Portable movie players

[Clive Long]

Hi,

To while away the crap journey to and from work I have thought of buying a portable movie player. Then I can catch up on all the films I never get to see.

I have seen people on the underground using the Sony PSP - looks like it has a decent sized screen. How much memory does one need to hold a feature film? How long does the encoding of the DVD onto the format accepted by the player take? What's the battery life like? I'm not interested in games - I don't have the co-ordination for them.

I have thought of using a PocketPC/Windows Mobile device but the screen just looks too small.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

Clive

[DavidB]

I bought an Archos AV500, and the picture looks very good. A film takes 1-2 GB, and it has a 60GB disk. It can also play back on a TV.

The biggest problem with any of these devices is getting the video on in the first place. The Archos has the big advantage of being able to record direct from a video output from a TV or DVD.

Otherwise I've found DVDCopy from Intervideo to be very useful and easy to use. For more control you can use Virtual Dub.

You can also get some very good deals on portable DVD players at the moment. If you only want to watch stuff on DVD, one of these may be your best bet.

[Clive Long]

I bought an Archos AV500, and the picture looks very good. A film takes 1-2 GB, and it has a 60GB disk. It can also play back on a TV.
<< snip >>
You can also get some very good deals on portable DVD players at the moment. If you only want to watch stuff on DVD, one of these may be your best bet.
Therein lies the challenge. The portable DVD players have good screens but are a bit cumbersome and delicate for a journey consisting of 3 tube journeys, walking, waiting and a train journey (it is truly cack).

I like the "robust" quality and more compact factor of the Archos for when I am getting on and off trains.

However, these digital devices do carry a premium price tag when compared against a dedicated DVD player. Also there is the tedium of the DVD conversion on to the digital player - which may not be achievable for any particular DVD due to DRM


Clive

[Dreadful Scathe]

I have one of these (http://gp2x.co.uk/) - a gp2x not only is it an open source games machine with emulators for everything from the SNES to the PC it natively plays mp3's and divx files. So I go to torrentspy.com download the latest episodes of my favourite tv program and dump them on my SD card and plug it in. Cant get easier than that. The unit is £125 and a 2gb SD card is about £28 , this would hold about 5 full TV episodes. It also has a TV out if you want to use a big screen :)