I just used my DVP642 for the first time. Picked it up for $70 at target. For those not in the know, the DVP642 uses the same chip as the RJ Tech RJ1500 and they play pretty much everything in terms of what a DVD Player will do. VCD/SVCD/MPEG4/DIVX/XVID/DVD/etc.

The RJ Tech does SACD and Karaoke IIRC, but the Philips does not. The RJ Tech also has a VGA output and costs $110-120, so that's where the extra cost is from.

By far the biggest problem with this unit is it's peed. It takes forever to read a directory listing of AVI's and even longer to start playing them. Once playing, FF/RW and skipping to the next AVI is fairly fast.

The next biggest issues the remote. It sucks.. small buttons, not intuitively layed out, but for $70, can't expect too much. Interested is that the menu navigation keys also double as FF/RW keys, this is odd, but cool at the same time. Less buttons to have to program on a universal.

Picture quality and sound seem equivalent to my older Sony DVP-S330 when played through S-Video and Optical (using optical because my cable box uses coaxial). I've never used a high quality modern unit, something $300+ range minimum, so I can't compare to those.

Overall, for $70, you can't beat it IMO. Nothing else out there is this cheap and play all these formats.