Playing AVI on the Philips DVDR Player

In my last blog entry, I was talking about how it seems that most video downloadable via BitTorrent seems to be in AVI format. I've download some videos recently, notably, WWE's 2008 documentary on The Rock, and the much acclaimed BBC documentary series entitled Planet Earth in AVI format. But strangely, the AVI files encounter errors somewhere halfway when I run them through my DivX Converter. So I figure I'm stuck with watching the AVI's on my PC's Windows Media Player.

Just out of curiousity, I burned The Rock AVI's onto CD tonight and played them on my Philips DVDR Player. I was wondering if it can actually handle it. The other night, I tried playing the AVI's on my mom's fake China DVD Player. Although it can play the audio part, nothing appears on video. But to my pleasant surprise, the Philips player actually played the AVI on TV (audio and video)!

Even though the AVI's look very sharp on the PC, I get the feeling that the Philips DVDR player can play DivX clearer than the AVI version. The TV screen looked also a bit warped on the left and right edge whereas they look more normal when I play DivX files. I should try this tomorrow with the Planet Earth AVI's. The ripper claims that those AVI's were ripped from 720p HD DVD format and they looked fantastic on the PC. Its not exactly 1080p, but then again, I'm just using a conventional TV and not HD. I have to see what the quality will look like.