Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
posted to rec.boats.cruising
|
|||
|
|||
New portable DVD player....
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. |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Portable Charger or Onboard Charger | General | |||
Experience with WAG bags? (portable toilet) | General | |||
Buddy Portable Catalytic Heater | Cruising |