Portable DVD Player Recommendations? 34
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.)?"
Portable DVD player observation (Score:4, Insightful)
Plenty of them (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, I don't see the point in the toys, personally, other than a 'ooh, look what I have' factor. As another poster said, you're well on your way to a decent laptop by purchasing a portable DVD player, and you'd be able to do other stuff with it, as well... especially on those long boring flights.
Anothing thing: if you're intending to use these at home as well, I'm not entirely sure of the quality these things would output, if indeed it's quality that you're after. Might be best to get a cheap-ish DVD deck, and a cheap laptop. Best of both worlds, then.
12" ibook (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
This is what I do (Score:3, Insightful)
In the car, I have a 7" (widescreen - $200.00) LCD that is dash mounted, and I use a Sony Psyc [dealnews.com] 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.