Customer Reviews

Norcent DP-220 DVD PLAYER WITH DIVX PLAYBACK

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I love this player! I also have a Philips DVP642 DivX player and have had nothing but problems with it. I wanted so much to love that player, but it could barely play anything I had. There's two main reasons why I wanted a DivX player: anime and downloaded TV/movies.

Philips choked on so many things with that stupid codec message. Plus, it had problems reading various media. The latest firmware didn't fix anything.

This player is rock solid. It's so much cheaper than the Philips. It plays XviD! People said that XviD wasn't working but it works beautifully. I can throw old CD's, dirt cheap media, high-end media, etc. and so far they have all worked.

Picture quality is excellent.

At first, I thought it used the same chipset as the Philips because the file menu looks eerily similar but I haven't had the same problems on the Norcent.

Problems: There is no front panel LCD. I didn't miss it much after awhile. I read that the Norcent handled scanning better than the Philips but it didn't seem better at all. The Norcent is uglier than the Philips.

I haven't tried Q-Pel stuff yet but I'm not holding my breath on that one. If it does work, I will be in heaven.

SUMMARY: DivX player preference Norcent > Lite-On > Philips

Something that was annoying was that the parental level is on by default, and is set to "G", the lowest level. I had to dig in the instructions to find out the default password was "8888". On top of that the error on-screen for the parental lock is misspelled
"Parental Voliation"

The remote control is a little dinky but perfectly functional.

My other complaint is that the menu for when you load up a divx disc is really not that great. It can only list around 12 characters or less per filename. So let's say for example you have files named "Jim's Birthday 1", "Jim's Birthday 2", etc. You won't know what file is what with this menu. Typically it does play them sequentially though, although sometimes in reverse order.

As far as the actual playing of files and dvds goes, it does a great job. Plays divx, xvid, and even mpeg-1. It says it plays mpeg-4 files but that does not include wmv. Also, in the instructions, it mentions that it does not handle mp3s that are encoded with vbr that well, so be wary.

SUMMARY:
Cheap n' Cheerful divx dvd player that is robost in playing but a little rough around the edges. Decide for yourself if saving the money with a Norcent is worth it or not.

Pro: Plays practically everything on earth, even DivX files burned onto DVD+R disc. Good picture guality.
Con: No optical digital output.

DVDs: No problems at all, progressive output fantastic, remote hackable (search Google)
DIVX: good, reliable playback. Some audio sync problems but can fix using the menu
XVID: Works if QPEL compression not enabled (sadly many xvids have QPEL on). Audio sync problems like DIVX but can be solved using menu of Pause | Play.
AVI SUBTITLES: Not tested.
DISC BROWSING: Not massively intuitive but usable.
MP4: Not tested
MENU: Comprehensive.
REMOTE: Small but usable.

It's less the $50! My rating takes into account price.

My Norcent DP-220 Dvd came in today. I unpacked it & plugged in the three cordinating colored plugs, put the batteries in the remote & five minutes later I was watching my favorite movies. Works well with my burned back up dvds too. I like it a lot & the price was definately a bargain.

I bought this DVD Divx player to use to watch movies with Divx format in my badroom. It is working great. I have Philips DVP642 DivX also, which I was using as a primary Divx player. Now I will use Norcent as a primary DVD player, because it plays all DivX DVD that Philips can not play. When Philips can not play some DVD Divx I try them on Norcent and it plays. Both players are good, but so far Norcent plays all my Divx and Philips not.
For price of $45 I am giving rate of 5 stars to Norcent and 4 stars to Philips.

Got this player a few months ago, works with every DVD and it also played an Xvid file burned on CD-RW, no problems. Beware, however, it has no volume control anywhere. Normally you'd plug it into your TV or receiver, both of which should have volume control, but I can't do that with my setup so I plug the audio directly into my cheap speaker system. So I have to adjust the volume from the knob on my front speaker. Other than than, this DVD player works fine. Be sure to get the region-free instructions with a Google search.

this player indeed plays back all advertised formats and almost all DivX files as well. We've had for only about one months and it's too soon to speak of any reliability, but it seems very nice and easy in operation

This player is almost the exact same as the Philips DivX player. It must have the same chips inside because it functions identically. As with the Philips it plays DVDs very well and DivX and XviD too. But in general I have trouble with either this or the Philips playing all my XviD CDs correctly. If I convert them to DivX then they always play correctly.

UPDATE 12/17/06:

HOW TO MAKE THE SUBTITLES WORK!!!

If you highlight the subtitle file and press "Angle" button and it doesnt give you the ''divX subtitle selected'' message, then do these steps!

1. Press the "Menu/PBC" button. (then.. wait till it displays "PLAY")
2. Press the "Stop" button. (this will stop whatever it played, duh!)
3. Press the "Menu/PBC" button again. (it should go back to the file explorer mode)
4. Highlight the subtitle file and press "Angle" like normal.
5. Highlight your movie file and press "Play".

THATS IT!! don't ask me why and how it works, it just does!


After 2+years of usage, It is still working. DVD playback is bad on scratched DVD's (I'm talking dvd-rental scratches, which my computer DVD plays fine) seems more like a buffer problem or the lens.
Other than that, it plays clean CD/DVD's flawlessly. Works out for me because I mostly watch freshly burned divX movies.



-----------------------
Old review


All the pros have been covered in the other reviews as well as the cons. I'll touch on some of the cons.

- Accessing the menu is not that hard to get used to.
- The player being only able to display 12 chars(?) of the file names really can be a bother.

This player IS ABLE to display DIVX Subtitles:
- go to menu
- find your subtitle file
- press the Angle button (it will display 'DivX subtitle selected')
- now find your divX movie file and play it normally

The subtitle could be a lot better tho. Can't change the color of the text (yellow, no background), it's pretty bad on the eyes. Also, some letters are not displayed properly.