A couple of summers ago our family took a driving vacation, spending nearly two weeks in the car traveling from Boston, Massachusetts to Raleigh, North Carolina, with many stops in between. In our bag of tricks for keeping the kids amused, among the books, coloring supplies, snacks and toys, we packed two portable dvd players and a stack of movies.
While the players worked great in the car (and two years later are still going strong), they are a little unwieldy when we hit the road using other modes of transportation – as we did this past spring when we took the train to Philadelphia. Cords get tangled, CDs get scratched, and space in small backpacks is at a premium.
Next month we're taking the kids on a cruise, a trip that will include planes, trains and automobiles (before we get them on the boat), so I began considering alternatives to the DVD players. I thought about buying each of them an iPod so they could watch movies – but found the idea of spending $149 per child for an iPod nano (the smallest iPod-item that plays movies) to be a little daunting, even if it is for Christmas.
Then, I noticed an ad in the Rite Aid flyer for a 2 GB Craig Video Player which looked suspiciously like my iPod. According to the flyer, the item (which was on sale for $39 with a $10 rebate) could play MP3 files plus videos. It also had an expansion port which allowed me to add more memory.
Which got me thinking – is a cheap video player worth the money? My husband tried to do research about the player, and was less than reassured when the Craig site didn't even list the player as one of it's products. But my thought was that if it could play videos, then it would be worth the money, because at the very least, the players would allow us to determine if our kids were ready for the responsibility of ownership.
And, I wouldn't be too distressed if they kids lost it, spilled something on it, or accidentally dropped it overboard.
I ended up buying the players, and gave one a brief test. It was able to play un-protected movies (ones we created by ripping the video from movies we owned with a program like Handbrake) but couldn't play movies we bought through iTunes. I'm not sure about the durability, since I had to hide the player until Christmas.
Have you bought a "knock off" video iPod? Was it worth the money? Did it last very long?
We have Disney Mix Max Video, they were on clearance last year for about $30 since they were Pirate of the Carribean theme.
We have used them a lot for trips and use PocketDVDWizard to convert unprotected videos to the Mix Max format. Plus sometimes you can pick up the mix max movies on SD cards fairly cheap online or on clearance.
Ours have held up great and they have been dropped several times.
Looks like Walmart still has the Mix Max at a pretty good price:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11995651&findingMethod=rr
I am in the same situation pretty much – I bought a couple of knock-off mp3 players at Kohl’s on Black Friday to give to my older girls for Christmas this year. They play music and videos, and as a bonus they’re pink and ‘look like’ iPods. I haven’t tried them out or even opened them yet so have no idea about the quality, but at $20 each, I figure it’s worth it to see how the girls manage with them and if they last for a little while then I’ll be happy. Good luck!