My Friend Has a Very Cool Toy

[neadods]

So, someone who shall remain nameless because I don't know if she wants her name on this post, came over yesterday for general Whovian squeeing and to show of her nifty, nifty new toy: the Mustek MP100 portable DVD player.

The portable DVD player with enough battery juice to get through even a Bollywood movie.

Which plays .avi files. Even if burned on CD instead of DVD.

And has RCA output jacks so we could watch .avi files on the TV instead of clustering around the computer screen. (See icon. See three people squeeing madly over woman in icon kicking all kinds of booty.)

Oh, and after a little googling, proves to have a very simple hack.

Waaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnt!

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, playing the .avi file format is good, but there's more to a/v media than just that. What codex are installed on it and is it possible to upgrade or install others? Most of the Who-related things use DIVX for the video format and some varient of mp4 for the audio.

Actually, a quick google says is does support DIVX built-in so at least for the stuff you get (as far as i know), it would work.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

First thing we tested it with was a Confidential burned onto CD. Worked perfectly, which is when I started drooling. We also dropped in one of my Region 2 DVDs with no problem. (The Bollywood stuff comes on Region 0 DVD, bless 'em, so that ought to play on anything.)

[tiggerallyn.livejournal.com]

There's a COBY DVD player I picked up at Hechts' a few months ago. Dirt cheap--ten dollars, I kid you not--and it handles damned near everything. No hack for other regions. PAL to NTSC conversion on the fly. Frankly, I was shocked, but I don't question these things. Ten dollars for a multi-region DVD player that handles anything thrown at it? I'm not complaining. :)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

SWEET!

It's the playing of avis that's really making me drool with this one. My friends are tired of being invited over to cluster around my monitor. :>

[jennetj.livejournal.com]

It plays .avis? WANT! That's the one thing I've been saying I needed - a way to play my copious AVIs on my TV instead of my PC.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Exactly why I'm drooling over it, and we've tested the theory. Beautiful picture. Pity we both missed the pre-Christmas Best Buy sale, but Amazon.com seems to have it for a not too unreasonable price for a portable.

If you get one, email me. I've got the hack written down.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, I bought an RGB extension cable to hook the computer up to the TV (which has said input; i could have also used an RGB to S3 conversion cable).

but when rendering the computer input into the TV it only gets me "normal" and "wide", so i end up with black bars across the sides as well as the top and bottom. clarity is beautiful, but i just wish i could see the whole screen.

actually, I *really* wish it was easier and not so time-consuming to convert the divx avis to dvd-vobs to be able to archive them and share them with mom, yada yada...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I *really* wish it was easier and not so time-consuming to convert the divx avis to dvd-vobs

And now there's this "pando" in the mix, just to make things even more complicated.