LG DP781 8-Inch Portable DVD Player

I am so glad we purchased this player. After reading reviews I wasn't so sure. It has a nice picture and easy to understand buttons that even my 4 year old has figured out. We bought it for a 5 hour airplane ride back East with our then 2 and 3 year old. It worked great. You can't hear the sound on an airplane. You have to use headphones, which is the only courteous thing to do. My kids wouldn't keep the headphones on so they just watched it. Since they are videos they have watch a zillion times, they don't care about the audio. We have used the player in our rental minivans on several trips, I bought a case that hangs between the seats. You could hear the player just fine. We have used the player on 3 subsequent plane rides. We have also used it to hook up to motel televisions to watch movies. Last month our old DVD player hooked up to our second TV in the house quit. Instead of buying a new one since we may go Blu-ray eventually, we hooked up this player to the TV. It works awesome. This little player has been through lots of things and it still works as well as it did when we bought it.

While I certainly concur with other reviews that this unit has a great picture, I cannot get over the fact that no reviews I read mentioned the poor volume. You cannot hear this player. When I was in the room alone, with the volume at its highest point, I could hear it fine. With other people in the room -- occasional chatter, movement, etc -- I couldn't hear it, could not turn it up to the point that I could hear what was being said. The worst moment came when we went on a trip and none of our kids could hear a thing, not a thing, in any of the headphones we own or even without headphones. They could hear nothing in the car on the highway and absolute silence while on the plane. We tried different DVDs, then I called LG, as I thought we received a unit with a problem. Surprisingly I was told that this particular unit is not very loud. That's it. I was stunned and of course we returned it. What good is a great picture if you cannot hear it? If you are planning to use this unit anywhere that may have background noise, beware, you will have a very hard time hearing it.

I bought the LG DP781 Portable DVD Player in July 2008, and had high hopes after all the good reviews. I am disappointed with the unit. The picture is not bright or pleasing and worst of all the volume level is very poor. You cannot use anything but expensive noise-reduction headphones on an aircraft. You cannot hear a thing through regular headphones. Also, the unit does not respond well to the set top controls, and you must use the remote constantly. I do not know if there are DVD players out there with more volume level. If there are, buy them, and not this machine. I am returning it for this reason.

Great picture. Sound is okay in low noise environment. However, even with headphones, it was difficult to hear with other noise around, i.e. other tv sounds, outdoor sounds, people talking, etc. Also noticed that it depends on the film, as I found that some movies were harder to hear than others. Other minor drawback is that due to the high gloss around the control panel, it left a lot of fingerprint smudges; Easily wiped with a soft cloth. For the price and excellent picture quality, I highly recommend.

Before I buy any item, I do my research so that I am making a choice that is based upon knowledge of the product and how it stacks up against other similar products. It's a matter of being happy with my choice. Sure, it means spending time comparing and weighing out the plus's and minus's but in the end, I feel it is a worthwhile investment of my time. I'm thankful for the unbias reviews from customers of those products. When people spoke of this unit, they commented on how sharp the picture was. I too was impressed when I first viewed it. At times I thought that it might be a little too good because now I could see the amount of makeup on an actors face whereas before, I could not and that was a good thing! But now I willingly sacrafice these little nuiances to see a clearer version of nature which is almost always a part of the movies I enjoy. The only negative is the inabilty to move quickly forward and reverse, frame by frame. You can only "jump" forward or backward or go very slowly in either direction. Other than that, I think this player is quite excellent and would recommend it to my family, friends and those in search of a good, portable DVD player. Enjoy!

I agree with the other purchasers who criticize the lack of sound volume. I purchased this device to use while traveling, and you can not hear the sound (with Sony headphones or with the integral speakers) when there is background noise. Therefore this unit is useless for my needs. I'm up for any suggestion on how to increase the sound level.

I researched many different portable DVD players and settled on this one for two reasons: 1) the USB port, 2) Why not get an 8-inch screen? I read reviews of possible audio problems with this player but haven't experienced any problems. I think the audio problems dealt with the volume when you didn't have headphones plugged in. But the reason you get a portable DVD player is to watch in on a long road trip or on the airplane. So why wouldn't you use your headphones? Based on this reason I can't complain about the audio output. It has two headphone ports which is very convenient. The menu buttons have a touch screen functionality which is very sexy. It comes with a remote, but you'd have to be extremely lazy to use a remote when you have your portable DVD player two feet in front of you. Nevertheless the remote works fine. The battery life was at least 5 hours. The screen rotates all around where you can close the lid with the screen facing out. A very nice feature if you'd want to attach it to the back of a car seat for any back seat viewers. The only knock would be the USB port. I got it so I could copy my digital copy of The Dark Knight onto a flash drive and then play it on this portable DVD player. This did not work. I do not believe this player has the capability of reading whatever kind of file a digital copy is because it could read other files. But in any case, this has been a top notch buy.

This was a great looking machine and extremely compact. I have to agree that the picture quality was very good, but the volume was low even at the highest level using a headset. The battery life was short, as it usually lasted for just about 2 hours before it needed recharge. However, the clincher for us is that it died 8 months into service (may be used 20 times max). So comparing the pros and cons of my personal experience, I cannot recommend this player, as I read the reviews before buying and it seems to be a luck of the draw for how well this dvd player may work.