Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

It will be playing fine, but then just stops, with the picture
frozen. But not at the same place each time, and on multiple
discs.

If possible, I need this to work because it plays DivX files.

Any suggestions? Should I try to clean the head?

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

In article ,
Peabody wrote:

It will be playing fine, but then just stops, with the picture
frozen. But not at the same place each time, and on multiple
discs.

If possible, I need this to work because it plays DivX files.

Any suggestions? Should I try to clean the head?

Does it simply stop playing at that point (but can be persuaded to
continue playing if you fast-forward/chapter-skip)?

Or, does it freeze up entirely, and have to be power-cycled to start
working again?

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

Does it simply stop playing at that point (but can be
persuaded to continue playing if you
fast-forward/chapter-skip)?

Or, does it freeze up entirely, and have to be
power-cycled to start working again?

It will not fast forward or do anything within the current
file, but I can make it skip to the next file and start
playing it.

It may be that there's something wrong with the files. I'm
working on that possibility. I hope that's it.

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

Original firmware?
I have a DVP5990 with modified firmware. Occassional it acts up.
Unplugging the power for a few minutes has restored functions.

"Peabody" wrote in message
...
It will be playing fine, but then just stops, with the picture
frozen. But not at the same place each time, and on multiple
discs.

If possible, I need this to work because it plays DivX files.

Any suggestions? Should I try to clean the head?

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

Peabody wrote:

It will be playing fine, but then just stops, with the picture
frozen. But not at the same place each time, and on multiple
discs.

If possible, I need this to work because it plays DivX files.

Any suggestions? Should I try to clean the head?

One longshot possibility, on those, there are one or two electrolytics in
the power supply that are very common to go bad.

Normally the failure causes the unit not to turn on or shut itself off
after it's on and loading the disc (current draw from the tray motor).

If the unit never had them replaced, it's a cheap and easy fix.

It might help. Google for like "dvp642 capacitor".

-bruce

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

Thanks for the responses.

I re-rendered two of the files that were causing problems, and the
new renders seem to play fine. It's not clear what may have been
wrong with the original files, particulalry since they didn't
freeze at the same point on each play, but if this works for a few
more files, then I'm going to chalk it up to unknown encoding
structure errors. But actually, I think that's the best answer I
could get. At least is suggests the player is ok.

But I'm going to check on those capacitors, just in case.

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

In article ,
Nelson wrote:

It will be playing fine, but then just stops, with the picture
frozen. But not at the same place each time, and on multiple
discs.

If possible, I need this to work because it plays DivX files.

Any suggestions? Should I try to clean the head?


I have the same problem, but only with DVRs which have been ripped by
someone else. I haven't pursued it, but I suspect errors in the
encoding rather than physical media errors.

That's distinctly possible. MPEG-2 and similar video-encoding
standards allow for a *lot* of flexibility in the encoding... but most
playback devices aren't designed to copy with the full range of
possible encodings.

Commercial-DVD encoding is usually done with well-tuned encoders,
designed to stay well within the envelope of encoding ranges that DVD
players can handle. DivX and other home-encoded recordings, not so
much.

I've seen some MPEG-2 decoder chips which would choke (badly) on some
borderline or out-of-spec MPEG data streams... sometimes so badly that
a hard reset was required to get them to decode again properly.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Philips DVD player DVP642/37 - freezes up
 

In article ,
Peabody wrote:

But I'm going to check on those capacitors, just in case.

Well worth doing.

I was able to restore a Cyberhome DVD player to usable condition, a
couple of years ago, by doing a capacitor replacement... several were
bulging, and a couple of the others showed a high ESR when I measured
them. Replaced 'em all and the player started working again.

A capacitor ESR tester is a very useful piece of kit these days.
They're available commercially, and you can home-brew one without too
much difficulty. I built one based on the following:

http://ludens.cl/Electron/esr/esr.html

and it does the job really nicely.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!