One For the Road: Portable DVD Players

By Jonathan Berohn

As DVD technology becomes more widespread, prices continue to fall across the board. These days you can even buy cheap DVD players at the corner grocery store. But the standard home DVD player isn’t the only DVD technology to see a huge drop in price. Portable DVD players have become much cheaper. Once priced only for the I-don’t-have-enough-to-do-with-my-money set, portable DVD players have now become reasonably priced additions to anyone’s entertainment stable.

The real beneficiaries of this price drop are families with young kids. Remember the last long road trip you took with your clan? How many “are we there yets” and “I have to go to the bathrooms” per mile did you average? A portable DVD player, on the other hand, can help turn 8 hours across Nebraska into 3 movies and a couple of pit stops.

There are now nearly as many different portable DVD players to choose form as there are home units. When trying to figure out which one to buy to meet your needs, here are a few rules of thumb. First, if you plan to have more than one kid watch it at a time, consider getting at least a 7” screen. The 5” screens, while cheaper and certainly fine for individual viewing, get small real fast when you try to view them from across the car. Second, don’t pay too much attention to the speaker system unless you like hearing Harry Potter and Scooby Do over and over again. Instead, make sure it has a headphone jack (every one I’ve seen does), and buy a headphone splitter from some place like Radio Shack so you can connect as many sets of headphones as you have kids. Third, buy a player that includes a car power adapter. Some companies want to hit you up for another $50 for the privilege of running the player in the car. My $50 is better spent elsewhere.

Finally, consider getting an extended warranty on your DVD player. While I’m generally not a big fan of extended warranties, portable DVD players are going to take some abuse. Portable DVD players that my kids are going to fight over—er—use are going to take a whole lot of abuse. A little insurance seems like a good idea.