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Portable DVD Player Recommendations?
snapman asks: "My wife and I are looking to move to another state because of our respective job situations and we forecast a lot of travel (to return home to visit family and friends). We were looking at portable DVD players to help ease the boredom of long flights home, and we were wondering if the road warriors of the Slashdot community have any advice on the best portable DVD player (features, drawbacks, battery life, etc.)?"
If you buy a decent portable you're a third of the way to purchasing an inexpensive laptop with DVD drive and a much larger screen.
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Portable DVD Store has a section about stuff to know when looking at portable DVD players.
Also, be sure to check Google for more sites.
For my dollar I'd go with a notebook computer instead. The portable DVD players are kind of expensive for their lack of functionality. Small screens and short batery life don't paint a favorable picture for me. Not to mention that when you run out of DVD's you can always play solitare on your notebook.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Check out this one at Wal-Mart. The screen's a little on the small side, but you can't beat the sub-$200 price.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
The problem with battery life on a portable DVD player tends to be that it is spinning a disk with a motor. They get around this with a combination of a big heavy battery and a very small screen. This tradeoff results in just enough battery life to watch one movie.
If instead you convert your DVD to DIVX format and play it on a notebook computer, you get a bigger brighter screen and a longer lasting battery.
Also, if you get bored of movies, you can play games instead.
Bob.
why the hell not? sure, you don't own a mac (yet), but it has a 5 hour battery life, nice big 12" screen (when letterboxed is still larger than the largest dvd use only dvd player) and when you're not using it for movie playback you can write emails, compose documents in word, listen to music/mp3s/cds and even burn your own. if you get bored of a movie, you can always load up one of about a million games.
yes, it costs about 2x as much as a mid priced portable dvd player, but you pay for alot of useful other features and a signifigantly higher resale value.
moox. for a new generation.
I travel with a late model Apple 12" iBook. Smaller than a TI, and much less expensive, these are the stealth deals of the year. They are excellent for DVD use on an airplane, etc. You can copy DVD's to the hard disc and play from their, or leave one in the drive, ready to watch when the in-flight movie leaves you flat. You get a large clear screen, and easy controls. One battery is more than enough for one movie.
In the car, I have a 7" (widescreen - $200.00) LCD that is dash mounted, and I use a Sony Psyc headless portable player...these are selling now for $99.00.
I looked at the portables with screens, but a nice one, with a large screen, decent controls and battery life sells for more than $500.00, and in some cases, more than $1000.00. For that kind of money, it's not a hard step to an iBook for around $1200.00, and you get the obvious benefits of an excellent laptop.
Any of these will also play audio...most will also play VCD. If you travel far and wide, you'll want a player that is region free, so you can buy DVD's from various countries. Again, my iBook fills this requirement, but not without some minor tweaking.
Before you spend too much, watch for portable MPEG players coming to an outlet near you.