17 out of 17 people found this review helpful.
You Get More than what you pay for
Date of Review: Mar 6, 2004
The Bottom Line: For those on a budget this is as great buy for the $250-300 price range. Picture and screen resolution is better than most pricey units in the 600-900 range.
I bought my Polaroid PDV-0700 player back around the end of January. I had received a gift certificate and had some mad money to spend and a Portable DVD Player is what I had wanted. After looking at many models, I decided on this unit as it was within my budget and the display unit at our local Best Buy (where I purchased) had a great picture. I have used this DVD player in the car and at home. We have it hooked up through our TV in our bedroom when not in use on the road and the sound and picture is very good. One problem I did have was that the battery only held up for about and hour and forty-five minutes between charges. Reviews that I have read on the Internet suggest a 3-4 hour playing time. I called my local Best Buy and they exchanged it for another unit. I was glad I did this as my new player gets just about 4 hours of playing time on the battery and the picture is excellent. You have to adjust the settings from what is set at the manufacturer as the color on the screen is very intense out of the box. The Remote works well for this player and I have ample settings for the player through the remote. Taking it out on the road was a good experience also, the picture was very good and can be seen on an angle with minimal if any distortion. The anti-skip feature seems to work well as we live in a rural area with well traveled roads and have yet to experience any problems with the Disc skipping. The sound in this unit is pretty good when viewing with others where there isn't a whole lot of background noise. It's a bit weak when on the road however and needs to be turned up fully in order to hear adequately. I would recommend either some external small speakers or hooking it up through the vehicles system which can be done either through the cassette that is used for personal CD players or an Iroc FM wireless transmitter. I have used this with my Bose Tri-Port headphones and the sound is phenomenal. All in all this is a good little player for the money. I did get the extended warranty from Best Buy just for piece of mind. I'm not sure I'll ever need it, but it's good to know it will be covered for that time.
Finally, I did by a Portable DVD Case from Targus. The Road Warrior model which allows you to set up in between the seats of your vehicle or on the console. Good for storage of about 20 DVD's as well as the remote. I found it at PC Universe for about $47 and that included free shipping. That was about $22 cheaper than at Best Buy. I definitely would recommend getting this add on.
Update:
It has been some 8 months since I have bought this player and it is still working great. We have it as a main unit in our bedroom and take with us on trips and the like. When my son is out of school I bring it with us on my first job of the day and it keeps him entertained. He repeatedly uses the player and many of it's functions and to date no problems what so ever. The casing is showing some signs of wear from the strap hold of the DVD Player case but other than that nothing else appears to be wrong. The battery still holds up for almost 4 hours. I just wish my Bose Triports held up as well. I upgraded to the QC2's and enjoy them much better with this player. I still highly recommend this unit. For the money (Now about $180) you really can't go wrong.
