Tough climb for handheld DVD player
Another one comes on the market, but specs seem to fall short
A lot of us at Crave have small children, and at least some of us aren't ashamed to admit that we rely on portable DVD players in emergency situations (such as drives that last more than an hour). So we were pleased to find that a new handheld player had made its way to the market, MediaStreet's "eMotion."
On closer inspection, however, the player seemed to fall short compared with other models at least in the specs department. Its 3.5-inch screen is smaller than that of a comparable player from Hammacher Schlemmer, for example, which has a 4.5-inch LCD and actually costs a little less ($130 vs. $139). But the biggest drawback, in our opinion, was the flip-up screen--a feature that would seem especially fragile in the grubby hands of a pre-adolescent monster. The screen on Hammacher's model, by contrast, is actually built into the casing.
Unless the playback quality and other features are far superior, the eMotion seems to be a non-starter. But if our kids end up breaking other models, we may have to give it a shot anyway.