Movie downloaders rejoice!

[someguy]

I just bought the Philips 642 DVD player the other day and I am loving it. Why you may ask? Well I'll tell you why....

It supports DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW, VCD, SVCD, JPEG, MP3, Kodak discs and.........

DIVX, AVI, XVID and separate subtitle files!

This is good for me because when I download a rare movie all I have to do is burn it on a data disc and watch it. The file type doesn't matter as long as the movie fits on one disc(and avi/divx files usually do). The quality is superb and there are minor problems(at the beginning of a divx movie it'll freeze and go ahead a few seconds)but they're not too big. If you nitpick a lot with DVD players then you won't like it one bit but I do love it greatly. Plus it's a steal too. It's 69.99 at CompUSA, 79.99 at the official Philips website and 99.99 Canadian. This seems like spam but I love this player so much. I just wanted to let some schmoes know this since it is basically a steal.

[WhiskyDrinker]

you may be happy with your new dvd player, and the fact it plays all these cpu files on it.
however, its never going to be the same has having the REAL DVD, rather than a pirated one.

to tell you the truth, downloading the movie, watching it in less quality than the dvd, burning, buy the disc for it, and all the time is not worth the $20

the $20 gets you the REAL thing, rather than some imitation

[Psychocandy]

Originally posted by WhiskyDrinker
you may be happy with your new dvd player, and the fact it plays all these cpu files on it.
however, its never going to be the same has having the REAL DVD, rather than a pirated one.

to tell you the truth, downloading the movie, watching it in less quality than the dvd, burning, buy the disc for it, and all the time is not worth the $20

the $20 gets you the REAL thing, rather than some imitation

A movie that has been ripped and converted by someone who knows what he/she is doing is perfectly watchable. And since when were all DVDs $20.00?

[WhiskyDrinker]

i dont care if it is perfectly watchable
its still not the same as the REAL thing

its an imitation, thats all

[bankholdup]

Some could call the real DVD an imitation...seeing as how it's not exactly the same size as seeing it on the big screen. Eh?

[JCPhoenix]

Originally posted by WhiskyDrinker
i dont care if it is perfectly watchable
its still not the same as the REAL thing

its an imitation, thats all

actually, they're not just watchable in most cases like psychocandy said, but can be exact replicas of the movie with no downsampling in the bitrate quality. granted they probably will rip extras to accomodate for the quality of the movie, but some movies manage to keep the extras and have no downsampling.

And even if you downsampled a movie, most of the time, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you have a big TV and even then you could barely see the difference.

and you also have to account for the fact that many of the retail dvds get leaked on the net a couple weeks to a couple months before they come out on dvd in stores.

ETA: though re-reading someguy's post again i can see what psychocandy meant about "watchable" quality. xvid/divx files are significantly smaller (generally fitting on cds) and they look decent on the tv but not really dvd quality (especially again if you have a big tv). but for those who download DVD-Rs, etc there really is no difference in quality.

[someguy]

Please don't make this another debate on downloading movies. This is about the DVD player. I just did the title about movie downloaders because most movie files are divs and avi.

[Psychocandy]

Originally posted by WhiskyDrinker
i dont care if it is perfectly watchable
its still not the same as the REAL thing

its an imitation, thats all

Yes...it is an imitation. A free imitation. If I love a movie I will buy the DVD. If it's a movie I just want to watch once then delete...then i'll download a DIVX or an MPEG or somesuch. So far i've only come across a couple of ripped movies the quality of which were poor enough to impede my enjoyment of the movie. Most of the time you'd be hard pushed to detect much of a difference between a properly ripped DIVX file and the original DVD.

[Psychocandy]

Originally posted by someguy
Please don't make this another debate on downloading movies. This is about the DVD player. I just did the title about movie downloaders because most movie files are divs and avi.

You're right. Kudos on making a good choice. I'm planning on buying something similar even though I already own a Sony DVD Recorder. It can't play DIVX or MPEG or even play CD-Rs.

[WhiskyDrinker]

all decent DVD players have these options already

i've had a JVC one for almost 3 years, and its had all these options.

good choice on your DVD, but to be honest, these machines have been on the market for a long time.

[someguy]

It's hard as hell to get these though. I went on the Radioshack site(the place selling them in Canada)and they were expected to ship back out September 26th because they're selling like hot cakes.

I took a drive to a town about 20 minutes from me to get it. Well worth it though. Oh yeah, the DVD player is noisy but if you have a surround sound or the TV is loud enough it won't bother you. As I said, the problems are minor. The only major problem I noticed is that sometimes it won't read the disc and I have to restart the player but that's it really.

[someguy]

Originally posted by WhiskyDrinker
all decent DVD players have these options already

i've had a JVC one for almost 3 years, and its had all these options.

good choice on your DVD, but to be honest, these machines have been on the market for a long time.

They have been but there hasn't been too many. I think your JVC one probably doesn't have the features these have. Burn a data CD with music or a small avi file on it and I bet it won't work on your DVD player. Most of these players cost from 300 to 500 dollars.

[WhiskyDrinker]

dude, my JVC DVD player does. my dad was a baller when he bought it. LOL.
i'll try to get you the model number later, but yah, i've loaded up CDs with just .mp3 files, and it gives you a menu to play them. Much like a MP3 Player or IPOD.

i didnt have a DVD burner on my cpu back in the day, so i never bothered downloading a dvd-quality .avi. Simply because you would have to put them on CDs, and thats just a drag and a half. But i've got a DVD burner now, and these .avi files should burn easily onto a DVD-R, and then play on my dvd player.

but i'm more of a collector, and don't bother to waste my time d/l and burning. What can i say, i like buying the case lol

[JCPhoenix]

Originally posted by someguy
They have been but there hasn't been too many. I think your JVC one probably doesn't have the features these have. Burn a data CD with music or a small avi file on it and I bet it won't work on your DVD player. Most of these players cost from 300 to 500 dollars.

Actually, I think most dvd players can play data CDs with music (aka mp3 cds) as my family has three of them, one of them from about three years ago (a Panasonic progressive scan that was top of the line at the time), one of them from a year ago that was *really* cheap (VSonic i think the brand is), and another one we just bought a couple weeks ago because it's an all-region player.

For all three, mp3 cds work so I'm guessing it's a pretty standard feature on most dvd players, as is dvd-r, cd-r capabilities.

however, the one thing all three dvd players I have don't have the ability to do is play avi files directly from a cd, etc. That's where your dvd player differs I think and it's fairly worth it I would say if you watch a lot of avis. Then again, I don't really burn avi files I burn dvd-rs :).

Another way though of watching avi files on your tv is just loading them onto a laptop and connecting it to your tv through some cables you can get at most electronics stores. That's what we used to do and it works, but it takes a bit more work then say, just popping a cd into the dvd player.

[Iacon5]

so your new dvd player can read avi, divx, and mpeg files that have been burned to a cd-r?

if you burn avi and divx files to a dvd-r then are they just like regular dvds and you can watch them on any player right?

i only really download movies if i liked it enough to want to own but didn't quite like it enough to shell out $20+ for.

if they're ripped properly then watching them on anything is perfectly fine and in my opinion indistinguishable from an actual dvd.
am about to get a dvd burner on my computer so now rather that even bother downloading the movie i can just copy the dvd i rent or barrow and have it for life. the only real problem with downloading is it takes a while and sometimes your hope has been in vain because the quality ends up sucking or its a completely different movie(happened a couple of times)

[someguy]

Originally posted by WhiskyDrinker
dude, my JVC DVD player does. my dad was a baller when he bought it. LOL.
i'll try to get you the model number later, but yah, i've loaded up CDs with just .mp3 files, and it gives you a menu to play them. Much like a MP3 Player or IPOD.

Ok then your player probably reads MP3's so that's why. If you burned a Data DVD you can fit a few avi files on there and be able to watch them. Maybe 5 or 6 movies.

And just so you people can see what I'm talking about......

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=312093&pfp=srch1

I was looking around and found [URL=http://www.onlybestrated.com/RJ1500.htm] DVD player too but I wouldn't recommend it too much compared to the Philips. Some of these features aren't very important or vital plus this DVD player has an easy region hack that doesn't harm your player. The subtitle support can be easily done with a firmware upgrade but the latest versions of the Philips have the firmware upgrade already in it. I just think that this is a good enough DVD player plus it's a steal.

[beastieben21]

I don't know what you spent someguy, but someone mentioned these costing 300-500 dollars. I bought a JVC model about 6 months ago for 90 dollars and it does everything listed and possibly more. I hate watching films I've downloaded at my computer, so for me it was a great alternative.

[JCPhoenix]

Originally posted by Iacon5
so your new dvd player can read avi, divx, and mpeg files that have been burned to a cd-r?

if you burn avi and divx files to a dvd-r then are they just like regular dvds and you can watch them on any player right?


no not quite. You'll notice a very significant difference in quality between an avi file and a real dvd, even if u burned it onto a dvd-r. they'll still be decent but nowhere near dvd quality, perhaps better than vhs if the avi file you get is around 1.2-1.4 gigs.

If you want actual dvd quality, you have to download full dvd-rs directly, and these are usually around 4.5-4.7 gigs apiece.

Oh and someguy - could you explain the subtitle support thing a bit more? I'm not sure I get what you mean, what does it mean that your dvd player has subtitle support?

[someguy]

Originally posted by JCPhoenix
Oh and someguy - could you explain the subtitle support thing a bit more? I'm not sure I get what you mean, what does it mean that your dvd player has subtitle support?

I shall explain....

When a movie is downloaded and has subtitles, the subs are in a separate file with the extension .srt, .sub, .ssa, etc.

Instead of permanently adding the subtitles to the avi file(which is a lot of work)you can simply burn the movie and the sub file. The DVD player can read the sub file and you can play the movie with subtitles on your DVD player. Hope I made sense. :)

Although I think that the DVD players come with that feature installed on the player now. If it doesn't you can go on the Philips site and download the upgrade for it. You would need a CD burner though.

[Hot-Handed Fury]

Actually the best reason to get the Philips DVP 642 is that you can make it region free with a very simple remote hack, and it converts PAL - NTSC.

Now you dont have to wait forever for some movies to come out on R1 dvd; I've had the Korean R3 dvd of Ed Wood for awhile now, and I just got the recently released R3 Thai DVD of the new Dawn of the Dead DVD. its the exact same director's cut DVD that will be released here in October.

[JCPhoenix]

Originally posted by someguy
I shall explain....

When a movie is downloaded and has subtitles, the subs are in a separate file with the extension .srt, .sub, .ssa, etc.

Instead of permanently adding the subtitles to the avi file(which is a lot of work)you can simply burn the movie and the sub file. The DVD player can read the sub file and you can play the movie with subtitles on your DVD player. Hope I made sense. :)

Although I think that the DVD players come with that feature installed on the player now. If it doesn't you can go on the Philips site and download the upgrade for it. You would need a CD burner though.

Aaah now that's an intriguing feature. That along with the avi support really does make this dvdplayer seem awesome :)