Samsung vs LG upconvert DVD player recommendation

[murdoc]

Background:
My current Samsung upconvert DVD player is having a hard time playing DVD's I burned on my PC.  The player will take either 30-40 seconds to initally read the disk, or it will start playing normally, then start skipping and studdering half-way through the movie.  I've tried the disks in other DVD players and there was no problem.  I tried changing DVD disk brands and still have a problem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was at Flanners today looking for a new upconvert DVD player.  I was looking at the Samsung DVDHD960 and the LG DH191H DVD players.  The Samsung was $180 while the LG was $120.  Both of these players say they will support DIVX playback.  I asked the salesman about this and he said that DIVX disks are dead, and were meant to compete against DVD's.  The DIVX disk was only good for a certain number of plays before it became a coaster.  I thought a DIVX disk was basically putting a video file that were encoded with DIVX from your computer directly to a disk.  Basically, I thought you could drag-and-drop video files onto the disk and play them in your DVD player, much like viewing a JPEG disk.  So who is right here?

Does anyone here have any experience with either of these DVD players?  With my current DVD player, I can't see any difference in video quality if it is connected with DVI versus component cables.  The salesman assured me the new player would be better than my old one.  Again, who's really right here?

[waterhead]

DivX is a codec, of the FourCC catagory (MPEG4). Others are XviD and H264.

I don't have any knowledge of how the DivX DVD players work. Maybe you can try a homemade disk on the store demo. Do you have any DivX encoded videos?

[murdoc]

Do you have any DivX encoded videos?

I believe so.  A few videos that I open in Windows Media Player will put the DIVX icon on the taskbar, so I'm guessing that means it's encoded.  This is what I mean:

[waterhead]

I looked at the spec sheet for the Samsung HD960 and this is what it says:

DivX Playback: Insert DVDs and CDs that have DivX movies downloaded via computer and enjoy watching them on the large-scale TV.

Here's the spec sheet:Samsung HD960 Specs

I'm sure the LG is similar.

I use BeyondTV to record HD broadcasts, and the latest version has the option to convert the files using the DivX codec.

[AndrewP]

I just bought RCA DRC8060N DVD recorder which does upconversion and plays DivX, Avi files (Mpeg4). I find an excellent replacement for my old Artec DVD recorder.
Price for the unit I paid: $130 (after $30 rebate) from Newegg.com

[klwillis45]

That guy at Flanners was thinking of the Circuit City divx not the current one.

You can see what I mean here.

[waterhead]

I asked the salesman about this and he said that DIVX disks are dead, and were meant to compete against DVD's. The DIVX disk was only good for a certain number of plays before it became a coaster.

At first I thought that the salesman didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about. Then I read the DivX entry in Wikipedia, which states:

However, "DivX" should not be confused with "DIVX", an unrelated attempt at a new DVD rental system employed by the US retailer Circuit City.

Here's a link to that: DivX Wiki

Paul

[murdoc]

Thanks for the info everyone.  I have a good idea what I'm looking for now.

Andrew, that RCA looks like it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. :p   I really can't complain though since it looks to be heavy on features.  The price is up to $199 now, so hopefully a sale is coming up.

[AndrewP]

Thanks for the info everyone.  I have a good idea what I'm looking for now.

Andrew, that RCA looks like it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. :p   I really can't complain though since it looks to be heavy on features.  The price is up to $199 now, so hopefully a sale is coming up.

I don't know, I have it in my living room and it looks fine, in line with my other stuff. Maybe you saw a distorted jpeg image

[Bebop]

If you are looking for a good up-conert player try the new  Sony DVP-NS75H and if you wanted some thing that can play DivX and also up-convert the Oppo 970 .