best electronics to watch DVDs in flight?

[singmom]

My family will be making one of those 24-hour-long international flights in a month. Now that my little boy is almost two years old, I would like to bring along something so that he can watch his favorite DVDs to stay occupied. I'm afraid the battery in a portable DVD player will run out too fast. Can anyone make suggestions about the best electronics to buy for this? I only have a cell phone and a laptop; have never used an iPod or the like. Would something like that work? Thanks in advance!

[x9200]

All these kind of appliances have the video running battery time typically up to 6h and many of them can be recharged only via usb connector as their batteries are not that easily interchangeable. What you can do is to buy travel battery pack/charger for them - I know there are around but I don't know how efficient their are.
What I am using for this kind of trips is PSP - portable playstation, 3000 or slim. They have small interchangeable batteries and 4 of them covers such trip. You can still use an external battery pack/charger with it.
These are also gaming devices so you have to be careful

[aster]

If you're flying on one of the newer SQ planes (A380,77W), then even in economy class you will have a USB interface where you can charge your electrical appliances.

[curiousgeorge]

If you're flying on one of the newer SQ planes (A380,77W), then even in economy class you will have a USB interface where you can charge your electrical appliances.

If you're flying an A380 with SIA or Virgin or similar you won't need the DVD player for the kid as the in-flight entertainment is excellent and extensive. Most airlines are pretty good these days, suggest you check out your carrier's website to see what they offer.

If I recall, the USB port on the A380 doesn't have enough power to charge all USB appliances (not the iPad at least). But I have to say that on my last flight I did watch around 6 hours of Star Trek Voyager episodes on the iPad with battery to spare.

Best bet on long flights with 2yr olds is to take a gag and put whiskey in his milk. Its not much good for him, but much kinder to the other passengers.

[singmom]

Thanks for your advice. We fly this route every one or two years, so I know not to expect charging capabilities on Delta economy. Last year we tried the in-flight entertainment with the little individual screens, but they don't adjust low enough for a *really* short passenger to see.

I agree about being kind to the other passengers. I am willing to bend my rules about TV and other things to make my little guy and other passengers contented.

Stupid question, but I'll ask anyway: Can you play a video from an iPod, or is it just for audio?

Thanks again.

[x9200]

Depends which ipod. Shuffle - only audio, the rest - both.

[ksl]

I have just purchased the energy to go from Energizer it is the XP2000 which can give up to 6 hrs talk time for mobile phone and can also use USB power recharge for laptop 39$ from Funan.

I find the EEEPC 10 inch well worth investing in for watching movies, though you will need an external player unit. or convert the files I have converted files never used DVD external. 160 Gb Ipod is maybe too small for long journey and films. The odd music video is okay though, never watched a full length movie on it eye strain gives headache

[Splatted]

I thought the new A380's have USB ports, which allow people to view photos and video directly off thumb drives on the on-board entertainment system.

[aster]

If you're flying an A380 with SIA or Virgin or similar you won't need the DVD player for the kid as the in-flight entertainment is excellent and extensive. Most airlines are pretty good these days, suggest you check out your carrier's website to see what they offer.

Absolutely, if you're flying SQ on the A380 or Boeing 777-300ER in economy then you will have top-class entertainment (a myriad of films - also fairly recent releases - to choose from) with a big screen too.

No need to fiddle with any gadgets if you're on one of these birds...

[buttermaker]

I have 2 young boys (4 & 6).
We purchased 2 iPod Touch devices and LOVE THEM.
We travel to the U.S. (MN) at least once a year and these things keep them busy the whole way.
They play music and video, plus you can load them up with games on the iTunes store for only $0 - $2 per game. Many of the games are for toddlers and are semi-educational.

I should note that we bought a battery device that we can plug the iPods into to recharge them mid-flight.

[buttermaker]

I have 2 young boys (4 & 6).
We purchased 2 iPod Touch devices and LOVE THEM.
We travel to the U.S. (MN) at least once a year and these things keep them busy the whole way.
They play music and video, plus you can load them up with games on the iTunes store for only $0 - $2 per game. Many of the games are for toddlers and are semi-educational.

[carlos hathcock]

My wife and I have been flying Short and Long Haul with between 1 and 3 kids for the past six years.

We specifically choose airlines where we know that the kids will be entertained.

Economy
Singapore - A380 - Recharges for laptops etc but kids could see TV and were happy with it.
Quantas - 747 - The TV would not angle down enough for the kids to see the screen anything more than barely, we sat them on the free blankets which helped a lot but the PITA is that the because the kids can't see the screens so well they become bored, ergo, playful... Thankfully the person in front like to sit back with their seat so that helped!

Mid Class
BA - 747 - kids sat in bulk head seats which meant that they had deployable TV's on sticks rather than in the back of the seat in front. I would obviously suggest you call the airline and try to get these seats reserved explaining the kids...

As for which devices:

I'm a big fan of copying DVD to memory and then playing it from a laptop, smart phone or our personal favourite - the ARCHOS (google it). PSP would work well too. I've no experience of iApply stuff.. The benefits of copying to memory are that you avoid wasting battery power on spinning a DVD constantly. Also, turn the volume down, limit other applications open (wifi obviously, security software etc) to the bare minimum and turn the brightness down as far as possible. Also, you can stretch the user time by insisting on being in the air an hour before powering up, turning off for an hour at meal times etc also support the stretch time...

Good luck, Delta are crap.

[eastcoastdan]

PSP is good for this, as long as you have a very good pair of in-ear headphones, because the volume does not go up very high and on anything other than an A380, the sound is drowned out.

Would probably recommend running video files through a converter and putting them on an iPad via iTunes. Good screen, light and thin enough for travel and good sound. Just a pain converting the video files. That said, there is a new video player app which may play AVI files without prior conversion.....haven't tried it yet. I think it's called "VOD Player" but can't be sure.

[carlos hathcock]

Would probably recommend running video files through a converter and putting them on an iPad via iTunes. Good screen, light and thin enough for travel and good sound. Just a pain converting the video files. That said, there is a new video player app which may play AVI files without prior conversion.....haven't tried it yet. I think it's called "VOD Player" but can't be sure.

I think VOD files are DVD files (e.g. what you get if you copy your DVD onto your computer). AVI is something else. not saying that VOD player won't play them though. Try before you fly

[x9200]

PSP is good for this, as long as you have a very good pair of in-ear headphones, because the volume does not go up very high and on anything other than an A380, the sound is drowned out.

True, it is a bit on the quite side but also to very large extent (and often) is the effect of downmixing of the audio channels. What I typically do converting a DVD to PSP edible files is I run normalization or just arbitrary volume increase on the audio track, then it is sufficiently laud for any typical plane.