Review on Cinematix 9-inch Portable DVD Player with Extended Battery Life of 6+ Hours by Travis Rio

With one HUGE exception (hence the two star rating) this DVD player has everything you could wish for given the extremely reasonable price and plenty of extras. Exception? Very poor - and possibly incorrectly designed - sound from the built-in speakers. Headphones and earbuds reproduce a quite acceptable sound, but the built-in speakers are barely audible - especially when playing DVDs - even at maximum volume. Of course, many portable DVD players are not designed to deliver very high sound levels, presumably to minimize battery drain. Okay, that's understandable and to some extent expected. The big problem with this is that in addition to the unusually low default maximum volume, there's a HUGE design flaw. All center channel content from the majority of the films is mixed PHASELESS, which roughly compensates for the center channel's focus and further reduces its volume. This is a very important point since in most movies the dialogue is mixed directly into the center channel. At first I thought it might be intentional to provide a "virtual surround sound" trick and maybe just change it in the audio settings. And indeed (presumably for listening to karaoke CDs) there is a function to turn off the center channel. There are also optional audio settings for "LT/RT", "Stereo" and "Virtual Surround". Neither of them are doing anything to significantly change the problem. The center channel is barely audible. I've spent several hours carefully reading the manual, trying different discs, and using pretty much every combination of audio settings available in the menus and settings panels. and no joy. Of course I've specialized in selling audio and electronics for many years and I'm sure I didn't miss anything. The funny thing is that the music in the DVD selection menu sounds good (though still unacceptably quiet). But when the main function starts, the center channel switches and the volume and picture become shaky. Please note that this does NOT happen when using headphones or earbuds, only speakers. Grrr. Whatever controls the mixing of the 5.1 audio channels simply reverses the phase of the center channel. manufacturer) it's a shame and very disappointing, since the image quality is really great with good deep black values, balanced contrasts and good resolution, as well as numerous features and extras (two headphones, carrying case, car charger, remote control, etc.) d.). It even has the ability to force the correct 4:3 aspect ratio in the settings, which portable players often lack. Everything else works and works great. on the supplied headphones or your own headphones, this is a really great player and I would definitely recommend it. If you care at all about using the built-in speakers, forget it. said "great sound" or "clear picture and sound". This is puzzling. Maybe some of them came off the assembly line with a "phase-shifted" central channel, but others didn't? Hmm. I don't know. All I can say is that the device I received did NOT work. deliver an acceptable sound through the built-in speakers. I returned it.