The overall design of the Polaroid proved to be ergonomically challenging, however. To wit, rather than just using a small, round opening to accommodate discs, the whole bottom panel of the player flips up to insert a DVD. That means it is susceptible to being inadvertently opened and stopping playback if one isn’t careful about how one repositions the player jostling in the back seat of a car. Also annoying was the fact that rather than including separate play, fast-forward and rewind controls, a four-way directional pad does double duty as a menu navigation and playback control. “Where’s the play button?” was a constant back-seat refrain. Also notable is an owner’s manual warning that if you don’t carefully monitor battery charging and leave it plugged in for more than 8 hours, you may reduce its battery life. (Typically, the Polaroid’s battery in our experience lasted for just over 3 hours.)

While the Polaroid player was serviceable, there were problems with its display and playback performance. Color reproduction was faithful enough, and the screen is certainly bright, but there was considerable banding evident is scenes showing sky and and water. Worse was its proclivity to freeze and skip on certain movies, which would strangely put the audio and video out of synch. Occasionally, we even had to resort to rebooting the player to resolve the problem, something even my patient daughter thought was unacceptable. The very same discs presented no problem for the other two players we tested.

Some parents may be attracted by one unusual feature of the Polaroid player. It includes something called TVGuardian, an automated function that anticipates vulgarities and mutes the audio to save sensitive little ears. It accomplishes this by monitoring the closed caption text looking for expletives. When an offensive phrase is about to appear, the player kills the sound and displays a cleaned up subtitle. However, it’s liable to raise more awkward questions from children, I discovered, and to use this function you have to pay a one-time fee of $19.95. Moreover, it’s only 95 percent effective according to the company. So if you want to keep it clean, I suggest parents stick with G-rated fare and forego the TVGuardian service.

A Bigger Picture

Generally, speaking when it comes to portable DVD players, spending more money means you get a bigger screen. Such was the case with the Magnavox MPD850 Portable DVD Player, which cost me $155.99 plus tax at Best Buy but came with an 8.5-inch screen. The Magnavox also came with a full compliment of accessories and basic necessities. There’s a power adapter, A/V cable, remote control, built-in dual headphone jacks, and a car power adapter.

My family thought the Magnavox’s larger screen was the most vibrant and vivid display among the bargain players we tried. However film snobs like myself who are more likely to watch Cocteau than “Chicken Little” will find it lacks a certain degree of subtlety. It was bright but elicited a little too much horizontal banding in some scenes—although not nearly to the degree that the Polaroid did.

What I did agree with my family about was how convenient the Magnavox’s controls were and how adaptable the player was to a variety of situations.  The player’s screen, for example, is mounted on an arm that allows you to flip the display over, lay it down flat, or move it forward toward the front edge of the player, thus solving the problem of crammed air line seats. All of us also appreciated the fact that this model had the greatest number of individual buttons dedicated to specific tasks. It caused less confusion at night in the back of the family auto, aided by the fact that Magnavox chose to use the same symbols that are standard on DVD players and VCRs. Everything also worked as expected, including the pause function when I had to stop to fill up the tank with gas.

The one blemish in an otherwise positive assessment was the trouble I had charging the player’s battery. I tried to charge it no less than three times before it would actually take a charge. It turns out that the player must be turned off and the battery has to be very carefully snapped into the player to take a charge. And even if the Magnovox’s charge/power LED is illuminated, it may not be charging. This was extremely irritating when I was pressed for time and wanted to take it with me on a trip. Nevertheless, when all was said and done, the battery lasted the longest of those we tested, clocking in at about 4 hours.

Cheap Not Crummy

While I wouldn’t recommend tossing any of these players across a room unless you’re ready to pick up a lot of little plastic pieces, they generally do yeoman’s duty. Not one of them skipped while circumnavigating bumpy rural dirt roads and downright violent New York City potholes, and all were capable of playing a feature film before their rechargeable batteries ran dry.

What you give up with these inexpensive systems are the little niceties, such as case adapters that let you hang the players on the back of a car seat. And more expensive players tend to have crisper screens than the bargain machines. On the other hand, you don’t always get what you pay for, as demonstrated by the Polaroid player, whose poor performance means shoppers should steer clear of this model.J-Q.com