What's the best cheap DVD that player will play ANYTHING?

Question

I need a new single disc DVD player. I need something that will play NTSC & PAL as well as all manner of CD-R & DVD+/-R(W)discs. It also needs to play DivX and if possible Xvid, something that played WMV and/or AVI files would be great. MP3 playback is essential. I have had players in the past that were supposed to play DVD-R discs, but some would only play discs that met the most stringent DVD authoring standards, that's no good for me, I need something that is VERY forgiving. DOes anybody have any suggestions for me?

Oh yeah, JPEG viewing is also a big plus. If you know, the max number of JPGs that can be viewed from a disc would also be good to know. My old one had viewing, but only 256 files per disc!

Answer 1

Philips DVP-642. At about $60 at your local Target or Best Buy ($50 on Amazon!), it's still pretty widely available.

- Converts PAL properly to NTSC (i.e. some cheapies don't do the aspect ratio right)
- Hackable to make it region-free by pressing a code on the remote
- Plays CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD+RDL
- Plays MPEG1 (.mpg), DivX and XviD (although it does have problems with the qpel codec, but that's a relatively rare thing); it tries its darndest with all sorts of other files, and often succeeds (I figure no player is perfect in this regard). Philips sporadically releases firmware updates that expand its repertoire of formats.
- Plays MP3's. Like most DVD players, it's an afterthought and navigation is pretty Mickey-Mouse, but it does its thing.
- Displays JPG's. Again, this sort of feature is an afterthought with most DVD players. I don't know its limitations, but I'm pretty sure that it can handle typical pictures well enough; I wouldn't say the same if you tried to feed it a 50-megapixel, 100MB-size image.
- Component video out with switchable progressive scan (as opposed to some players where component out is only progressive), coax and optical digital audio. No DTS decoder but it outputs DTS for your audio receiver to decode.

In short, this is my primary DVD player, I can attest personally to its capabilities, and if I had tons of money and was feeling generous, I would buy one for each of my friends.

Answer 2

Check out the APEX brand of DVD players. You can find them at Walmart or lots of places on the Web.
They were making multiple-format units back years ago before any of the other brands. The only thing that is unknown is the DivX compatibility. That requires a different decoder but they may have incorporated that on their ROM as well by now.
As for the max number of JPEG images you're only limited by the resolution of the pictures. High-res=bigger file sizes=fewer total.

Answer 3

34.95 Magnavox at walmart..... mwd200f