When portable DVD players first came out, they were pretty expensive. And clunky. They barely had enough battery power to play through a whole movie. Nowadays, you can get a decent one for less than a fifth of what they used to cost, plus they can also play media files from an external drive. But there are still some caveats to be aware of.
Buyer beware
There's a certain danger to going for the cheapest available portable DVD player. Sometimes it has a poor viewing angle. Other times, its battery power isn't much better than the first models that came to market. Sometimes you'll encounter a model that can't suffer much vibration at all, which is exactly what you don't want from a mobile device. If it starts skipping, or restarting the DVD, that's no fun at all. So the first thing you want to do is research.
Features
Thankfully, you won't have to do a lot of homework on this one. Websites like Amazon and Newegg have user reviews and a large selection. (Since we're looking to keep costs down, you're going to want to steer clear of retail stores which will usually charge more.) CNET also regularly reviews portable DVD players. Almost all of the popular models are in a widescreen "16:9" format and are measured diagonally. They come in ranges of 7 to 9 inches. Most of them come in a "clamshell" design, like a laptop. A few of them look more like tablet PCs and are carried in a sleeve to protect the screen. Some offer multiple headphone jacks as well. Pretty much all of them come with car and AC adapters.
Screen formats
Another thing that you'll probably only get from user reviews is how one of these portable players handles video that's not in a 16:9 format. Most television is in a 4:3 format, which means everything gets stretched horizontally. Some portable players adjust automatically, but others need to be tweaked manually.
Additional considerations
Another consideration is what formats the DVD player supports. Some of them only read commercial DVDs, while others can have a portable hard drive or iPod plugged into them, and you can play movies or other media stored on the attachment, including image files. This method is ideal, because DVDs can skip and get scratched. This means carrying another device around, but you'd be carrying around your DVDs anyway if you weren't carrying around the extra device. Also, most portable DVD players offer connections allowing you to plug it into a television, which is handy if you're staying at a hotel, where you won't typically have access to a DVD player and will instead have to purchase movies from their in-house service or just watch regular television.
Tags: portable players, battery power, carrying around, them come, user reviews
