Used to love the product but hate the customer service.

I purchased this DVD about 2 years ago for my daughter to use in the car for long trips. I must admit that I love this product--picture was good, the sound was good, very portabele especially with the slim battery pack that attaches to the botton of the DVD player and it seldoms skips even with hard bumps or driving over frost heaves or holding it uneven. During daylight, it is harder to see the screen (not sure if the other brands will do any better). The really great thing for us is that this DVD was multi-regional. Because of that feature I had purchased 2 more Audiobox D1708 portable players for friends--which is not as sleek looking as the D1705, especially since battery goes on the back of the player. At this point, the 3 Audiobox DVDs that I have purchased were all multi-regional.

Lately after 2 years, the D1705 is no longer working right. The screen will momentarily work perfect then it will go off, then it might work perfect again after 5 mins. Although the unit is still usable as a DVD player if plugged into a regular TV monitor. So, to replace this malfunctioning unit, I purchased a D1708 (I didn't know at that time that the D1705 were still available)--however, to my horror, it is NO LONGER MULTI-REGIONAL!!! I called Audiobox to inquire if they just started limiting the DVD's to Region 1--and much like the other customers, I had a really bad experience with the Audiovox customer service--very rude and accusatory. The person that I spoke to accused me of tampering the units to make them multi-regional because she said that Audiovox only makes Region 1 DVD players (I did wish I were smart enough to tell her right off that I would not have bothered calling them if I already knew how to change the unit I just returned to a multiregional player). Now that I know that these D1705 still exists, I would have liked to replace my malfunctioning unit with this one since the battery pack we have still works for 3 hours (knock on wood)--the spare battery would be great on long plane rides. But now I am hesitant to support Audiovox anymore and if they stop selling multi-regional players--then they really don't have my business anymore. Besides, I don't really know if these portable DVD players could possibly have a longer life than 2 years.

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Dead battery

My unit works only plugged, so the battery is dead. Now I have to either get a replacement batery or buy a new unit (certainly not an Audiovox). Even when the battery worked, the recharging time was around 8 hours, so it was good for one movie. I am thinking on Panasonic as reviews in general are good.

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Good performance, bad battery, awful customer service

I have the private-labeled "Eddie Bauer" version of this unit and it plays exactly 5 minutes on battery. Once private labeled, no one, including Audiovox, has any information on the unit so that I can replace the battery. Customer service at Audiovox is atrocious; consequently I will avoid their products at all costs in the future. I think the unit was shipped with an alkaline battery, notorious for developing discharge memory. Replacing with a high amp-hour lithium ion battery will eliminate this problem... assuming I can figure out which battery fits the unit. Truly, companies like Audiovox are subscribing to the throw-away economy where products are assumed to be obsolete immediately on release and little is done to take care of customers down the road. Too bad.

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