Portable DVD player plays DivX for 4.5 Hours

WE CAME across a Hong Kong-based portable DVD maker called Shinco and discovered that this company actually has a really nice player to offer.

The SDP-1250 has been shipping for a few months now and this is the 10.2-inch, TFT-based, portable DVD player. The 10.2 inches, or 26cm, LCD-TFT display at the 16:9 ratio is nice and large and it has lots of other bits and bobs.

It supports DVDs, DVD-R and RW no matter whether they are they plus or minus, MPEG 4 (DivX) all sort of codecs, video CDs, CD-R and CD-RW and JPEG pictures.

The device looks like a small laptop and comes with a nice 7.4V, 5400mAh battery that can last for a while. It weighs some 1.2KG without a battery and at least a half of kilo for the battery. The design is dominated with a big screen and once you turn it on, you will figure out that the display has the laptop-quality picture. It is far better than any other DVD player that has ever been seen before. The picture looks simply great as the company uses the real TFT display.

The front side hides a play, stop, pause and rewind and fast-forward key placed between the speakers. There is also a power and charger LED and the infra-red recipient for the remote. The right-hand side hides a volume scroll wheel, memory card reader, audio and video out, coaxial out, audio and video in, S Video, Composite video out and a power DC plug. Last and not least is the European composite audio and video to SCART dongle.

The package includes a manual, the remote control, AC Adapter, High capacity lithium Battery, Car Adapter, S-Video cable, component video cable, and composite video cable and a stereo audio cable. Let's not forget about the two times 3.5 mm headphones, that's a nice touch as you never know who might be sitting next to you on a plane or train.

The device has stereo speakers and they are really loud for this small device, it will be enough even if you are in a noisy environments. There is a place for two pairs of the headphones. The device supports USB sticks and you can play the video either from a DVD or CD disk or you can play it from the card reader or simply the USB key. It's very simple, you plug the USB stick browse the folders till you find the avi file and simply play it. The same goes for the recorded DVD's with multiple video sources or the memory cards. The memory card reader supports SD, MMC, and Sony memory stick cards. The player can also play MP3. It has an anti shocking system and supports a region free out of the box as it is meant for the people in the move. You will be able to buy a region code 1 movie and play it on your device purchased in Europe and vice versa. That is good to know as you don't want to buy this device to sit on your couch. Maybe it can be good as a kitchen multimedia station.

Once you turn the device you chose the media and play it and it is very intuitive and user friendly. THE DVD will start the movie menu instantly. The remote controller is easy to use as the device itself is easy to use. It is sometimes hard to pause the movie in the dark and top play it again, as it is easy to confuse the buttons.

We tried to play a various video files and all the DivX files we tried worked perfectly. Naturally all the DVD's worked flawlessly even the ones with multi angle content. After a few minutes the screen goes in the power save mode, to preserve a battery.

The best thing about the device is the battery life we managed to play some four and a half hours video on it and this is the score that we always wanted. I don't think it can get much better than this as the last DVD that we tested had some louse two hours play time.

In Short
This is the top-of-the-range portable video player. It plays DVDs but it will play music and DivX movies which is great. It is the portable DVD player that can play for four and a half hours video. It has the best picture quality and the best 10.2 inch display that we seen so far.

Shinco Portable DVD 10.2 inch SDP-1250 costs around €300 in Euroland while in the UK you can buy this device for just about £229 here.

It is not the cheapest device but it will offer you a great quality picture, and will play movies for a respectable four and a half hours. On top of that, it plays the movies from the USB sticks and memory cards so you will really have a great deal of possibilities to watch a movie.

We didn't find anything that really bothers us about the device and we can easily recommend it to anyone that needs a travelling movie showing companion. And you can use it in your car, it comes with the car power adaptor but your security-sonscious INQUIRER suggest - don't watch while driving. ?