Panasonic DVD-LV70 7 in. Portable DVD Player

The wife and I went back and forth before purchasing this one. It seems like a luxury. But we've now owned it for 4 years, it's working great, and we consider it a travel necessity.

With regard to the technical details, the picture is fantastic, the sound is good, battery life is incredible (we get 5 hours!), it hasn't had any technical problems -- like skipping or failing to read a disk [my Sony home player did regularly, and has since been replaced]. I use the cable to attach the player to my home and hotel TV and it works great.

While car companies are selling built-in DVD players, they're always stuck in the car. A portable allows you to use it in restaurants, planes, hotel rooms, and friends' houses.

I mainly use this for our intended purpose -- entertaining our girl (she's now 6). Before we got this we would drive at nap time, and any additional time would require that one of us ride in the backseat, providing her brief snippets with a large selection of toys. Then we got this out and plopped her favorite Barney movie in. She was engaged for the length of the DVD. Hurrah. Suddenly car trips of 5 hours became possible again.

The real day-to-day value of a portable DVD player came when we took it to restaurants. Not only did it allow us time to chew our food, but the restaurant experience went from eating to dining again! We talk to our little girl before dinner. She plays with a few toys while we have a glass of wine and an appetizer. Then when our entree arrives, we all get to eat for a while. But about 20 minutes, she's bored. This was where we used to suffer. But now we whip out the DVD player and boom... peace! We not only have time to eat the second half of our entree in peace, but we also get to have dessert, wait for the check, pay it, and relax!!!

We have taken dozens of plane, car, and restaurant trips with this. For a while I used it as our second home DVD player (on the bedroom TV). We've also found it useful for watching movies at hotels when they have a video input (instead of forking over the $9.99 per movie -- about half have input jacks). Again, it's engaging enough to make long plane trips possible without constant attention.

So, yes, this coiuld be an expensive toy for DINKS. But for PARENTS this is a good investment. Being able to take car trips again means we can go places, getting an extra 3 hours of driving in saves on motels, makes plane trips more bearable, and being able to eat out in restaurants with her saves in babysitting.

Four years agao we couldn't eat at a restaurant without having several conversations about this thing. "A DVD player. $700. No, it's not a computer. Yes, that's the Jungle Book..."

UPDATE
We've used this player for more than 4 years -- on planes, in the car, in restaurants, and had no technical problems at all! (Okay, I fried the AC apapter in France when running it through a transformer -- the old style 120 Volt, 60-Hz transformer was too limited. But that wasn't a problem with the player itself.) My sister bought a cheaper brand that has already begun to misread disks (after a few uses!)

Today I just bought a Minitek simply because the AC adapter uses not only the 120/60 at home, but the 110/50 we will have for 4 months in Japan, and the 240/50 that fried my AC adapter in France. Oh, and it was less than $200. I just hope it lasts half as long as my Panasonic has. (Judging from the Epinions reviews, I'd have to say no chance there.)

I highly recommend DVD players in general, and the Panasonic ones in particular!