I made sure that before I left the DVD player was fully charged and ready to go. While everyone hit the beach, I stayed back, sat on the deck and watched an old classic flick, Full Metal Jacket. The audio sounded loud and clear and the picture on the 10”, 180 degree swivel LCD made some of the “basic training” scenes look as if they were jumping right out at you. The swivel screen also allowed me to move the screen in several different ways in order to dodge the glare from the sun. However, if I tilted the screen a certain way, I wouldn’t get as good a picture as if I had left it flat and didn’t tilt it at all. The unit also comes with two headphone jacks in case you and a friend are on a flight and both of you want to watch the same movie without disturbing the others around you. The battery life lasted about a movie and a half long. I was a little disappointed at the fact that I had to stop and pause the movie to plug the AC adapter in to watch the rest of the movie.
The MP100 also has several picture- and music-taking playback features that require special mention as well. These features include playback of MP3 music and JPEG images, as well as DivX, XviD, MPEG-4 and AVI files. There is also a slot for an MMC/SD memory card and a USB host. Pictures from the beach that day that I had transferred from my SD card to the DVD player did not look as clear as some of the images that I had seen while watching Full Metal Jacket. However, the kids enjoyed looking at themselves acting silly.
Being the in-car electronics guru that I am, I was really happy with both the carrying case and in-car headrest protective case that allows you the ability to watch movies and view images while sitting in the backseat of your car. The kids really enjoyed watching SpongeBob, and it kept them quiet for a little while at least.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t as impressed with the MP100 as I thought I would have been. My roommate showed me a smaller portable DVD player with a 5.8” swivel screen that was much more portable and easier to move from place to place. He actually thought at first that it was a laptop computer until I told him otherwise. However, it does what it’s supposed to do and does it pretty well. Leaving the beach and heading home is always difficult, but the Mustek MP100 definitely made it a little more bearable, especially for my usual backseat driver who of course shall remain nameless. yy
