portable options

[andyr354]

at home I just throw the real DVD in.

What I am looking for is an easily portable solution I can take to friends houses or on the road, ect.. to watch divx or xvid files.

Looking for something I can put all my videos on one box and take it along.
Composite video and stereo outputs required. Also would really need an optical or coaxial digital for when I am at a place that has it.

Anything fit this list?

Second option is a portable player with a built in screen and just burn to dvds. What players would work?

Andy

[Zabbo]

Galaxy Tvisto 3500 3.5 inch TV out External Enclosure/Multimedia Center should come close to what you are looking for. Here is the link.

http://www.supermediastore.com/galaxy-tvisto-3500-series-3-5-inch-enternal-enclosure-m...er-silver.html

[andyr354]

That is a pretty cool device I must say. Sort of pricey considering I still would need to put a hard disk in it, but not bad.
http://www.galaxymetalgear.com/Products/3500tvisto.html

Andy

[edDV]

Sounds to me you need a good shuttle box computer to do it all. A laptop comes close but will need external drives and such.

[stagescrew]

I purchased an Archos AV500 last year. It has a 100gig HD. It came with all the options you suggested, except the optical/digital sound output. There are some newer models now. I'm very happy with mine. I use it mostly for portable watching Divx/Xvid content. It does have the ability to work as a DVR, although I'm not impressed with the video recording, and that's not the main reason I bought it. The small screen looks great, and the resolution looks OK when I hook it up to my 32" LCD TV. It also lets you record comercial (copy protected) DVD's for playback on it's small screen. It will not output copy protected content through its composite or S-video outputs.

Edited to add: Mine will only play Divx/Xvid files encoded with MP3 audio. It will not play back AC3 encoded audio. The newer models might, I don't know.

[Justprocessbaby]

I purchased a Galaxy Tvisto 3500 3.5 inch TV out External Enclosure/Multimedia Center. It does what I need it to for the most part.

The two irritating points:
1. I can't do a direct downloaded AVI and play it. It takes XVID format and ISO format well. I end up convertying XVID formats using AlltoAVI. I placed all of the same format like MKV in one directory and converted all to videobitrate 1000kbps, XVID, audio bitrate 128kbps even though the original did not go as high. Else, you get a choppy video and audio sync problems.

2. You REALLY REALLY need to make sure that you perform the safe removal procedurs (aka right click and close the USB connection to this device) because it will think it was never disconnected and the movie list will be empty. I, always, perform the USB close and then turn off the drive.

3. The software update for the item from Galaxy isn't that great.

Hope this helps some decide.

[Justprocessbaby]

Oops. I meant 3 irratating points.

A good point is that whe you play and ISO image it plays like a the DVD. However, ISO images are large unless you shrink it with Nero or DVD Shrink.