I will be going to Europe this summer. Since the inflight movie do not provide closed captioned for the deaf. I was thinking abt bring my portable dvd with me on the plane so I can watch the movie with closed captioned. What kind of portable dvd should I get? what about the battery? what brand of battery is good for more than 8 hours without recharging at a hotel in Europe?

Your input would be greatly appreicated.

Yes, DVD players are allowed on planes. I've had a Panasonic DVD-LV75 portable player for years now. I've been happy with it although the battery is nearing the end of its useful life. It can now carry only 1-hour charge.

A new battery on portable DVD players will run 2-3 hours, 4 hours max. You could get an extra battery but they're expensive (~$150).

Some of the European airlines won't let you use a CD player during the flight. There was thread somewhere on flyertalk about it recently.

Anyone know if airlines which won't let you use a CD player will let you use a DVD player?

I don't believe any DVD will go eight hours without a charge, at least a couple of years ago two hours was considered great when I purchased.

It depends on the airline if they will allow it or not. Turkish, and Altalis for example, consider them digital devices, and like CD players and CD drives they do not allow them on any of their flights (or did not in the past). Most US based airlines don't have a problem with them except for the normal take off and landing shut downs.

Get an adapter ($2 or $3 at Radio Shack) and as long as your DVD charger is dual volatge then you will be fine, just recharge it in the room at night.

Also consider some of the low end laptops that come with DVD players now, you can get for example a Dell laptop for $699 with a DVD player in it, so you get a laptop too, and the screen will be much larger then any portable DVD player.

CD/DVD drive restrictions are slowly getting lifted, the majors in Europe like AF, SK, LH and BA have no restrictions anymore.

Most carriers do still have issues with using the burning features on a drive as the EMI profile of the device does change when burning...

Also, if you get a laptop, you can rip the dvd to disk and watch it without spinning a dvd player.



[This message has been edited by winkydink (edited Jan 21, 2004).]

"Also, if you get a laptop, you can rip the dvd to disk and watch it without spinning a dvd player."

What do you mean by that?

If you copy the DVD to your harddrive while on the ground, then in the air you can play the movie from the harddrive, not the DVD player.

Consider an Archos 340 or 360 instead of a DVD. I use a Panasonic LA95 with extra battery pack which gives around 3 hours per charge. The Archos is a small JPEG and MP3 recorder - and has an optional FM tuner. It's great because you can record straight from any source including TV scart and so in one very small pocket unit you have (depending on model) dozens of hours of video and thousands of hours of music. I also record in the UK Radio 4 programmes and other plays etc to give me something to listen to. The combination of pre-recorded radio and a couple of TV programmes gets my wife and I through most European flights and is the option we use when traveling in favour of our DVD.

......... there are no 8 hour flights in Europe. I don't know of any airline that won't allow you to use DVD except on takoff and landing.

I believe the request was 8 hours of battery power without having to recharge at a hotel, not for 8 hour flights, sounds like they didn't want ot be bothered with a converter.

You clearly don't know about S7 flight 3271. Also known to its friends (probably not many) as the Siberia Airlines 0010 departure from Novosibirsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, arriving 1635... Of course, OVB is in GMT+6 and PKC is in GMT+12, so it's really only 10 hours and 25 minutes. Yes, there is a stop in Vladivostok (VVO), but it's all on one flight number. Even discounting the waiting time at VVO, the flight time is still 8 hours and 40 minutes. Russia is still Europe, right?

You also don't know about Alitalia, which will allow passengers (certainly on its intra-European flights, and, I believe, its long-hauls also) to use only 'electric shavers, non-digital recorders and portable computers not connected to printers or compact disc readers' (if my memory serves me correctly).

[This message has been edited by NickW (edited Jan 22, 2004).]