmmmm....

Thanks for responding... while waiting for your response, I checked out the Philips support site here for the 642...

http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/dcbint?mode=files&modname=DVP642/17&moddesc=..._eu&s=consumer

Interestingly, there are two manuals posted for this player, one (I assume) in "UK English", and the other for US owners (I happen to be in the US). The UK manual on page 24 explicitly indicates that this player CAN play multiple subtitles and multiple audio streams in a DivX file by pressing the audio/subtitle buttons while the file is in "Preview" mode. This information is nowhere in the US manual. Neither manual states what file format the subs need to be in.

Can anyone in the US with this player give this a try and see if this works? Are the US and UK versions of this player identical (except for the region coding, of course)?

Thanks for your help,

Julie

[ejp]

once again, hate to bring up an old thread, but this talks about my question in mind...

i guess i could try it, but it'd be a few days before i can. maybe someone already tried. well first, when you burn the the avi with the srt, does it have to have the same file name?

ex:
moviename.avi
moviename.srt

...or can it be different...

ex:
moviename.avi
englishsubs.srt

...which leads to my next question. does anyone know if this dvd player (with whichever firmware upgrade) supports multiple selectable external subtitles? i know the trick is to go into the menu then choose the subtitles, then choose the movie. so can you select another subtitle file?

ex:
moviename.avi
englishsubs.srt
forcedsubs.srt
spanishsubs.srt

...so now i can either load english subtitles for hearing impaired, or just forced subtitles for alien language, or just spanish subtitles.

does anyone know if this works?

[giannid]

To play a srt file, you have to go to the disc menu. use up down buttons to go to your subtitle file. When the subtitle file is hilighted, push "subtitle" button. Screen should show Divx subtitle selected. Then go to the corresponding video file with the up/down buttons and push play.

The subtitle file does not have to be in the same folder or have the same name, it might not even have to be on the same CD.

[ejp]

so this means the CD can contain more than one SRT file?

[jman98]

Yes, multiple SRT files ARE possible! I don't know what kind of problems Boroda had, but it definitely does recognize SRT files. I couldn't get SUB files to work at all, although in theory they should work. I made a test disc with English and Cyrillic SRT files (by the way, it is a nightmare to get Cyrillic subs in the right format for this player!) and I was able to select either one from the same disc and both worked.

Boroda might not realize that you have do more than just select the SRT file in the menu before you play the disc. After it starts playing, you have to push the subtitle button on the remote control to actually start the subtitles. If you don't do that, they won't automatically play.

While you might not care, you should be aware that currently only Latin and Cyrillic character sets are supported, which means that you can't watch subtitles in Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

[javierperezch]

This player supports SRT, SUB and SMI subtitles. I've tried them all and they worked.
The only problem is that subtitles are hardly readable.
But there is a trick that lets you enable a shadow behind the text
See this post

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=247794