Philips DCP851 8.5 in. Portable DVD Player

I recently purchased the Philips portable DVD player, largely for the built in iPod dock, which I found fascinating. First imperssions: Nice, large screen, nifty sliding iPod dock, nice and compact, unfortunately easy to press power off button.
Next step: testing it. First thing I did was figure out which iPod mount I needed, and hooked my iPod Touch right up. Took a little while to get it to read it, and for some reason it kept disconnecting. I had a lot of trouble getting it mounted, and when I did it couldn't read my library until I reset it a few times. It still doesn't do a very good job finding my movies, and will randomly disconnect when moved around at all.
So, moving on. Not impressed with the feature I bought it for--Not a good start.
Next up--DVD player. I put in a UK region Rocky DVD in to see how well it did with it. Came up with "Wrong region, cannot play" or something like that. Did a little web surfing, and went through a fairly simple unlock process. After that it worked just fine. The image isn't amazing, but it's decent enough for me.
Ok, time to test the battery life. I fully charged it up, and started watching a movie. About and hour and a half in the "Low Battery" icon started flashing--I couldn't believe it. How can you design a PORTABLE DVD player with a battery life this terrible? I have to take the power cord with me now, and usually can only watch anything if I'm near an outlet, which was hardly the point of me buying it in the first place. Very disappointed by this aspect. I could have forgiven a lot of it's other faults if I could watch Braveheart without sitting next to a wall.