Hitachi PDV 302

I have owned my Hitachi PDV302 portable DVD player for 15 months now and it is the best DVD player I have owned. The unit oozes class and the build quality is very good. After 15 months of abuse by my 2 children (now 10 & 3 years old), and several drops and manic button pressing by the youngest, it stills looks very well, and works faultlessly.

The unit features a detachable LI-Ion battery with a stated battery life of 150 minutes. ...
...it to a TV. The Hitachi can also accept analogue audio and composite video, and I have used this feature to watch TV in the garden by means of a video/audio sender that was attached to the video/audio in socket.

The remote control covers every feature of the player, and the player has a good set of buttons on the unit itself which covers the basic functions needed to watch movies.

All in all this is an excellent unit ... more

I have owned my Hitachi PDV302 portable DVD player for 15 months now and it is the best DVD player I have owned. The unit oozes class and the build quality is very good. After 15 months of abuse by my 2 children (now 10 & 3 years old), and several drops and manic button pressing by the youngest, it stills looks very well, and works faultlessly.

The unit features a detachable LI-Ion battery with a stated battery life of 150 minutes. In my experience with this unit the battery life, when fully charged, is nearer to 165 minutes, and that tends to take care of most movies. One minor niggle, which I suspect is common to most portable DVD players is that the unit can not be charged when viewing. It either works from the mains or from the attached battery. However, if you unplug the mains adapter the unit switches to battery power immediately and viewing is not interrupted. Charging time for the battery is around 3 hours from flat, and the unit clearly indicates that the unit is fully charged by a red led on the front.
If the battery is left attached to the unit for a few weeks or so it quickly drains down so I tend to charge the battery fully and only attach it when required.

The sound quality is excellent through the built in speakers, and the unit comes with 2 headphone sockets. The unit does tend to hum very slightly through the headphone sockets when running on battery power; this humming does not tend to spoil the listening pleasure, but it is noticeable on the quieter sections of a movie. The unit can output to a Dolby Digital player; I do not have a Dolby Digital decoder so I can not comment on the quality of the output.

The screen is a 7" wide screen TFT with an excellent colour display, which can be easily viewed, in all but the very strongest sunlight.

For reference the unit plays the following disc formats:
DVD Video, CD-DA, CD-R/RW, MP3, JPEG, VCD 2.0.

The coolest feature of this player is the fact that you can set it to remember where you stopped the disc, and it will continue to play from that position when you view that DVD disc again.

The unit has a video & audio out/in socket and comes with the necessary cables to attach it to a TV. The Hitachi can also accept analogue audio and composite video, and I have used this feature to watch TV in the garden by means of a video/audio sender that was attached to the video/audio in socket.

The remote control covers every feature of the player, and the player has a good set of buttons on the unit itself which covers the basic functions needed to watch movies.

All in all this is an excellent unit and I would recommend it highly.
 

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