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Samsung DVD-L1200 12" Portable DVD Player

Samsung DVD-L1200 12" Portable DVD Player

List Price: $1,199.99
Your Price: $999.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not worth its price
Review: Bought this unit so that my young daughter could watch her favorite dvds during airplane trips.

So far, this unit does everything that it advertises. Excellent picture clarity, good quality, and overall performs well in bumpy situations. It has two earphone jacks so I can watch Wiggles with her (if I must), and has all the other features one expects from a dvd player.

However, the best feature of this player is that I don't have to do a thing when my 4 year old daughter wants to watch a movie. It's light enough that she carries it around in her Barbie shoulder travel bad, and the controls are simple and familier enough that she can set it up, turn it on, get to the main menu, and play. Try that with a laptop (and I have the small Sony TR3A). All I do is sit there and grin.

Only downside it that even with the headphones, on particularly noisy flights, the volume does not go up high enough to overcome the rather heavy ambient noise found in airplane cabins.

But, my daughter doesn't seem to mind that much, and she enjoys using this thing thoroughly, making for very relaxing trips.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Simple Player
Review: Bought this unit so that my young daughter could watch her favorite dvds during airplane trips.

So far, this unit does everything that it advertises. Excellent picture clarity, good quality, and overall performs well in bumpy situations. It has two earphone jacks so I can watch Wiggles with her (if I must), and has all the other features one expects from a dvd player.

However, the best feature of this player is that I don't have to do a thing when my 4 year old daughter wants to watch a movie. It's light enough that she carries it around in her Barbie shoulder travel bad, and the controls are simple and familier enough that she can set it up, turn it on, get to the main menu, and play. Try that with a laptop (and I have the small Sony TR3A). All I do is sit there and grin.

Only downside it that even with the headphones, on particularly noisy flights, the volume does not go up high enough to overcome the rather heavy ambient noise found in airplane cabins.

But, my daughter doesn't seem to mind that much, and she enjoys using this thing thoroughly, making for very relaxing trips.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great player except when viewing brighter movies.
Review: I purchased this DVD player for my daughter for airline flights. We currently own the Panasonic DVD-LS5 and decided to upgrade to a 12 inch model. The problem is that my 17 month old daughter can only sit still watching a show called Boohbah and doesn't like watching it on the 5" monitor. We noticed when running it on our 15" laptop, she was fine. So, we got the 12 inch model. When I put in the DVD, the picture is was way to bright and straining on the eyes. All other DVD's look great but when it comes to certain movies with bright colors, the colors are exaggerated like stated in another review.

"The picture quality suffers from bad black level. Imagine watching a movie that takes place in darkness and instead of the night being black it's gray. I tested a couple of CGI animation and it looked too bright that everything looked washed out. Significant lost of detail was obviously lost in bright scenes. Picture adjustments didn't work too well. Low light settings were way too low that a lot of detail in the picture was lost. Inside light settings provided the picture more sharpness and brightness but edges were exaggerated. Outside settings provided more color to the picture but looked unnatural. Standard was the best picture it provided."

All in all, it's a great player. Just can't watch movies with bright features.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Why not buy a laptop instead?
Review: If you're looking for big screen size, for same money get a laptop with a 15" screen...and everything else that a computer has to offer over just a DVD player.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Best Portable DVD Player you can find
Review: This is no doubt the best DVD Player you can find, my favorite feature on this player is that the screen is 12". It also playes CD's and there are speakers for it that are really nice. The reason i took a star off is because it is missing a couple features and it is pricy.
Here are some facts/Things about this amazing DVD Player:

in the box: DVD player, battery pack (affixes to back of player), AC adapter, power cord, credit-card remote control, remote battery, composite- and S-video interconnect cables, stereo analog audio interconnect, user's manual, and warranty information:

Screen size: 12.1 inches
Display type: TFT LCD
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Resolution: Information not available
MP3 playback: Yes
Progressive scan: Yes
Playback formats: DVD-Video (NTSC), DVD-R, red book CD, audio CD-R, CD-RW, MP3 CD, JPEG CD
Includes memory slot: No
Includes radio: No
Built-in speaker: Yes (2)
Quick play: No
Antiskip protection: No
HDCD decoding: No
Video DAC: 10-bit
Audio DAC: 96 kHz, 24-bit
Signal-to-noise ratio (video): 68 dB
Signal-to-noise ratio (audio): 110 dB
Dynamic range (audio): 100 dB
Headphone jack: Yes (3 jacks, .125-inch each)
Resume: Information not available
Hold: Information not available
Headphone volume control: Yes
Remote included: Yes (credit-card-sized)
Batteries: Included
Battery life: Information not available
Aspect ratio control: Yes (and screen inversion for upside-down mounting)
Multi-angle viewing: Yes (with applicable discs)
Black-level adjustment: No
Chapter preview: No
Custom bookmarks: No
Frame advance: Yes
Still/freeze frame: Yes
Forward/reverse play: Yes (including 2x audio while scanning)
Karaoke: No
Multilingual support: Yes
Parental controls: Yes
Picture zoom: Yes
Reverse-frame step: Yes
Slow motion: Yes
Audio outputs: 1 minijack .125-inch stereo analog (left/right), 1 digital (minijack coaxial)
Audio inputs: 1 minijack .125-inch stereo analog (left/right), switchable with output
Video outputs: 2 (minijack .125-inch S-video and minijack .125-inch composite-video)
Video inputs: 1 (minijack .125-inch composite-video), switchable with output
Surround-sound output: Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel passthrough
Simulated surround sound: Yes (Spatializer)
UPC: 036725612006
Item length: Approximately 8.25 inches
Item width: Approximately 12.5 inches
Item height: Approximately 1 inch (closed)
Item weight: Information not available
Warranty: 1 year parts and labor

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not worth its price
Review: This is the best portable player out there? Really? I owned this for about two weeks and decided it wasn't worth its price.

The DVD player comes neatly packed inside the box with all its accessories mention in the specs except that it comes with a soft leather case. The player has a huge display at 12.1" and looks like a laptop when closed. The design is thin and light and can easily be carried around while watching. The gray finish is sleek and looks high-tech but when viewed on bright light the finish looks cheap reminds me of a bad paint job at an auto shop. You can tell around the CD lid the paint is rough makes it look cheap and it also looks like some dirt or dust got in while in the process of drying the paint. Samsungs logo could have looked better if they only embedded their logo in silver like what Sony always does with their TVs. I'm not sure what kind of factory they have but it looks like they better start paying their workers more and establish quality control.

The player was a little hard to open; you can't open the player with one hand. It forces you to open it slowly. The CD lid feels cheap, it sprang quickly once ejected to reveal its lens. I looked under it and saw just a thin spring that's doing all that. I imagined in the long run that thing is going to give up. The Power button is coated with chrome which was a good idea. It saves the paint from fading from over used. The only thing annoying about this button is you have to press it several times to turn it off, sometimes pushing it down for a few seconds.

The picture quality suffers from bad black level. Imagine watching a movie that takes place in darkness and instead of the night being black it's gray. I tested a couple of CGI animation and it looked too bright that everything looked washed out. Significant lost of detail was obviously lost in bright scenes. Picture adjustments didn't work too well. Low light settings were way too low that a lot of detail in the picture was lost. Inside light settings provided the picture more sharpness and brightness but edges were exaggerated. Outside settings provided more color to the picture but looked unnatural. Standard was the best picture it provided.

The sound quality sounded equalized, music and dialog sounded clear but there was little or no bass response strong enough to scare you on scenes with guns or explosions. Samsung could have provided a small bass module if they could not fit it in the player's thin body. Not even the headphones could deliver good bass and I was using a studio monitor headphones. There is an audio output so you can hook it up to your Home Theatre setup but who the heck wants to do that on a 12" screen? Good for playing music though. The player's mp3 file supports only 8 characters which is ridiculous. you probably have to rename every file to make it readable on the menu.

You could plug in your game console to this player or plug in your video camera. Samsung provided jacks but not adapters. You can also use it as a stand alone DVD player but no progressive output. Only the built-in screen has this feature. You can view still images in jpeg format. The slide show lags reminds me of an old 486 computer. quality was okay but not better that my LCD monitor on my desk.

Now for the worst part this player still has problems with subtitles. I read some reviews that this was also an issue on their previous models. I looked in the players menu and found that there was no option to turn this off. Options are Automatic only and numerous foreign languages to choose from as a default for the players subtitles to display automatically upon inserting a DVD. Now what's really weird about this is it only happens when the player is plugged in an outlet. But when it runs on battery subtitles remains off. Go figure. A design flaw or maybe just a Korean thing since this player is made in Korea. The Koreans figure it will be very convenient for them since many of them don't speak English. They could have made a Korean version and a US version.

The player plays everything as stated in specs. It doesn't support Video CD. I called their support if there was a firmware that can fix this but the guy responded "NO" and he said it's being phased out. It's too bad if you have a collection of adult movies on VCDS you won't be able to watch them or hard to find titles not on DVD.

I just hope Samsung is listening and fix these problems if they want to be the best. But if you can live with these issues then you will be very happy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Big Screen Viewing in a Portable
Review: This portable DVD player is incredible. The 12-inch screen is a great size, and the picture is crystal clear. Amazing resolution. The surround-sound is also high quality whether listening through a headset or through the speakers. One thing that was a pleasant surprise is that there is a great case included with the DVD player. I don't see that listed anywhere on the specs. Now I know that some would say that this is so big and pricey, why not go ahead and get a laptop. Well, for one thing, I don't see many laptops in this price range that have this quality picture or sound. Plus, if you are in the market for a portable DVD player and you really want to be able to see the picture and enjoy the sound, this one is wonderful. 12 inches. What a great size screen. The adaptable lighting feature is very good, too. It adjusts for four different lighting situations to allow for the best possible picture. I am very happy that I bought it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally a DVD player with a screen big enough to see!
Review: We tryed the smaller Portable DVD players but the screens with anything under 10" are a waste of time for detail. This portable changes that, the picture is great. There are four options for display brightness level and it seems we find the display level we like for the movie feature we are watching on this machine. It's pricey but you really get to watch the movie! very happy with the unit! It came with a plastic case to store the player but I wish I could get all the assorted paraphernalia (charging cables, TV hook-up wires, etc.)that came in the box into the storage case as well as I find this stuff gets scattered.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awesome Player
Review: When I got this player I wasn't expecting a lot. But when I popped in a disc pressed played, I was totally impressed. The sound quality coming from the small speakers is the best I have ever heard form a portable player period. The sound is crisp, clear, music sounds amazingly clear, and the presence of vocals are excellent and never distorted on high volumes. The 12.1" high resolution screen has the best picture quality I've seen in a portable. I'm a very picky guy when it comes to picture quality this one impressed me greatly. It has four adjustments for different lighting conditions which worked very well.
Colors are rich and natural and very bright reminds me of a plasma display.
For this price it's worth it. You won't find a better quality even from a laptop, even the highest models I've seen won't match the quality of this unit both sound and picture. The build is pleasing to the eyes. The design is well thought of. The player supports every major format except DVDRAM no biggie. No one hardly uses that format anyways. It also supports Super Video CD. Plus it comes with a soft dark gray leather case, what a surprise that wasn't mention on the specs. My 11 year old son is constantly asking me to borrow it. Everyone is happy! My friends keeps saying "Cool" Wow! how much is that? If you're shopping for a portable DVD player and looking for quality get this one you won't get disappointed. This player is a keeper


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