portable DVD players (Part Two)

[sergebroom]

This is sort-of Part Two of my entry of November 3, where I asked for recommendations for portable DVD players that could handle pretty much anything, even European DVDs.

This being Albuquerque, and my choices thus being limited, the search has been difficult. Also, players with a screen in the 10-inch range aren't that cheap. A few days ago, a thought occurred to me: my wife's laptop is rather heavy to lug around, so we're planning to get her a newer/lighter laptop when she signs her next contract. It could then become my home entertainment center. All I need to do is to replace its busted CD/DVD drive, which might be cheaper than a DVD player, and would be capable of way many more things.

I understand that, if I upload Videolan's software VLC, it'll allow me to play pretty much any DVD. Is that true? Does that include DVDs made for the Europe, whether it's in the PAL format or not? And would it allow me to override the region restriction?

Comments

[ckd]

VLC, or Apple's DVD Player app for that matter, will play PAL. The region restriction is part of the drive firmware (it can be changed something like five times before it locks), so I don't think VLC will be any better at playing the discs than DVD Player though.

"Mac the Ripper" will let you copy the DVD onto your hard drive (with all the features/tracks/etc; DVD Player can watch it by using "Open Media File"), or Handbrake will convert it into an MP4 suitable for watching on the screen (much less disk space than the raw DVD, but without all the DVD features). Either of those will require a DVD drive that's set to the appropriate region to do the ripping, however. (As I've mentioned before, owning a second DVD drive, either an additional internal drive in a desktop machine or an external USB drive, may be useful in this situation.)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

That[s a great idea! And it couldn't come at a better time. As I write this, I am piling up overtime even though I officially am on vacation to take care of my wife and her new knee. That means I could acquire an external DVD drive set up exclusively for European suff while my wife's old laptop would be for everything else.