Matsui PL 800

...Comet stores I believe and Matsui is one of their makes. They currently cost £33.99 and they also sell replacement remote controls, mains and car power adaptors, as well as earphones and audio/video connection cables. So basically you can buy replacements for everything through that site (Partmaster.co.uk, obviously search for Matsui PL800 for the right parts).

Okay so Matsui is perhaps not the biggest quality brand name out there ...
...not too worried about the Matsui make apart from the problem I've mentioned already as my family have a few Matsui products and they've all been fine, so I think in general Matsui are no worse than other brands.

Below are a couple of photos of the player, remote control and battery pack. I hope you found this review at least somewhat useful.

Edit 16/10/07 - I decided to check if this was working properly as I hadn't ... more

I got myself this portable DVD player with some money I got for my birthday in February. I couldn't decide if a 7" screen would be large enough for me that I wouldn't suffer from eye strain but yet I didn't want to get a large 9" or 10" one as then it would be so big that the term 'portable' would be negligable I thought! especially as I'm tempted to pack it for use abroad, so it had to be pretty small but yet have a big enough screen that I felt I could actually use it for more than a few minutes without my eyes screaming to look elsewhere and get some rest.

Thats the main plus point for me, its small and yet large enough, luckily. I'm quite happy I made the right choice, its a nice size, I'd say roughly the size of a small-ish external hard drive or a really small laptop maybe, something like that (see below for a photo of my one). The screen, however, doesn't suffer because of this. Its good enough that I've been able to watch DVDs played in it for over an hour and not felt any ill effects, which is definately a relief. Its easy to use and isn't too noisy when the DVDs are being read, although there are some downsides, such as that my one had a problem at the start whereby the disc tray kept coming loose and the discs kept stopping, then when I got the DVD to play again, it wouldn't give me the option to resume it from where it had stopped, that really wound me up. However, I managed to fix it after getting some advice, it was the latch at the bottom right of the disc tray, where it pops open and close, that was loose and by simply unwinding up a paper clip and pressing it into the latch mechanism a few times, it loosened it and that fixed it. I guess I can't say for sure that the problem won't happen again but I've tested it by playing a full movie on it and it played right until the end absolutely fine without stopping once, so the problem seems to be fixed and if it happens again, its easy enough to do that again.

The only other downside I would say is that the remote control takes cell batteries, which are hard to come by. I wanted to have a replacement for the battery as the unit itself doesn't have too many buttons (just volume up and down, play, pause, stop and eject). This is mainly because If you want to stop the disc other than by pressing 'eject', you have to go to the discs menu then press stop and only the remote control has a button for the menu and otherwise you can't access the main settings menu if the remote isn't working, so I wanted to be sure the remote would be functional for a good while yet (I'll have to be careful not to lose it as its fairly small!). The remote requires 1 CR2025 cell battery, for reference. I was lucky though (I thought they would be hard to come by), in that a few weeks ago I spotted a small remote control and exactly the right cell battery type on sale in a pound store, so there's me got my replacement battery very cheap! I believe these batteries last a really long time though anyway, so if thats the case then I guess thats not worth worrying too much about, but I thought its worth mentioning anyway.

I like the design of the remote, its nice and narrow and small, again being easy to pack for bringing away on holiday etc. Also the weight of the unit, minus the battery pack (which is attached by pushing it into the back of the unit), is pretty good. The battery pack is very heavy and I wouldn't bother bringing that on holiday, it would take up too much weight and space but its easy enough to bring a foreign adapter and put the mains adapter into that and power it that way. This means I can bring the DVDs I really enjoy and watch them when I like when im at our accomodation having a rest later in the day, which I quite look forward to.

The DVD player offers progressive scan and I've got no problems with the picture quality.

It also offers anti-shock protection, which was a bit of a laugh when it was having that problem of stopping all the time but like I say, that got fixed and it wasn't related to the anti-shock protection but to start with I was a bit suspicious. Now the problem has been fixed, it seems pretty good anti-shock wise, though I wouldn't try it out too much, I still treat it as being slightly fragile to be on the safe side.

The only other main feature it has is that it can play back Kodak Picture CDs or otherwise DVDs with .jpg photos burned on them. I have to say I haven't tested this but im not too bothered about that function personally, most DVD players offer this. If I want to look at my photos, their all on my digital camera which has a large enough LCD screen, so I'm not sure if I'd ever really want to make use of this particular feature.

Oh and also, I tried the car adapter and managed to get it to play in my car pretty quickly, so that seems to work ok. The mains adapter works absolutely fine, though it would be good if it was a bit longer as I've tried to plug it in, in my room and watch it in bed when I wasn't well but it was very awkward to set that up, I had to pull the extension over a bit. The battery pack takes quite a long time to charge and doesn't last very long but thats because mine is a second hand model that had been used before, so I wouldn't say thats a disadvantage to this model as my particular unit might well have been used alot in the past and so the battery is probably quite worn down, hence I just use it with the mains adapter now.

Another useful piece of information is that I've discovered you can buy new battery packs for this model through Partmaster online, as they supply Currys and Comet stores I believe and Matsui is one of their makes. They currently cost £33.99 and they also sell replacement remote controls, mains and car power adaptors, as well as earphones and audio/video connection cables. So basically you can buy replacements for everything through that site (Partmaster.co.uk, obviously search for Matsui PL800 for the right parts).

Okay so Matsui is perhaps not the biggest quality brand name out there and there may be a problem on some of their units with the disc tray opening but like I've said there is a very easy solution to this and hopefully thats sorted (I've had it a few months and its been fine since I fixed it in March, so I like to think its fully fixed now and if not I still have that handy paper clip!). The quality of the parts and so on may not be as good as other makes but its still a good item with good features at a competitve price, which was what I was looking for and I don't regret buying it, considering how much more some of the more well known brands charge for 8" portable DVD players. I'm not too worried about the Matsui make apart from the problem I've mentioned already as my family have a few Matsui products and they've all been fine, so I think in general Matsui are no worse than other brands.

Below are a couple of photos of the player, remote control and battery pack. I hope you found this review at least somewhat useful.

Edit 16/10/07 - I decided to check if this was working properly as I hadn't used it since it got taken with me and my family to a holiday in Gran Canaria in July and I remember I had problems with the old problem mentioned above (with it thinking that the disc tray is 'open' when it isn't), so I figured I'd better check and see if its working... unfortunately, it isn't. I tried using the advice I mentioned above and I loosened the latch a fair bit but to no avail, so it seems... ah, this is what happens you buy secnd hand I guess. I'll maybe see if my dad has any ideas but otherwise, it seems to be pretty useless at the moment im afraid... *sigh* oh well, it was good while it lasted(!) what can I say? I think I might be tempted to, at some point or another, possibly look at getting a more reliable one to replace it but considering my MP3 players gone pretty much dead and ive spent money trying to replace that with another item (I'm using my old PSP to play MP3s, purchasing extra MemoryProDuo cards to hold the MP3 files), I don't think I should rush to pay more for another portable DVD... 

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