Philips DVP5140

H&B 3255 is a superb player, I have it for 2 years now and it's flawless. Plays all DivX and xVid versions including the latest DivX 6.4, QPEL, and even GMC on DivX (but not GMC on xvid). Don't worry about GMC though, during the last 4 years I've only encountered very few GMC-enabled xvid files, and trust me, I've had a lot! Not to mention MTZ's and Bitmapbrother's superb unofficial firmwares which efeature a nice file browser with long filename support and DTS support!
Have a look here for specs:

http://www.hb-direct.co.uk/EN/P_53.html

NBR, lol, ya i am quite picky about video quality! however its not dvd/mpeg2 but rather mpeg4/avc [h.264] that i like more! i would trade in all dvd's for h.264 high-def video's! and h264 is even better than mpeg4/asp [divx/xvid]. black is represented better by h264, xvid/divx has color/gray rainbowing effect and cant re-produce blacks properly.

also h.264 has less random noise than mpeg2, but that might be more because some people dont know how to compress using mpeg2 properly, or because the original source already had it!

as for tv and monitors, i have already mentioned, the reason for quality diffrence is not because the video is low quality, but because the monitor is too high quality, so to speak! tv's have 12-16 bit color depth, while monitors have 24-32 [and even 36]bit color depth. also the color spaces [color representation and even compression methods] for monitors and tv's are diffrent, YV vs. RGB and all that!

well i got a question now... seeing as how my dvd player pretty much just died (drive tray loading errors etc) ... i might have to buy another one, but i have some questions... (and the backup dvd player we had laying around (which we got free) plays svcd's but it acts up way to much.. like garbled video etc, so basically this aint gonna work)

most likely "if" i do buy another one it's gotta be able to play SVCD and DivX/XviD perfectly.... cause i have alot of my movies on SVCD and even though my xbox can play SVCD's it cant read CD-R's which pretty much all of my SVCD collection is on, so for the xbox to be able to play those i have to rip to the pc etc etc which basically is a pain in the butt i just want it to directly read the cd-r's which only the samsung dvd-rom drive for the xbox can do that which i have the philips one ... so basically im screwed as far as the xbox playing svcd's is conserned from it's dvd-rom drive ... thats why i want to get a dvd player that does both SVCD and DivX/XviD ... ill be mainly using the dvd player primaryily for SVCD but i figured if im going to buy another one i might as well get one that works well with XviD/DivX to

and my second question... can those home dvd players that play divx/xvid, play back XviD files from a dvd+r/dvd-r disc? (generally speaking, i have atleast 3 movies per dvd disc) ... or do they have to be on cd-r's for the player to play them? ... cause im hopeing that u can choose which video file the dvd player plays back when it's playing a xvid file.

any suggestions?

p.s. im hopeing to get a decent brand dvd player that does what im saying above for preferably no more than around 60 dollars.

and also is it easy to upgrade firmware for dvd players if needed?

Afraid you aren't gonna find what you are looking for, for $60USD or less. That being said you could probably find a Samsung 605B XBOX DVD-ROM on ebay for about that price and you could hock your Phillips for about $40USD on there. It has to be the Sammy 605B though (not the newer 605F model). After swapping out all of the XBOX DVD-ROM drives that are out there (including the modded 616T PC drive) I have to say that my current XBOX Samsung 605B is by far the best drive I have had. Reads anything you throw at it (provided you set the booktype to DVD-ROM on +R discs).

thanks for the suggestions ... but what price do u think i would have to pay to get what i roughly wanted above?

well so far i should be good cause i shook my dvd player around a little bit and "so far" it works perfectly again... once the svcd's play it never has problems playing them back as long as it loads up the svcd video discs's.... the only problems i had with it where when it's attempting to load the discs's it says "drive tray error" or something along these lines.

so i guess for now ill just deal with my old 46 dollar dvd player which i bought about 3-4years ago.

thanks again for the reply though as your (Jesterrace) idea was a pretty good... although it would have been a little pain in the butt to buy a new one and sell my old one on ebay ( i generally dont use ebay often myself but i have used it a little here and there) ... but i guess if like u said i could basically get a samsung drive for 60 dollars or so and sell my philips for 40 dollars or so then it's like i would be tradeing my philips for a samsung and paying 20 dollars which aint bad

Here are a few listings currently for the 605B, some are over the price I listed after shippping though:

http://cgi.ebay.com/XBOX-CONSOLE-PAR...D-ROM-SDG-605B

http://cgi.ebay.com/XBOX-PARTS-Samsu...QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/XBOX-PARTS-Samsu...QQcmdZViewItem

All Samsung DVD players are DivX or DivX Ultra certified even though some AD do not mention about it, since .avi ripping (divx, xvid, wmv, etc) are so popular in Korea and other East Asian countries, function is all embedded.
So look out for the black friday sale on Samsung DVD player or Home theater set.

Or if you want the convenience of no bulk DivX recorded DVD/CDs and hassle of burning it, then try standalone DivX player that just like external USB HD. that just need to be hooked up to TV whenever you want.
Mediagate seems the best one available in US since other models in US are all cheaply made from China or Hong Kong.
Try eBay if you want cheap one.

Im very disappointed with the Philips DVP3040/12 now that i have it for some time. My previous divx players i had were much better and they had same price if not cheaper.
Philips DVP3040 doesn't reads long names, it doesn't play audio of some movies and it has problems reading at least 30% of mp3s burned on dvds or cds. It has big troubles reading all mp3s of many albums and big troubles reading audio albums at start or end of any dvd. The Philips DVP3040 doesn't stop playing the movie if i press stop on my remote, its like a pause, i have to go than again into movie and press stop again to stop it running in background (cause when i go the second time it starts from the spot i stopped it the first time). Another bad thing is that there is no eject on remote control, only if im pressing the stop on remote control for few seconds it opens. Also this divx doesn't support chinese, japanese or any other non standard characters, its not unicode. I wanted to play a chinese movie and the divx just goes crazy and freezes and scrools up and down and than i had to shut down the divx, happens each time. Sometimes it doesn't even read subtitles and the latest firmware i installed didn't fix anything. My yamada and xoro were much better.

Until HD divx players come down from $250 (only one chipset around right now, means no competition) probably the best budget one is the philips 5960 since it has everything the 5140 has plus hdmi and usb port - and can be had for around $60 if you wait for the right sale.

if anyone still cares about this topic.... u can get a decent xbox on ebay for around 60-70 dollars... which for it's price it's hard to find a dvd player that does divx/xvid as well as the xbox does... plus XBMC is constantly being updated.

The xbox does seem to be one of your best bets for a budget player. I have seen them pretty cheap in pawn shops too.
personally, I just went with an htpc, mostly because I got tired of searching for disks. Its nice to be able to just have everything on hard drive, avalable on demand.
The xbox's can run from larger capacity hard drives too. can't they?

The XBOX will support up to 480p. Not much by today's standards but then again find me a DVD Player that does a GOOD JOB of upconverting to higher res and is region free and supports PAL/NTSC playback (to say nothing of all of the other obscure file formats that XBMC can play) for under $100.

I love my oppo.

As do I.

Me too (970)

Hey Guys,

Very interesting reading. I've decided to get an xbox to play divx files.
A few questions though;

1. Whats the best modchip and why? I can get my hands on this one; Duo X2 GS - good?
2. Is the modchip simple enough to install? (I can build a PC but that's like saying I can wash the dishes :P)
3. Anyone have tutorials on hard drive and XBMC install?
4. This is off topic, but I have been backing up 360 games, sometimes when extracting to the hard drive it comes up with read error's and asks me to fill with zeroes, to I which I agree and it completes the image. Question is, when I burn it to a DVD will it be corrupt? I don't wanna waste an expensive 8.5g blank trying to find out

Thanks in advance,
Rick

I too own a Philips DivX player DVP3040. Received it for Christmas 2006. Played fine until recently. Called Philips tech support. They suggested downloading latest firmware (DVP3040ZS_37_V21) which I did. I installed this firmware on my DivX player, verified it was installed, but it didn't help. Called tech support back and they suggested a Laser Lens Cleaner. Bought one of these and cleaned the DivX lens, but this too didn't help.
This DivX player plays normal DVD movies just fine. Any ideas from the group???
Ed.......

egowing@tds.net

OPPO with Farouja Chip

Gamestop/Electronics Boutique Has had used Xbox on sale for $50
several times.

To get HDTV signals out of the Xbox, you must buy the the Xbox High Definition TV Pack from Microsoft.
From The MS Dash you have to setup the Video to output 480p 720p 1080i 16:9 Platform.
Once this is done XBMC can be set to 1080i, and it's now an Up converting Player. The highest Support Rez is 1024x768 for AVI and Xvid
but it up converts them to 1080i quite nicely for a 7 year old system.
x.264 encoded for the Xbox with the above settings will play just fine..

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/...ution_media.3F

http://144.92.43.200/hdg/?submit=ShowFAQ