Praise for the Phillips "DVP3040" Dvd player. From me.

[leeroysphitz]

This week I was in the market for a new dvd player.

My previous player, the Oritron "dvd 3119", is officially on the fritz.
The Oritron was three years old, a very cheap no name player but was great because it would play damn near anything I threw at it. I do a lot of D.V. home movies. I also like to download video content to watch on my television so needless to say I spend a lot of time authoring my own DVDs. Compatibility is a constant hassle. The Oritron would play anything but when I tried to loan out videos or give DVDs of family events out to relatives the success rate of these disks is pretty hit or miss.

So I bought and returned two new dvd players this week to replace the Oritron. Both were in the 40 dollar range and both failed to play home authored disks despite claims to play DVD+- r/rw.

Then my SO (Mrs. Sphits) stumbled on to a review of the Phillips "DVP 3040" also in the 40 dollar range. The review claimed it also would play any format/ media and would, on top of all that, play raw .AVI off of DVD or CD-R! Sounded a little too good to be true but the upshot is it works! So far it has played EVERYTHING. It plays the .AVI, .DIVX files just fine. It also has no problem with XVID files (it will even properly display subtitles on divx and xvid files!). Tonight I plan to sleep with a blank DVD-R under my pillow and see if it can playback my dreams- lol.

The case is sturdy and made of metal, it has a reassuring "heft" when picking it up, unlike the other two models we tried which made entirely of plastic and seemed to weigh less than the disks they wouldn't play! (very CHEAP (as in shoddy) IMO).

We actually had to talk the guys at Best Buy into going into the back to get this model for us. They salesman said it was a "value" model or something and they weren't supposed to sell it until enough of the more expensive "comparable" models were sold out.

The new player is magnificent. We've taken to calling it the "Super Magical DVD Player". My wife even wrote "SMDP" on the remote.

Anyhow. I just posted all this to say I've found a what I consider to be a quality consumer product at an excellent price. Just wanted to share in case any one else was looking for a good player.



BTW, the first person who ruins my day with replies telling me that Phillips is evil and makes 4 yr. somali children assemble their dvd players for .0003 cents a week is going to get put on "ignore"! :)

[qnr]

1. I have a Philips DVP-642 that I bought at Overstock.com a couple of years

ago. I've read some reviews where people badmouth it, but it has read almost everything I've thrown at it (I'd like for it to play .ogm, but I know it won't, so I haven't 'thrown that at it'. :) ) If I remember correctly, I "flashed" it and increased the capabilities a bit, but the upgrade was from Philips.

[leeroysphitz]

2. I've been reading that the 3040, in addition to upgrades,

has a number of "hacks" to expand capabilities (regions etc...) which I can't wait to play with.

I haven't tried it yet but I've also read about others having success with .WMV.

I'm no expert but seems like .ogm shouldn't be such a big stretch, at least in upgrades or future models, I mean a "container" is a container right? hmm...

[qnr]

3. Yeah, it shouldn't, but I'll just wait a while, and ensure that any new

one that I buy supports OGG.