Saitek PS27 for PlayStation 2
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- Console: PlayStation 2
- Brand: Saitek
- Type: Light
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Great little DVD player
Pros
Good price for the features provided, good picture quality, plays a lot of formats
Cons
Missing some features, can't charge battery while watching a movie
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
This provides the features and easy of use that I'm looking for, with a very modest price tag.
I've been in the market for a portable DVD player for quite some time, but the price on most units seemed to be rather cost prohibitive.
I came across the Mintek 1770, and the price was right, so I picked one up.
In the box you get the player itself, a detachable lithium ion battery, wall adapter and car cigarette lighter adapter, remote control (with battery), and cables to connect it to a TV.
According to the documentation, a full battery charge lasts about 2.5 hours. However, I managed to get about 4 hours out of a single charge, two complete movies (both widescreen) and half of another.
The remote control is a wafer thin membrane key keyboad, providing you buttons to control playback, set things up, etc. I think it's pretty full featured, given it's tiny size.
The player itself is rather astonishing. To start with, it can of course play DVD's. But it can also play music CD's and VCD's as well. In addition, put in a CD or DVD burned with MP3's, JPEG pictures, or MPEG files, and it will play those as well. One downside to this aspect is that the layout of the GUI is such that you can't see more than the first 10 characters or so of a filename. I recommend making up MP3 CD's that don't have the band name as part of the filename. The player fully supports multiple folders of content.
In addition, it's also possible to play MP3's while looking at pictures. Once an MP3 starts playback, you can browse around the disk looking at pictures or looking for the next file to play without the music stopping.
There is a zoom feature, however this does not work for viewing of JPEG images. On the other hand, you can rotate pictures as needed.
Supposedly the player is region free, so you can play any DVD you want. My collection consists only of region 1 DVD's, so I can't test this. There is an option in the setup to change the region, though.
There are a few downsides to this particular offering, which perhaps are present in higher up models.
The first is that the battery will only charge if the player is turned off. So, you can't charge up while watching a movie. The manual also recommends against using the car adapter for charging, because of possible voltage fluctuations.
Secondly, there don't seem to be enough physical buttons on the player itself. It has navigation buttons, play/stop/etc, and controls to change the brightness, color, and screen (from widescreen to standard), and for calling up the dvd menu.
It would be nice if there was a button to get to the On Screen Display (OSD), which tells you how long the movie has been playing, and lets you skip chapters, subtitles, audio tracks, and so on. However, this button is only available on the remote control.
Also, I found the OSD lacking, in that it can tell you how long the movie has been playing, but can't tell you how much time is remaining in this particular chapter, or in the movie as a whole.
Also missing is an indication of battery life. When the battery gets low, an indicator on the screen starts flashing. But there is no way to monitor the battery level before that point.
These are all minor complaints, however. You can't go wrong, for the price. The player also has several upsides.
For starters, you have the ability to skip past the copyright screens at the start of some DVD's, which other players force you to watch.
Also included is what the manual calls a "Digest" feature. In this mode, the disk is scanned, and first few seconds of every title, or every chapter, is shown.
My favorite feature is the time search. Besides being able to skip to a particular track/chapter on a disk, you can enter a time, like "1:15:00", and playback skips to that point. This is quite useful to skip back to the part of the movie you stopped watching at, if you have to switch from battery power to wall power, for example.
Another feature that I found interesting but haven't used much is a bookmark feature. This allows you to store bookmarks at various points on the disk, and skip back to them whenever you want.
And of course, the full range of navigation features are present, such as play, pause, skip, etc. Also included are forward and reverse search at 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x and 32x speeds, and slow motion playback, as well as frame by frame advancement.
Overall, I think this is a fantastic value for the money. A few non essential features are lacking, but every feature you might want during playback of the disk is there. I would recommend this player to anyone who wants a good, inexpensive portable DVD player.
I came across the Mintek 1770, and the price was right, so I picked one up.
In the box you get the player itself, a detachable lithium ion battery, wall adapter and car cigarette lighter adapter, remote control (with battery), and cables to connect it to a TV.
According to the documentation, a full battery charge lasts about 2.5 hours. However, I managed to get about 4 hours out of a single charge, two complete movies (both widescreen) and half of another.
The remote control is a wafer thin membrane key keyboad, providing you buttons to control playback, set things up, etc. I think it's pretty full featured, given it's tiny size.
The player itself is rather astonishing. To start with, it can of course play DVD's. But it can also play music CD's and VCD's as well. In addition, put in a CD or DVD burned with MP3's, JPEG pictures, or MPEG files, and it will play those as well. One downside to this aspect is that the layout of the GUI is such that you can't see more than the first 10 characters or so of a filename. I recommend making up MP3 CD's that don't have the band name as part of the filename. The player fully supports multiple folders of content.
In addition, it's also possible to play MP3's while looking at pictures. Once an MP3 starts playback, you can browse around the disk looking at pictures or looking for the next file to play without the music stopping.
There is a zoom feature, however this does not work for viewing of JPEG images. On the other hand, you can rotate pictures as needed.
Supposedly the player is region free, so you can play any DVD you want. My collection consists only of region 1 DVD's, so I can't test this. There is an option in the setup to change the region, though.
There are a few downsides to this particular offering, which perhaps are present in higher up models.
The first is that the battery will only charge if the player is turned off. So, you can't charge up while watching a movie. The manual also recommends against using the car adapter for charging, because of possible voltage fluctuations.
Secondly, there don't seem to be enough physical buttons on the player itself. It has navigation buttons, play/stop/etc, and controls to change the brightness, color, and screen (from widescreen to standard), and for calling up the dvd menu.
It would be nice if there was a button to get to the On Screen Display (OSD), which tells you how long the movie has been playing, and lets you skip chapters, subtitles, audio tracks, and so on. However, this button is only available on the remote control.
Also, I found the OSD lacking, in that it can tell you how long the movie has been playing, but can't tell you how much time is remaining in this particular chapter, or in the movie as a whole.
Also missing is an indication of battery life. When the battery gets low, an indicator on the screen starts flashing. But there is no way to monitor the battery level before that point.
These are all minor complaints, however. You can't go wrong, for the price. The player also has several upsides.
For starters, you have the ability to skip past the copyright screens at the start of some DVD's, which other players force you to watch.
Also included is what the manual calls a "Digest" feature. In this mode, the disk is scanned, and first few seconds of every title, or every chapter, is shown.
My favorite feature is the time search. Besides being able to skip to a particular track/chapter on a disk, you can enter a time, like "1:15:00", and playback skips to that point. This is quite useful to skip back to the part of the movie you stopped watching at, if you have to switch from battery power to wall power, for example.
Another feature that I found interesting but haven't used much is a bookmark feature. This allows you to store bookmarks at various points on the disk, and skip back to them whenever you want.
And of course, the full range of navigation features are present, such as play, pause, skip, etc. Also included are forward and reverse search at 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x and 32x speeds, and slow motion playback, as well as frame by frame advancement.
Overall, I think this is a fantastic value for the money. A few non essential features are lacking, but every feature you might want during playback of the disk is there. I would recommend this player to anyone who wants a good, inexpensive portable DVD player.
