Like the Energizer Bunny!!! Keeps going....

Bought this 3-4 years ago before Portable DVD players became really popular. (I paid like $250+ for it.) It has taken a beating from my 3 yr old..kicking it many, many times, dropping it, etc. and it just keeps going. We mostly use it in the van, but also use the plug in adapter once in awhile. We've never used the battery. It has never skipped (only if the DVD is dirty so not a player problem). The only problem we are having right now is we need a new car adapter and will order one. I bought a second player for my older DD so she can watch her own movies (a Panasonic-only because it was really cheap) so I hope that one lasts just as long. I basically just use mine in the car. There were times that it didn't cut on, but I never power it off so what we do is turn the power button off and then back on and it's good to go. We really got our money's worth.

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Wow.... this thing was even sorrier than the Mintek.

After Portable DVD Player # 1 (which was a 5" Mintek) stopped working on me, I threw it away and bought this thing, an Initial 7" portable DVD player, which was actually twenty percent less than what I paid for the 5" Mintek. Upon removing the unit from the book and testing it, I had already noticed one problem that did not occur with the Mintek. Unlike most other machines, this unit does not allow one to watch their source on both its screen and a television. In other words, suppose you want to watch a DVD on your TFT screen and your television screen simultaneously, then because of a button located on the side of the unit, which actually REQUIRES the TFT screen to be off if one wants to watch their DVD on their television, one does not have such an option. For most individuals, this is probably not too serious of an issue, but I thought that it was one step down from what I previously owned and somehow it took away from the comfort of quickly being able to see what is on television while my DVD is playing and then switching back to having the DVD play on both screens. Another problem, which was slightly less serious, was the fact that one could not zoom out on this unit. One could still zoom in and move around the image, and there would not exist a greenish rectangular area showing where they are zoomed, but zooming out was not a possibility.

There is some good news: 1) the battery was able to attach to the back of the unit much easier and more securely, making it less than difficult for the battery to slip out of place. 2) you do not always have to rely on the remote control for controlling functions like brightness and the menu, but it is still a necessity for things like fast-forwarding and slow motion. 3) the screen is 7" and the unit is not very expensive.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, Portable DVD player # 2 did not last quite as long as Portable DVD player # 1 did. I had only had it for approximately 6 months before the thing just stopped reading discs for no apparent reason (the Mintek lasted a whole year by the way). This may or may not be true for all Initial units, but some will come to a point that even if you have a disc inside the player, then instead of loading the disc and playing it like it normally would, it will simply read "NO DISC" after you close the lid. This forced me to discard Portable DVD player # 2 and so I am now on Portable DVD player # 3, a 7" Astar, which, thankfully, does allow one to watch their source on both the TFT screen and the television screen, but sadly, does not allow one to zoom out of the picture. I must say, whoever coined that old aphorism "You get what you pay for" certainly knew that about which they were talking. And sadly, that aphorism is more than applicable to the Initial 7" Portable DVD player.

The KAB score: 3.3 bad.

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Not worth the price

My mom bought this DVD player for my kids this past Christmas. She paid $179, with the promise of a $30 rebate. It stopped working after a month. It runs and runs but nothing appears on screen. Unfortunately, she had purchased it two months in advance of giving it, so that the 90-day warranty had just run out. I called the company and explained that we had only had it since December. After a lot of back and forth, the only solution they offered is for me to give them $49 to fix it, or $79 to replace it. I would rather put $79 towards a real name-brand DVD player. (And the rebate has yet to arrive, two months later...)

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