AS one use will be aboard "Lionheart" in the near future, I hope, this
should be on-topic.....

I download lots of movies from usenet newsgroups alt.binaries.movies.divx
and alt.binaries.movies. Some of the finest movies on the planet are
there for the taking, usually before they are even in a theatres! Ok, so
slap me in the face and call me names. Krause will.

Having thousands of XVid and DivX movies, mostly DivX 5.x these days,
I've been looking for a better way to play them, both portably and on a
digital television beast, independently from computers or notebook
computers.

I've discovered two great units and bought the portable DVD player just
today:

My first purchase was the LG Electronics model LDA-511 ($149 from Best
Buy or Circuit City). It is a home entertainment DVD/CD player that
loads with the little, almost indestructable, slot like the CD player in
your Lexus. It's full home-entertainment-device width, but is only about
1.5" tall and has no loading tray to break off like your computers. It
has yet to fail to play ANY CDR or DVD+/-R/RW disc I own. It plays
regular CDs/DVDs/MP3s/DivX movies/XVid/Windows media format movies/VOD
movies/in any format on the net I've found. It will slideshow your
digital camera jpeg/gif/tiff/etc. still pictures on the big screen so you
can bore Aunt Sally with pictures of the kids' Christmas to tears. I
have yet to encounter anything it won't play or display. It has plugs
for every new kind of digital TV connection, but has no RF modulator for
the TV cheapies in old analog TV channel. It does have analog NTSC or
PAL or SECAM direct video output with stereo audio in 5 channel stereo,
however.

Today, I tested the new Philips PET1000/37 10.9" TFT LCD portable video
player, which also boasted of DivX compatibility. It is the first
notebook-sized DVD player I've encountered that will play them. It will
not play all the formats the LG 511 will play, no wma/wmv Windows Media
movies for instance, but has played a wide variety of downloaded movie
formats since I got it this afternoon. It was $329 on sale at Circuit
City for the next couple of weeks. The player has a beautiful color
picture in both regular TV size or 16:9 Cinemascope formats, but nothing
in between. My downloaded movies appear a little "skinny" because the
screens on all these portable players are not really 16:9 aspect ratio.
They're not that wide. Philips elected to NOT include a letter box real
16:9 format on this player, but the picture is so clear and watchable
being a tiny big skinny horizontally is hardly noticable as the movie
progresses. Most actors could stand to lose a few pounds, anyways.

Please note - The manual says it will play DVD+R/RW but fails to mention
DVD-R or RW recordable DVD format at all. I only record +R format so
have no -R to test it with. The formats are incompatible, but most DVD
players will play either and this one MIGHT, too.

My biggest beef with the Philips is the hung-on, large, Lithium-Ion
battery pack for truly portable operation. "What WERE they thinking?",
comes to mind. Instead of a battery pack that fits the whole bottom
making the player "thicker" and standing up another inch, some IDIOT
decided to "hook" it by three little cheap plastic hooks to the
bottom...ALL IN LINE....with the battery pack STICKING OUT THE BACK about
2.5 inches! The hooks are nearly in-line with each other so the battery
sticking out back there can swing up and down on the chintzy plastic
hooks just BEGGING someone to push them accidently up or down....breaking
the plastic hooks right off the battery pack. I can see it happening no
matter how careful you are. This pack, too, nearly as stupidly, MUST be
attached to the player for charging! The IDIOTS didn't put a charger
socket in the battery pack's case so you could charge it without it being
attached to the player...charge one while using one style. Dumb,
Philips, DUMB...(sigh) Of course, on a boat using the very nice 12V
power cord or 110/220 switching AC supply (included) you wouldn't have
the portable battery pack attached to the unit when it's plugged in.
This large 5.4AH 14V battery pack is necessary to run the unit for 3
hours with its necessary 30 watt, 2.2A load. The processing computer
gets quite warm. The backlight of the large TFT LCD screen is very
bright, easily seen even in sunlight as the screen is black. All this
takes quite a bit of power. If they'd just put the pack UNDER the WHOLE
CASE, sort of like a docking station....not hanging off to be torn
away....Grrrrr.....(d^

Other than this blunder, the unit is very nice, indeed. It's been
playing since this afternoon and even recharged the battery pack while I
was watching it. (The red charge light goes out on the front.)

I had some vintage TV shows from the late 1940's/1950's downloaded from
usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.multimedia.vintage-tv and some new
documentaries of great interest from
alt.binaries.multimedia.documentaries. They all play on both players,
too. Very nice. The documentaries group has, in the last weeks, been
blessed with the entire 1952 NBC Victory At Sea documentary series,
prefaced by Peter Marshall in color, posted to it in DivX format. How
nautical would we need to get 50 miles offshore rolling in the waves?...
(c; GO NAVY!

I hesitated to post this because I'm going to get slammed, as always, but
I think it a great accessory to the boat entertainment suite for those
rainy days at anchor. Slams ignored, as always....

EVERYBODY RUN FOR COVER! Dad has just booted his slide show of the trip
to Dizzey World in '96!.....Yecch.