I bought this dvd system a week before a 7 hour road trip. We had bought a minivan 2 weeks before, but had not yet had a chance to install an overhead tv/dvd system. My husband was initially against getting these, since we plan on installing the overhead tv, but I convinced him by pointing out he and our son will likly be occupying said tv playing video games while the younger girls whine in the back. He quickly agreed with me after that. LOL.Initially I was looking for 9 inch screens. I was afraid the 7 inch would be too small. I was wrong. The 7 inch screens are more than adequete for my 3 and 6 year old.
The main deciding factors for purchasing this product over the others were the sd/usb capability and the 5 hour battery. This is the only portable system I could find with sd/usb capability. It also happened to be one of the cheapest. Yay! The difficulty in accessing the dvd player wasn't really a concern of mine, because I honestly didn't plan on using it. It's so much easier to insert the sd card preloaded with multiple movies especially in a vehicle. Personally I used 2 4gb card with 4-5 movies per card. To my utter delight, when the first movie was finished, it automatically started the next movie on the card!!! So great for long car rides.
I chose this model with the battery over the cheaper one, because I didn't like the idea that I was going to have to restart the movie every time I got gas or turned off my vehicle. The battery takes care of this and continues to play the movie while pumping, however, it only continues to play the movie on the main screen. Luckily the extra screen that turned off, was in front of my 6 year old and there were no major meltdowns or tantrums. She just leaned over and watched her sisters screen for a few minutes.
The mounting system is a basic velcro type strap mounting. Nothing fancy, but I wasn't needing or expecting it to be. It holds the tv's to the headrest. It would have been a pain to access the dvd player, had I been using the dvd player, but so would inserting a new dvd every hour and a half. Trust me, preload a sd card, I think it can read up to a 16gb, but don't quote me, with as many movies as you can, and don't even mess with the dvd player. No worries about bumps and skipping either.
The picture quality is okay. It's not the best I've ever seen, but it's not bad either. The viewing angles are also good. My son crawled back there and watched with them at one point. The sound output is great. My older daughter wore her headphones most of the time, but my younger one only lasted a few hours with them on. It's a big van though, so I could listen to the radio in the front, while they listened to their movies in the back with very little bleeding between.
All in all, I loved this product. Could it be better, sure, but then it wouldn't be $109. It is an excellent value and well worth the quiet peaceful roadtrip I had. I would definitely recommend.
Pros:
1. Cost for the price you get 2 large screen portable players with the capability to play DVD's as well as the ability to play movies off a SD card or USB stick. (See cons for thoughts on video formats.)
2. Accessories It comes with a remote. This is not listed on the product description (at least when I bought it) and is a big plus for me. Not many other brands offer remotes. It also includes a car and wall adapter, cable adapter for hooking in an RCA jack source, and a carry bag I didn't much care for. (it was clear)
3. Video Quality For a portable DVD player it is pretty good. Shows do not appear grainy to my eyes and are relatively sharp with good color quality. Let's be honest, it's not a 120 Mhz LED backlit flatscreen, but if you were expecting that I would like to invite you to join us back at a place we call reality.
4. Battery This player includes a battery in the master unit that keeps the unit playing even when the car is turned off. I'm not sure how long it lasts but for short stops it's great. Also several prior reviews state the battery does not run the slave unit. This is not true. If they are connected together the battery will power the second screen. The slave unit unfortunately does not have a battery of it's own.
4. Mounting Straps Several reviews state you cannot open the player with the headrest straps on. This is totally false! The straps slide through pegs mounted in the case on the back and do not disrupt accessing the disc door.
Cons:
1. Cord Length The cable between the 2 units is short and if you have a three year old who likes to kick cables this could be a problem with it stretched temptingly between the seats.
2. Video formats The unit comes with an SD slot and usb slot so you can play videos from either of these devices and skip the DVD's. This is a huge plus and one of the few players I found that have it. Unfortunately there are NO included instructions to specify the video formats supported! The following is what I have determined through multiple trial and error attempts and much frustration.
Supported container formats: AVI, MPG, DIVX, ie files ending in .AVI, .mpg, and .divx or .dvx will be recognized by the device.
Unsupported container formats (the device won't even see these files): .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .mkv, .qt, and .wmv
Using these container formats encoding with any of the following codecs works: mpeg-4 (divx/xvid compatible), mpeg-2, and the Divx codec. I am not sure if h.264 works but prior reviews have indicated not and I would be surprised if these units have the horsepower for that.
Also I have found 640x480 resolution works well for video files on this size screen. also I use a bitrate of about 1500.
3. DVD door is tight. The spring on the dvd door is rather strong and tries to push the door open against the latch. As a result it can be a pain to open especially when mounted on a headrest. The solution I found was to squeeze the door closed even more thereby releasing the tension and then the latch slides easily.
Unknowns: I have owned these units for a little over a month and they have held up well to 2 kids under six. How long they will last........I'm not sure.I have all of my kids movies in video files, so I wanted something which could read movies off a flash disk. It understands mp4 and avi containers. It hangs when trying to play h264 video. I re-encoded the desired movies into a lower resolution (to save disk) and used mpeg4/xvid video in an mp4 container. Works well with these files on a 16G SD card.
As others have mentioned, using the straps makes accessing the DVD difficult. That is a pretty big issue if you plan to use the DVD drive. (There may be more than one model/revision of this product. My manual clearly shows the straps covering the edges of the door, and there are no "pegs" of which another reviewer speaks of.)
The primary unit has AV out only, the secondary has AV in only. I would have liked to simply use my existing video devices (phones, iPads, PVPs, etc) to supply the video for both and forget the local flash entirely, but for the price I can't complain.
The devices themselves are thick and appear cheaply made. Only time will tell how long they work.
When playing movies from the flash drive, the unit automatically plays the next file. I have a good 24+ hours of video that it plays through on long trips. Really convenient. Of course it is battery powered as well so even during fuel stops the kids are entertained.
Update: How to convert video to use on this device. I use handbrake. It works on Windows, Linux, Mac and its free. I set up a simple profile with the following setup:
Container: MP4. No additional options necessary
Picture: width 480, anamophic "none", cropping automatic
Filters: none should be necessary but with some (older) interlaced DVDs it may be necessary. YMMV
Video: Codec MPEG-4, framerate same as source, constant framerate. I use average bitrate of 1500, but you can play with this for better quality or lower if video stutters.
Audio: AAC(ffmpeg), stereo, 128kbps, "auto" sample rate.
Subtitles and chapter markers are up to you, but I don't want them.
Handbrake will open just about any video source but if you are converting from DVD or Bluray with copy protection, that is a whole other issue entirely. I'll just say "AnyDVD" and leave it at that.I bought this system for immediate heavy use. We were going on a roadtrip to Disney, then flying from Germany to the states and back, as well as a lot of driving in between. I didn't want to prematurely review this item, but I feel that the hours of use we have put it through give me a pretty good idea about its overall performance. Let's start with the drawbacks since most people look for those first when considering a new purchase.
Cons:
-Mounting straps are difficult to get on. Not impossible, but not easy. Once you have untangled them and attached them to the units themselves, they are much easier to work with. The initial set-up is a bit more difficult. They do hold the units securely to the headrest, so I can't complain, but they didn't feel as sturdy as I would have liked.
-Second unit has to be plugged in to work. This fact itself isn't a problem for me. But, the way they did it is so weird. The main unit has an internal battery that will only power the main unit. Fine. But, if you want to use both, you plug a car adapter into the main unit, then connect a power cord (and A/V cable) from the main to the second. I think it's also supplying the main unit with power so that the battery isn't drained, but it was quite a hassle figuring out which unit had to go where because of the power cord. (I should note, this was only a problem because our main car adapter port was in use by the GPS, so we needed to use one in the back)
-The cable that connects the 2 units has to be inserted completely to work. Sounds like a no brainer, but the A/V cable sometimes feels like it's all the way in, but may not be. Another reviewer complained about how their second screen would only display "AV IN" and this is why. It happened to us the first time we tried to use it and it just turned out that the cable wasn't all the way in.
-When using a USB stick, the unit takes FOREVER to recognize it. This is my single biggest complaint about the unit. We have to tell it to read the DVD even though there isn't a DVD to read. Then it usually (but not always) notices the USB and lets us select that. When it doesn't, we just repeat this until it does. If you use a SD card, it recognizes those instantly, so you shouldn't have this problem. It's almost annoying enough to fork over money just to get a large SD card that can replace our USB stick. Almost.
Pros:
-Has an internal battery so you don't have to be in the car to use it. And if you do stop for gas, or whatever, the main unit keeps playing! (Those who complain that it turns off and has to restart must not have charged their batteries first) This was a real lifesaver when our van broke down in the middle of nowhere in France! The internal battery does have to be charged by a standard adapter, not a car adapter, but for us that has never been a problem.
-Has 2 screens so kids sitting in different rows of the car can still watch the same movie. They aren't huge screens, but my kids have yet to complain about not being able to see and that's what matters.
-Each screen also has a little fold-out stand so it can stand up on a table if you are not in the car.
-Reads USB and SD cards. I'll be honest, I haven't even tried to put a DVD in it. I did open it to take out the cardboard shipper, but that's it. It's SO convenient to have a USB stick with several movies on it and just let it play without having to change DVDs mid-trip. I'm not normally one who likes to let the kids watch movie marathons, but on long car/plane trips, I can make an exception. The massive downfall to this is that it is VERY difficult to rip DVDs onto the computer! Before I get any comments from "copyright nazi's", I will say that I legally own a copy of every movie I ripped and it still took me an entire day to figure it out! The player reads several formats, but I went with MP4, mostly because it was the only one I could figure out. Oddly enough, I actually had to convert them from MP4 to MP4, so make sure they are NOT H.264 encrypted.
-Comes with a carrying case, earbuds (not what I would call "headphones"), all the cables you will need, and a remote control. We haven't used the earbuds or remote, but we have tested everything else. I really love that it came with a case! It's not fancy at all and doesn't have any padding, but it's the perfect size, has a handle for easy carrying, and it keeps everything together and out of sight of would-be robbers.
Is this unit perfect? No, but I don't believe there is such a thing. Every person expects something different out of a travel DVD player system. This one is a great value for the money and I believe it was worth every penny! Would I buy it again? Absolutely!! If you can live with the cons I mentioned, then you won't be disappointed!After reading the reviews, I ordered this knowing I would have to take it out of the harness everytime I wanted to change discs, but got it anyway because of the battery power. I was very pleased when after reading the directions and putting the screen in the harness, the door still opened! I can clearly see if the harness was upside down the door would not open. So...I give this two thumbs up! It was cheap, it has battery power witch most don't, it has a remote, and everything works just as advertised.
No comments:
Post a Comment