Portable DVD Players

[Snoopy Fan 5,132]

Does anypony have a portable DVD player or use to own one. I know I used to own one, but I'm not sure if I still do. I remember the first movie I ever watched on it was Toy Story 2.

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,375]

I used to have one but the battery became defective and I had to get rid of it for safety reasons.

I miss it though because it was region free, and would playback imports, some DVDs of cartoon shows I have will only work with region 1 DVD players. Powerpuff Girls being one of them, Courage the Cowardly Dog being another. And if my My Little Pony FIM and Ed Edd n Eddy DVDs are region 1 that's another problem, because it means I have to keep my DVD drive connected to my Raspberry Pi 5 PC in region 1 mode, and their region cannot be changed infinitely which sucks. VLC Player is great but it has its limitations no thanks to DRM.

[SharpWit 2,801]

Oh it's been so long 

I've had two. The first we got around 2005? Used it for a road trip, and then got it out when there was a power outage and used it regularly after that. It was thin, grey metal, and angular. It opened like a laptop and the player lid within did the same. Definitely had a look for it's time.

Then in 2011 we had a different one. Much bulkier, black plastic. The player opened by sliding out. I don't think the battery on it was very good because I remember it having a short cord and we kept it at the end of the couch where it could stay plugged in. My first stepfather worked graveyard and didn't want to hear stuff playing while he tried to sleep, but I also didn't want to stop playing a movie if I went into the kitchen, so we got a set of ear covering headphones with a 30 foot aux cord. 

He got rid of that one after moving in 2013 or so, and we went back to the oldie which started crashing? The movie would freeze for a few seconds them the screen would turn blue. You could turn it on and off again but I think you could only skip ahead 10 minutes at a time? Plus when it started doing this it often did it with more frequency so you'd be done for the day. Then it started having battery issues as well. Luckily this was around the time I had my first laptop which of course had a disk player in those days.

We didn't have internet in our apartment for the first 2 months we lived here in 2020, and phone service was iffy at best if my girlfriend and I were both trying to use it, so I broke out the old laptop and watched my dvds for the first time in a long time. That laptop is now dead dead.

[Street Light 103]

i used to have one but i left the spiderwick chronicles running on it and hid it under my blankets and it overheated and melted ^~^

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,375]

6 minutes ago, Street Light said:

i used to have one but i left the spiderwick chronicles running on it and hid it under my blankets and it overheated and melted ^~^

Ouch, that sucks. I still got my laptop, it is old but still usable, and thankfully has a safeguard against nooby mistakes like that. Laptop motherboards like most PC motherboards automatically throttle the CPU, or in the worst case, shut down if the temperature is too high. Still it is not sensible practice to keep our electronics under blankets though, if there is a design fault or it has no built in safety features, it can cause a fire. And yeah I suppose I could use my laptop for the same purpose, watch films, but why do that when I don't travel a lot? it's easier to use my desktop computer to watch movies and TV shows.

[Street Light 103]

Moments ago, Dawnshine Wonder said:

Ouch, that sucks. I still got my laptop, it is old but still usable, and thankfully has a safeguard against nooby mistakes like that. Laptop motherboards like most PC motherboards automatically throttle the CPU, or in the worst case, shut down if the temperature is too high. Still it is not sensible practice to keep our electronics under blankets though, if there is a design fault or it has no built in safety features, it can cause a fire. And yeah I suppose I could use my laptop for the same purpose, watch films, but why do that when I don't travel a lot? it's easier to use my desktop computer to watch movies and TV shows.

YEAH LOL it was pretty silly >w< i didnt want to be discovered smuggling away the dvd player. the plan was foolproof.... if i didn't leave it running.... i have a few laptops, but they're all busted and i hold onto them in the alternate reality that i decide to get them fixed BUT i have a desktop pc that i use :3 and for movies there's always a website or two that has what you need (obviously im talking about legal, 100% legit ways to watch movies )

[KPackratt 475]

I had two portable DVD players, both of which were designed to open up like a laptop. The first one was a pink Polaroid brand player that my older brother got for Christmas back in 2004, it was our first dedicated DVD player (our first computer with a DVD drive was my mom's old laptop, which we got a couple years prior) and I remember the last movie we watched on it was Tinkerbell in 2008/09. We got rid of it not long after that.

In 2018, I bought a silver Audiovox portable DVD player at a local Goodwill for $20. Its battery was dead and it didn't come with an AC adapter, so I had to buy an AC adapter separately on eBay for about $10 extra. I didn't use it frequently, though the one advantage that it had over our home DVD/Blu-ray players (barring a JVC DVD/VCR combo which is in need of repair) was that it could play PAL DVDs, though I don't remember if it could play DVDs with regions codes other than 0 or 1. Its AV output jacks doubled as an AV input (which can be toggled by a slide switch on the side), so it could also be used as a video monitor. Its screen backlight died the last time I tested it a couple years ago, so I had to get rid of it. I probably could've modified it to use LED strips for a backlight, but I didn't have the time to dive into that.

I hope to find another portable DVD player at a local thrift store the next time I go to one, even though I doubt I'll find myself in a situation where it would be necessary to use one anytime soon. I heard the later Sony models were desirable since they had a higher resolution screen than most other players, and I heard they also made portable Blu-ray players.

[Envy 6,299]

I remember those back in the day, but I never had one. I always thought that was really fancy and I was jealous of people who had them while I was on trips. But then I got a laptop with a DVD drive and the thought of getting a portable DVD player never crossed my mind ever again.

[Iforgotmybrain 6,154]

I had a silver one, don't remember the brand. My family was driving 4 hours every weekend during the summer when I was growing up so it got a lot of use due to that.