It may seem at first glance that this purpose is served by laptop even. But a dedicated portable DVD player is much lighter, has more playback options and more battery life. Popularity of portable DVD players has raised to such an extent that many airports feature movie rental stores so that you can pick up a movie from the departure airport and drop it off when you arrive at your destination so you don’t have to watch the in-flight move that the airline shows over and over again.
In addition to standard DVD movies, these portable are compatible with a wide variety of disc formats, home recorded DVD, audio CD and discs loaded with digital music files. Some portable DVD players even allow you to create digital slide shows from discs encoded with JPEG picture files. Some portable DVD players come with mounting kits for installing them temporarily or permanently in a vehicle.
How to buy
If you are planning to use your player in your vehicle then its fine if you compromise on the battrey life as you can charge the battery easily with your vehicle power. But if you are planning to use it during long flights then discounting the battery life may not serve your purpose.
Portable DVD player screen sizes vary from under 5 inches to over 10 inches. Obviously, a unit with a large 10-inch adjustable TFT screen is likely to cost more than one with a smaller 5-inch screen and anything less than 5 inches will make the unit highly portable but will require squinting which reduces the fun of watching the screen.
Many of portable DVD players are put to market as light and stylish, which is fine if you are using the player in airport terminals but not so good if you want to take the player for a camping trip. For these kind of use a portable DVD player with a must be a sturdier one.
Check for the other video outputs so that you can connect the player to your T.V. set for watching a movie. Check for S-video and component video output support as an add-on facility of the player.
See for the audio output jacks. As although the players come with a in-built set of speakers but they provide just sufficient output. If you are a audio affectionate then you will enjoy more with a set of headphones.
These portable DVD players do not limit you to watching movies. Most of them also serve as portable CD players also if you choose a model having right A/V connections; you can even plug in a game console or a camcorder and view home movies. It's the best way to share pictures with friends and relatives without carrying an entire photo album to a distinct place.
If you want use it to view home movies or shows recorded from TV, go for a player that is compatible with your home DVD recorder. If you share discs with people across countries, look for a portable DVD player that provides multi-region disc compatibility.