Best portable DVD player that I can hook my iPod to??

[glassgirl]

I've been researching players that have USB ports. What I don't know is if these players will allow me to view the movies I have on my iPod? I'm looking for a good picture and sound. It doesn't have to have lots of extras. I'm looking in the $200 range. Any input you have for me would be appreciated. Thank you!!

[guns1inger]

The PS3 can, but very few others will. The iPod is an ugly beast to access via USB. Aside from the fact it only uses lower quality encoding settings, the internal database and file storage make it difficult to navigate and access.

Better off keeping a copy on a separate USB HDD for playback on portable devices (this also lets you keep a higher quality copy if you intend to playback on anything other than small CRT TVs)

[Ai Haibara]

True, but you can also enable 'disk mode' on the iPod (generally, assuming it's formatted for use with Windows), and just use it to store better-encoded movie files like any other USB drive.

I'd wonder if the DVD players/PS3 wouldn't also trip over the DRM on most of the videos stored on an iPod that have been downloaded and added through the iTunes Music Store, anyway.

[guns1inger]

The PS3 won't play DRM protected files.

[Ai Haibara]

Yeah, I figured as much.

Should the PS3 have any problems playing video you've encoded for iPod format, yourself? Just curious. (Not that I'd want to encode a video for the iPod and then push it to the PS3...)