Portable DVD Players

[janeyb]

I'm thinking of purchasing a portable DVD to keep my daughter quite for at least some of the journey!

They only seem to have a 2.5hr battery life, how do those of you that have them get aroung this? Is it easy enough to purchase additional batteries? We have one for the car, but that obviously runs off the car battery.

Sorry for being so thick!!!

Also, do you find them worth taking?

 

[JohnnySharp2]

Hi Janey,

Our son Joshua is autistic and we find the Portable DVD player invaluable, mainly for the long flight.
I don't know how we coped without one to be honest. He has never liked any of the entertainment on board and the screens are too small for him anyway.
Our player is 10 inch screen size.

The problem with the batteries is there are not (to my knowledge) many or any players around that have say 9 or 10 hours of battery life, I think Panasonic were bringing one out but we decided on an alternative.

Our player comes with a battery that has around 3 hours playback time, so we bought 2 additional one's to give us around 9 hours.
We also have an adaptor that fits into the cigar/cigarette socket in the car which is useful for long journeys, whether in Florida or at home and it comes with battery re-charger plug/cable that again can be used whilst we are on holiday.

If you were buying one I would advise to check if you can get extra batteries first, whether buying from a store or the internet.
Only downsides are they are not cheap, it's often around £40 each for the batteries and some can be quite heavy which obviously adds more weight to your hand luggage.

However, certainly in our case definitely worth the money and can highly recommend them, especially for the long flight.

 

[bwoodhouse]

It's exactly the poor battery life that has stopped me from buying a portable DVD player (problem with buying more batteries is that it soon becomes quite expensive).

Have you looked at portable media players such as an Archos (just search google) - these are more expensive but have good screens, better (but not great) battery life and come with a hard disc rather than a dvd player (which means that you need to import any films before you go - may not be ideal)

 

[cocinelle]

Hi Janey,

With the prospect of a 14 hr trip to Tanzania in a fortnight- this question has been plaguing me over the last few weeks too!! I discovered this little gizmo on the internet yesterday http://www.value2you.co.uk/#529X3668 which is how I'm going to keep my portable dvd player fully juiced. About the same price as buying a couple of spare batteries- plus I can use it to keep all of my electronics batteryed up! It's also a lot smaller than the spare batteries I was considering.

Hope this helps!

Sophie

 

[dtm316]

janeyb,

I bought a portable player from allcam.biz and they also sell external power packs (which can be used with loads of different adapters) unfortunately I bought these a couple of years ago and I can't remember how much they cost but they are invaluable on the flights

 

[Ann B]

Sony sell one with a 6 hour battery life DVPFX850b. The cheapest that I have found it is £209 from play.com. Not cheap, but i reckon that you get what you pay for.

Hope this helps.

 

[Tim68]

It's exactly the poor battery life that has stopped me from buying a portable DVD player (problem with buying more batteries is that it soon becomes quite expensive).

Have you looked at portable media players such as an Archos (just search google) - these are more expensive but have good screens, better (but not great) battery life and come with a hard disc rather than a dvd player (which means that you need to import any films before you go - may not be ideal)

Hi bwoodhouse. I have the archos player It has a 100 gig HDD. At the lowest setting you can get about 400 hours of video on it. The best part of the archos is that you plug it straight to the dvd player to record films no need to mess about on the pc. True you get about 4 hours of viewing from one charge so you are a bit limited to what you can watch from 400 hours of video. At the same time you would not carry 200 DVD's. Another good point you can plug your digital camera in to it and backup your photos from the memory card.

Regards

Tim

 

[Graeme]

How about a video ipod? I don't know much about them but think you can download films onto them and they have about ten hours of battery.

 

[janeyb]

Thank you so much everyone for all your help and advice, it's been fantastic....now all I need to do is decide which route to go down!!!!

 

[JohnnySharp2]

Thank you so much everyone for all your help and advice, it's been fantastic....now all I need to do is decide which route to go down!!!!

Some of the suggestions since my initial post seem very useful and certainly a bit more advanced 'technology' moving on etc
Not for us though as we spent over £400 on our DVD player and batteries so we will stick with that.

 

[giggler]

Hi,
Have you considered a Sony PSP, as you can download movies from DVD onto a memory stick, plus you can play games on it. I get about 4-5 hrs worth of video out of the battery.

regards

giggler