Polaroid PDV-0700 7" Portable DVD Player
FANTASTIC!
Intended purpose: Travel, keep my 17 mo old daughter occupied and another gadget for me! Also for occasional hook-up to other TV's in house <BR>I just purchased this machine after a week of extensive research. After reading all the reviews on this site and hands-on tests in stores on models ranging from $200 - $1000, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't justify spending a whole lot of money on a machine that does the same thing that this $300 model does. I picked mine up at Costco for $279 Canadian! (It's a steal if you ask me!) I opened it up as soon as I got to the car. Right out of the box, it was a breeze to set up. I plugged it into the DC outlet with the included adapter, popped in a DVD and within seconds my daughter was enjoying All Dogs Go to Heaven. <br />For the price of the model, this little guy is packed! You can watch your DVD's and listen to CD's or MP3 - it even has a cool slideshow feature to view jpegs (the manual doesn't say anything about it though so it take a bit of experimenting) The remote is fantastic - even has a power button - and it works from across the room. Hook up to a TV is a breeze and the picture is nice (both on the LCD or your TV). You have to keep in mind that this is a PORTABLE unit and you can't expect to get Theater quality or HDTV quality out of a $300 machine. The speakers do the job but hooking up to headphones or a FM modulator to play through your car's stereo and the sound is excellent. I don't find anything that feels cheap or flimsy on it and unlike another post, haven't had any problems with the CD cover staying latched.<br />I found the best thing, so far, is the battery. This was my biggest concern in a portable unit. I wanted to make sure that I would get sufficient use of the battery since an outlet isn't always available. After charging the battery for about 3 - 3 1/2 hours (until the light turned green indicating it was charged) I tested the machine by running it non-stop. It lasted 4 hours! My daughter was able to watch All Dogs Go to Heaven, Finding Nemo, an episode of VeggieTales (1/2 hour program) and I got to watch about 20 minutes of the Matrix! I was incredibly impressed. Not only that, the machine barely heated up at all with the 4 hours of non-stop playing. This polaroid player also has an excellent anti-skip feature that works beautifully, I really banged it around and it never skipped once. The menu is extremely easy to navigate, although figuring out how to play MP3's and view jpegs took me a little bit of experimenting (you have to select the repeat button on the remote to access shuffle, repeat, repeat all, etc..) I've also had a total of 6 kids watching a movie on it at once - and none of them complained about being able to see. It has a very wide viewing angle. Overall, I've been incredibly impressed with the machine. If you want a machine that's portable with all the accessories but don't want to blow your budget - this is the machine for you. Even my A/V critical husband agrees that it was a good purchase!