Philips DVP642 "no disc" of death: 6 month failure

[Zisguy1]

I'd generally trust a refurb (from a known reliable seller with good policies) *more* than I would an original unit.

[jaxxboss]

Ive had mine for over a year and use it a lot, Im talking everyday and not a problem at all.

[Quantum]

If you purchased your DVP642 from Walmart or Walmart.com in the USA you have the option to buy a replacement plan for $16.58 for 3 years. If the unit breaks within 3 years, likely, you get a check for the original purchase price. Best Buy has a very similar plan for items under $200.

I usually don't buy these plans but there's a high probability that my until could fail and if so I'll get the money back to buy newer technology.

[TOY4TWO]

It does seem like Philips is having some QC problems with the DVP642. Nothing unusual re: products made in China...

Hopefully this gets resolved over time... usually it does, if a product line lasts very long. Doesn't help people who run into problems in the meantime, of course.

P.S. "knocking on wood" with my player also. I don't care that much anymore, since I've gone to DVD burning for my backups instead of DivX/XviD (which looks kind of crappy on the Philips anyway, those awful vertical lines)... next purchase will probably just be a good quality standard DVD player.

The vertical line fix is in. Reset to defaults and never touch the SMART PICTURE option, you'll never see them again. The full fix is on the yahoo dvp642 group.

I wouldn't make a blanket statement about the DVP642 failing, there were 3 drastic changes to the inside of the DVP642 disc loader. I have taken 2 apart and the new E loader is MUCH better. Make sure you get a E version, you can check in the firmware page. All this info and the screens are on the yahoo group and on the South American site (REALLY good closeups off all the changes). The new E loader came with a new controller chip that includes a heat sink, the old chip would get REALLY hot and after a period of time die. DO NOT get a refurb from Philliips, just buy a new one for $55 at Walmart and make sure you get the new loader design.

The same thing happened to the people who bought Playstation 2's, SONY revised the loader/laser several times and it is much better now.

[CBC]

OK, so what does Joe Consumer look for on the carton to ID this E loader version?
In general terms Philips, ironically the co-founder of the CD standard, has not had good overall results , quality wise, with their disc players. I owned one of their (now discontinued) DVD/SACD players, which overheated a lot. Trying to return it for replacement was a major PITA. I've read many other horror stories of similar issues with other models too. I bought my DVP642 for it's Divx playing feature, but with the advent of easier methods of converting DviX/Xvid to DVD(SVCD2DVD,The Film Machine, AVI2DVD), I seldom even bother using it anymore.
Another great idea, with poor execution.

[DeathStalker77]

Toy4Two:

Could you post the specific differences between the 3 models please? I currently have an M series (orig 0531, currently at 1109) and am considering a second one.

Mine has developed an "odd" problem recently though - it has changed the speeds at which it will FastForward (FFW) and FastRewind (FRW) VCD & SVCD discs. The same MPG files burned on a DVDR disc will FFW/FRW just fine. Files normally FFW/FRW at 2x,4x,6x,8x but now they will only go at 1x,2x,3x,4x - and the player will often have problems with them if the FRW button is hit while in FFW (the screen goes black and the display counter on the unit becomes garbled. The only way to break it out of this "confusion" is to power the unit off.

This is very frustrating, as it has been working just fine until now. I've gone over every feature on the unit, but have been unable to correct it. I have tried numerous VCD/SVCD discs of different manufacturers and made with different burning programs.

Thanks much! =)


--- DeathStalker

[leha]

I owned DVP642 for less than a year when it stopped reading disks ("NO Disc" message). That happened after the player presumably overheated when operating under the hot satellite receiver. I opened its case, spread some flux over all chips' legs on the decoder board (the green board between CD reader and power supply) and used a butane soldering iron to melt solder. Now the unit operates flawlessly.

[MJA]

mine didn't last 6 months.the warranty is only 3 months!!!!!!!!that tells you dvd player isn't made to last more than 6 to 12 months(I know some lucky people .blah blah)thats why philips is on my DO NOT BUY LIST

[ROF]

My DVP642 replaced a dead Sony over a year ago. It's in operation on a daily basis. So far anything I put into it plays flawlessly. I can understand the overheating bit as posted here though. It's quite a sealed unit with little ventilation. So far so good. I spent $60 on it so it's only cost me less than $5 a month. Wish I could say that about the POS Sony product. If it died tomorrow I'd take it back to walmart. I purchased it at Best Buy but because our Walmart is closer and also sells this unit I'd do an easy exchange. I've never had any problems when the items are in stock at Walmart and all I want is to exchange a bad unit for a good one. When they ask for the receipt I tell them I don't have it and they continue processing my return. Even if I don't buy the item from them I've never had any problems. If I did I'd ask to speak with a manager. If the manager wasn't going to make me happy I'd ask for district managers name and phone number. Just mentioning that usually gets our local Radio Shack people to do what I request.

[Krispy Kritter]

I have 2 of these currently. The original is almost 2 years old now and was getting daily use until I purchased an Oppo OPDV971H for Christmas.

[webranger]

I bought one of these. It lasted a year. I bought another one. Lasted 14 months.

Same problem. No disk. No motor sounds. Just DOA.

I wouldn't recommend it.

[jman98]

webranger - Welcome to the forums, but please do NOT in the future dig up old posts that are almost 2 years old and reply to them. It's called "gravedigging" and we actively discourage it. It's really not helpful for you to dig up an old post that was long ago abandoned and add to it.

My DVP-642 is over 3 years old and it STILL works. Does that mean I'm right and you're wrong? Nope. But the fact that mine still works and yours doesn't isn't really relevant to a thread that should have been left alone. By the way, I wouldn't recommend the DVP-642 either even though mine still works.

[Krispy Kritter]

I actually have two, one from August 2004 which still gets almost daily use and a second from April 2005.

And yeah, what jman said. : )

On a side note, these units (and most other slimline units) are known to run hot. They need to be in the open air without other items or hardware sitting on top of them.

[mlyaaaa]

Im sorry if Im digging up an old post again but I must say that the same thing happened to me. My DVP is about 2 years old but I didnt use it much. Lately I started to use it everyday and got NO DISK error in the middle of the movie.
Now, all the CDs work fine. But all DVDs get NO DISK message. So I opened it, to check if theres 2 lasers - no theres one. Then I googled this thread and realised that Im not alone with this problem.
Gotta build a small PC for TV to play everything I want.

[nguyen27]

My just died with the "NO DISC" message too, after cleaning with alcohol/QTIP, air duster blowing but either work. Finally I tried tighten two screw at near the end of the tray and that work like a charm. Open up the player, and eject the tray, looking from back forward, you will see two screws with some sort of rubber washers, just tighten them. give that a try.

[dork432]

I received my No Disc error after only 2 years. Replacing the drive would be easy if there were replacements available.

[jman98]

I received my No Disc error after only 2 years. Replacing the drive would be easy if there were replacements available.

Welcome to the forums, but we strongly discourage doing what you did - adding unnecessarily to old posts. To be blunt, your post adds nothing to the thread. The DVP642 is rather infamous (I have one, by the way) for being poorly made and not lasting very long. Some posters reported having it die in only 1 or 2 months after purchase. I know you wanted to be helpful, but we've heard it all before.

I hope you'll find VideoHelp useful and stick around, but please don't add to old posts again. The only time it's OK is if you have new information that's completely lacking in the thread, like a region free unlock code for a DVD player someone asked about in the past. To tell us that your player died after 2 years is not really very interesting or helpful to the other members here.

The DVP642 is pretty crappy. It was cheap and at the time it first came out it was one of the first DVD players that would play Divx/Xvid files, but it used one of the earliest chips that supported Divx/Xvid decoding and that chip has long since been left behind by superior chips. Did you know that the DVP642 actually stretches Divx/Xvid video too much in the vertical direction? It's not so much that it's really obvious, but it definitely does that. It also is incapable of correctly displaying Divx/Xvid in 16:9 and only 4:3 output is even close to being correct. I've had mine for about 4 years now and I rarely use it. When it dies I won't miss it.

[leokrut]

My just died with the "NO DISC" message too, after cleaning with alcohol/QTIP, air duster blowing but either work. Finally I tried tighten two screw at near the end of the tray and that work like a charm. Open up the player, and eject the tray, looking from back forward, you will see two screws with some sort of rubber washers, just tighten them. give that a try.

I have this player about two years and like it. The message "no disc" happens sometime and after loading one or several times disc usually go through. Irritated but for the price is acceptable. Lately some discs do not work at all. I gave a try to this specific recipe. It sounds crazy but cost nothing to try. To my surprise it helped. Thanks for encouragement nguyen27.

I believe that problem is not in these particular "two screws". There were tightened enough I felt. My best guess that just opening and blowing up some air could clean some very small peace of dust from laser bean.

In any case doesn’t matter how magical it could sound - give a try. :roll:

[hExDJ]

from "nguyen27":
Open up the player, and eject the tray, looking from back forward, you will see two screws with some sort of rubber washers, just tighten them. give that a try.

I've had this player for over 5 years now and just a couple of weeks ago I started getting the NO DISC message also, it only happened whenever I inserted a CD (data, music, pictures, etc) while all DVDs worked just fine.

I tried this solution, thinking it was silly and gues what, IT WORKED!!!

[victoriabears]

Y'know , I would like to know if any of the failed machines had proper air flow round them, I now use Hockey Pucks to seperate all my electronics, not stack them on top of each other.

It was on the advice of a installer I know.

Just a thought.

[Joshatdot]

I just got a DVP642/37 used from Goodwill, no remote but founds codes for it for my Sony TV mote.

Anywho, it was playing DVDs, DVD-Rs, CDs, CD-Rs fine...then I started to play around in its Setup menu. I messed around with the Video Setup, changed Output from S-Video to YPbPr, Smart Picture to Personal with various settings. Went back to watch movie after changed settings...NO DISC.

So I did some Googleing, performed the Region Code to 0, still NO DISC. Got to the hidden version page, everything was right. I performed the Preferences > Default> Reset.

DVD Played!

-----

It's been some months now, and now nothing will play...the drive barely sounds like it's spinning up at all. And when I try to play an audio CD, after about 10s of "loading", I hear this electronic scream sound coming from the drive area!

-----

I just did the tighting of screws trick...didn't seem to work, so I took out the whole drive..tapped the spin up motor, licked my finger & thum and cleaned the black band of the spin up drive. Put everything back in.

DVD Plays!

[xryak]

guys, in my case it was cold solder joint of spindel motor wires.
problem has gone after resoldering.

[Lucky Starr]

I bought DVP3260 couple of years ago and in less then a year i got that "no disc" message. So I got new one for free and now that one after 2 years started having same problem but it fixed itself after few days and started playing DVDs but now after a month or two again same problem.

[MJA]

my philips dvd player is collecting dust now after i got got the xbox 360 slim

[Lucky Starr]

Well good for you because it seems person needs to spend immense amount of time on the internet before buying anything electrical because I also bought few weeks ago Sony bluray S185 and it plays mkv files but it can't play most of .avi files so I basically need two players to freely watch stuff.

I mean I see that some people turn PCs to be their players which is probably the best solution because it can play anything but then again it's probably not good turning on and off PC everytime you want to watch 20 or 30 minutes of video. And I would need to buy new TV to switch in PC.

[MJA]

WD live is the best when it comes to size,power consumption,heat plus playing many Codec MINUS DVD

[jman98]

so I basically need two players to freely watch stuff.

DVD and BD players are really bad choices for "plays everything" devices. Even worse are the Xbox and PS3. Yes, the reality is that you do need multiple players. I've got a newish Philips DVD player that I use for DVD playing. I've got a Momitsu region free BD player that I use for BluRay playing. If I've got MKV, MP4 or AVI files to play, I use my first generation Western Digital player. And I've even got a Roku for Netflix/Amazon streaming.

[MJA]

Do you have any internet issues(surfing) when u watch Netflix on the Ruko?

[jagabo]

Do you have any internet issues(surfing) when u watch Netflix on the Ruko?

We have several netflix streaming devices (computers, Blu-ray player, HDTV). I've never seen problems with them fighting over internet bandwidth. Though typically only one Netflix stream is running at a time, and one computer browsing or downloading (only two in the household). I think our current internet download speed is around 15 Mb/s (we're paying for 15, Speedtest.net shows 25). Our LAN is all gigabit wired.

[jman98]

My experience is the same as jagabo's but with lower download speeds. If I remember correctly I currently have about 12 Mb/s. I previously had 6 Mb/s before upgrading with my ISP. I didn't have any buffering issues with 6 Mb/s except my internet connection was insanely unstable and if it just dropped, then the streams would buffer. I'm with AT&T Uverse now and the connection has been reliable and I have no buffering issues.