It seems the fashion these days is for ultra-slim DVD players, combination VHS units, and portable units with a built in LCD screen. So when online retailer Merconnet offered a budget portable without a screen for our beady little eyes to give the once over, we thought it might be worth a closer look.

Shipped with three phono leads for audio and composite video, but with no SCART adapter, and both a UK 12V mains supply plus an optional bundled car adapter, this is clearly aimed at those of you who want to have a spare back-up unit which is easy to transport for a DVD-less friends house or on holiday, and maybe even use with the cassette deck of a car for MP3 playback on long journeys.

However, costing under the £40 mark, it might equally suit someone who just wants a unit for the bedroom with an incredibly small footprint.

Supporting both DVD-Video, VideoCD, MP3 playback and regular audio CDs, the latter two entirely usable via the build in LCD display and buttons, this covers all the basics, and should fulfill your needs unless you require DivX playback too. It also works fine with DVD-Rs and CD-RWs, so you can use it for those family films or perhaps home made movies you have lying around the place.

The remote control is basic, but may just offer enough unique touch points to identify the most important buttons without looking. Powered by an included watch style battery, the buttons also glow in the dark, which makes it ideal for use in a dark bedroom or living room.

Speed wise, this thing is quick, very very quick. Navigating menus is a dream, almost an instant process, but the trade off is the noise it makes when browsing them. However the trade off is a slight vibration noise when the main movie plays, but this may not be that audible with your average movie background noise.

Another nice touch is the ability to enter the setup menu directly from the remote, regardless of what you are playing at the time. Important for various video features we'll mention later.

In the setup menu, you can specify the on screen display language, in addition to default languages for audio tracks, subtitles and menus, including the option to default subtitles to off as well.

For those with children, they can password protect content so only things safe for children, or teenagers if you prefer, is viewable. Again this is a useful feature that is on nearly all units, and helps to increase the market for this type of player, since it can easily be installed into your child's bedroom due to its size.

It includes a 3.5mm jack headphones socket with volume control, phono outs for both analogue and digital audio, a phono output for composite video, and the welcome inclusion of an S-Video output as well. However no cable is included in the box for either the S-Video or digital outputs, you'll have to get those yourself.

SCART is missing from both the unit, which isn't a crime, and the connectors that ship with it, which probably is. However you can buy cheaply an adapter which will serve your needs, it is just a shame that something which retails so cheaply isn't bundled.

The nice dampened top loading DVD drive, overly transparent and ugly infra-red sensor, and extremely cheap and nasty power switch finish off the player. The latter thankfully being made pretty redundant by the fact that the remote includes a working standby button.

But due to its standard outputs, and standard DC input, you do get a multi-region unit that you can take pretty much anywhere in the world if you are going on holiday.

Okay, so this doesn't compete with a very expensive unit which has all those wonderful tricks to help improve image quality and remove posturisation. But for the price, it is well above some units which retail for £20 more. Colour is pretty accurate, details are there, this really sets the bar for entry level units.

Unusually for most of the DVD players we have seen, you can adjust the hue, contrast, saturation and brightness from within the setup menu, which is an excellent option considering this is designed to be moved around a lot between various output devices.

Also supporting picture CDs, if you have JPEGs on a CD-R you can view them on it too. Keeping with the portable theme, this lets you show your holiday snaps to any poor relative who owns a TV. In fact the manual states you can browse JPEGs, MP3s and even WMAs all on the same CD-R, although we couldn't confirm the latter.

You can rotate JPEGs which is an excellent feature, and it also gives you thumbnails too which is a real bonus. If you have a digital camera, this is a great option for showing off the results if you cant be bothered to output them to a printer.

Conversion from a PAL source to NTSC is excellent, and very watchable even when it comes down to pans, although why you would want to do this beats us. However going from NTSC to PAL is not so good, but admittedly a harder job to do. Watchable for anyone who has no choice, but if you need to do this a lot, looking elsewhere may be more worthwhile.

Alas no PAL60, which is a shame, as switching between this units NTSC and PAL playback you really notice the difference in colour quality. This doesn't really output a great NTSC signal, saturation is all over the place whether it is composite or S-Video. Watching sections of The Matrix which are supposed to have a green cast, look far too warm.

Talking of S-Video, the difference in quality between this and composite is great, the former producing much sharper images, as you would expect it to. Perhaps the inclusion of an S-Video cable too would have been nice, and we are sure any buyer would do well to get one along with a SCART adapter that takes both this and composite inputs.

The Dynamic Range option will suit those who watch on very poor speaker setups, such as those inbuilt into a portable TV, and also anyone watching things late at night. It lets you hear that quite dialogue without turning the volume right up, just before a large explosion kicks in and wakes up the rest of the family or your significant other.

Another neat addition is the downmixing to virtual surround, admittedly a gimmick for most, but might be fun for some who still only have common stereo systems. Again more likely if you are going to use this in the bedroom.

The MP3 playback is typical for a budget unit, giving you about the bare minimum folder browsing options. Although it does let you pause and play a title, the current playing time is only indicated on the LCD display and not onscreen. It does however support scanning forward and backwards, which is very unusual for this price range. A few dedicated units selling for more than this don't offer the feature.

If you want something very small for the bedroom, or heck even a portable player you can take to other people's houses and show off family photies or home movies, you could do a lot worse than to buy this unit.

This unit is on sale currently from Merconnet.

Robert John Shepherd

	Build	Picture	Sound	Features	Speed	Value	Overall
	7	8	7	8	10	8	8