Rating: 
Summary: Good value / performance - terrible durability
Review: After 6 mos of use
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Though it has been carefully taken care of (special DVD player case, minimal movement, low usage) the player has ceased to read most DVD discs. At first, it had issues not being able to read the occasional widescreen DVD and now I'm lucky if it will read one disc out of 10-15 (mind you most of these discs are either rentals from Blockbuster or are brand new and all play fine in my home DVD player). Not sure what is wrong but good luck getting in contact with Initial. Maybe that is what the name represents - that it will work 'Initial'ly but then fall apart. Stay away from this company and this quirky, now useless, DVD player!My initial reactions
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The initial 8" portable DVD player is a good value for the money as it's one of the least expensive 8" players out there. The connection from the battery to the player is a bit odd as there is a separate wire that you need to connect from the battery to the player (as opposed to most laptops and other electronic devices where the battery has contacts which connect with the device when the battery is attached). Also, the clips which hold the DVD in place on the spindle don't fit as one would expect since a 'normal' load of a disc will only engage two of the three clips leaving the DVD at an angle and unreadable to the player. The last thing to note is that this is one of the louder portable DVD players out there. It doesn't bother me at all, but it's something to note. Lastly, but probably most importantly, wide-screen DVD's dont use the entire screen for some reason. I tried fiddling with all permutations of the screen adjustment through setup (remote) and directly on the DVD player itself but no matter what combination of options I use I can not get the image to fill the screen without using zoom. All in all, my gripes thus far are fairly minor and the Initial has a bright, widely viewable, screen and fairly easy to understand controls with good volume. At the end of the day I'd still recommend it to others, but don't expect something as technically polished / well-designed as a Sony or Samsung-type product.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for road trips
Review: Bought this for an upcoming long road trip and for future plane travel. Absolutely fantastic. Love the car power adaptor. It has many more options (zoom using the remote control, input video from a cam corder, plays cd's or mp3s) than I imagined and especially for the price. The picture quality is great and the sound quality is better than I thought, especially on head phones. I've had no problems with skips or any malfunctions. Only two semi complaints - one: be careful, it gets hot. If a young one is going to put it on their lap, put something underneath the machine. two: if you are using the battery, there is no way to check on how many more minutes it has till it runs out of power. All in all, pretty happy.
Rating: 
Summary: Remote Control
Review: Does anyone know where to find a remote control replacement for this unit?
Rating:
Summary: Found Replacement Remote for Initial 5820!!!
Review: First of all, let me just say that I have owned this unit for about a year and a half and I have never had a single problem - although the battery is getting a little weak I think. I currently use it to play DVDs and MP3s. I have found that you NEED the remote control to do many functions that are not available on the main unit. While listening to an MP3 for example (or probably even a CD or DVD), you must have the remote in order to 'fast-forward'. The controls on the main unit only allow you to 'skip' to the next file. Anyway, I travel a lot, and LOST my "waffer-thin" remote control! After doing and extensive search on the Internet, I was unable to find a website for 'Initial', BUT I did manage to find a place where you can order a new remote (...)
Rating:
Summary: Great Value
Review: For the price this is an outstanding portable DVD player. As a videophile I would not give this the top rating, but I was pleasantly surprise with the product. It would be nice if it had a resume feature, and you could control the volume with the remote control. You can pay twice the price for these features, and a slightly better picture, but this unit will give you a lot of bang for the buck!
Rating:
Summary: Great Value
Review: For the price, this player is a very good value. Manufactured in China and featuring the same firmware as other players (just with different name plates - check out the Mintek DVD-1810 - including full-size home players) right down to the menus, it plays many disc formats. Speaking of formats, all those listed work great. I've confirmed it will not play WMA files. This wasn't listed on this page but neither was an S-Video output and the player has it. JPEG pictures can be rotated easily with the left/right arrow keys on the remote or unit itself if needed. As far as HDCD is concerned, I'm not sure how much can be achieved using just the player's built-in speakers. Unfortunately, at least for me, the player does not support DTS in anyway. So forget about selecting the DTS audio option on movies are playing DTS-CDs. Something most sites and "re-badge manufactures" of these Chinese players fail to mention (but should) is their use of computer type DVD-ROM drives. They may be a little nosier than standard DVD player transports but they are incredibly fast. Navigating menus is quick with minimal load times. Fast forward and fast rewind searches, while not ultra-smooth, are still much smoother than other players and act more like a computer's DVD-ROM drive. More importantly, layer changes are so quick that they are almost unnoticed, especially if you don't know where they are beforehand. The player runs very hot and will need proper ventilation. I think everyone should know about the audio/video output: it's reversible. I mean it can be made to input signals as well as output them. Think about it. With a RF modulator and a RCA patch cord (supplied with the player) this can be a small screen television. Also, the player could be used as a small screen display for video game consoles like X-Box, PS2 and Gamecube. I've had it hooked up to a VCD/CDG Karaoke player and it worked great. As for the display, I do wish it was higher resolution but for the price it is quite good. The display surface is quite "rippled" when compared to more expensive portable players and laptop computers which are truly flat (this mostly disappears when a movie is actually playing however). The image quality looks closer to 480i instead of 480p. Sharp diagonal lines produce stair-stepping, there is much pixilation in some scenes, etc. The screen's brightness is excellent but it is so bright, even on the lowest setting, an accurate black-level will never be obtained. Overall though; the image is quite pleasing, particularly when you remember you didn't pay $700+ to get it. The sound from the speakers is quite good in my opinion. If you plan on setting the volume high enough to fill an entire room then of course they will fall short. Set at an adequate level though, they are quite nice. The headphone jack is always available and works great too. I haven't tried the optical digital out despite having the proper connection and theater system for it. That's one feature I personally will probable never use having stand alone home DVD players. The remote control is awesome. It is very small and wafer thin yet has all the controls you need. One final thing, a friend of mine from Cambodia let me borrow one of his Region 3 PAL DVDs he could not play and it played in this player! I can not confirm the disc's Region 3 coding (it is listed as such on the packaging which is mostly in Khmer) but I can confirm that it is in the PAL video format. So add PAL/NTSC conversion to this player's list of "hidden" features too.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the money!
Review: Great for long trips in the car and hotel room viewing. Perfect viewing picture that is crystal clear. I would highly recommend this DVD player as i've seen alot of the other models and they don't come close in comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Help have not received it yet...
Review: Hi I would love to give a review if I had the item, have been waiting since I ordered this item on May 8, 2003, can you please let someone contact me as I am anxiously awaiting this unit. Thank you very much
Rating: 
Summary: 7 inch model freezes up
Review: I bought the 7" model and it froze up. You thump it and it goes. I exchanged it and the second one does the same thing after 3 or 4 movies. It looks like someone else had the same problem with the 7" model, but everyone who bought the 8" model does not have this problem. Could there be a design flaw in the 7" model? Other than that, it's a great value, but that is a major problem. I would consider trading up to the 8" if I thought it would not freeze up. Any input anyone has on this would be appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: Do not expect S-video
Review: I bought this player expecting to connect the S-video at times to my home system. Firstly, the S-video connection is completely non-standard.
Secondly, the company does not provide, nor to buy, an appropriate s-video connector. Instead, the technical support refers you to *buy* an adapter (that is actually a converter) from Radio Shack that supposedly converts s-video to composite. That it does, therefore losing any value from the S-video since the separate signals are coarsely combined by the converter. In fact, the s-video done with this adapter is far worse than just the regular composite output! For all intents and purposes, this DVD player provides NO useable s-video signal! If you expect to use this feature, avoid this player. Otherwise, the display is merely adequate, and not as good as other DVD portables in this low-end price range.
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