Almost Perfect...

I took back my Philips DVP 642 and exchanged it for the Yamaha DV-S5750 hoping that I would get a better picture, especially when viewing DivX.

The good news is, the picture is better. I tested it on different discs (DVD-R, -RW, +RW and CD-R) and the picture was definitely more clear on anything in a DVD format. The DivX format was more problematic. It didn't have little white lines going through it that it did on the Philips DVP 642, however, the aspect ratio was slightly out (too tall)and the movement looked more like Internet streaming video. On the DVP 642, despite the lines, the movement was at least smooth. On the Yamaha, the movement was choppy.

Keep in mind, of course, that this could have been a problem with the original encoding as well.

The playback of jpegs seemed to be somewhat erratic. It would cycle through them and then stop for no apparent reason. Still haven't figured that one out yet.

I also tried a DVD with MP3's. The menu was a little slow to navigate, but the MP3's played fine.

The remote is the exact same one that came with the Philips player. In fact, judging by the menu structure of the setup, they are sharing the same technology, though somehow Yamaha managed to get the better picture.

Overall a decent player, but I'm still not quite satisfied. If you aren't planning on using the DivX features then this would be a good buy as it will take most DVD recordable formats.

If this one was firmware upgradeable, I might be able to give it a shot. But so far I have seen nothing on Yamaha's website to indicate that I can upgrade it. Unfortunately.

UPDATE: I decided to keep this after all. After scouring the web for hours I made a couple of discoveries. One is that if I run the DivX encoded file through a program called MPEG4Modifier, check the "unpack" option under "Packed Bitstream" and then save the file again then it works beautifully. Frankly, I don't know what all of that stuff means, but I know it works, and the pictures is at least as good as my satellite TV image (maybe even slightly better). Google "MPEG4Modifier" to find the program if you need it.

I was also able to upgrade the firmware when I discovered that this model is the very same as the Yamaha DVD-550. Again, it took some legwork, but I eventually found the firmware upgrade, held my breath, and applied it to the player. So far nothing bad has happened. I didn't recheck the jpg viewer, though, to see if it's more stable.

So overall, I would recommend this player, IF you have enough knowledge of the Internet to seek out a few solutions.