The display screen is clear and is much nicer than the 5" screens, with the battery attached the screen can open far enough to be comfortably viewed while on your lap or table. The sound quality is on par with a small transistor radio, a good set of headphones will give much improvement. Set-up is easy and trouble free, but the remote control provided is not neccessary unless you plan on hooking up the player to a T.V.

The lithium battery provides an average of 3-3.5 hours of play time with a full charge, with 6 hours needed to charge the battery when needed. A spare battery will cost another $55-$70 dollars depending where you buy. Also included in the accessories is an adapter to run the player on 110 volt power or from a cigarette lighter.

As of date my player has over 50 hours of use with no problems, the only negative I would give is maybe about the sound quality, but overall I have been happy with my purchase.

Works great for me (Rating: 4.00)
Review : The only reason I am leavening a review is because I started looking into it for a friend and started reading all the reviews and some made it sound bad.
Now I've owned my Initial 1731 now since Nov03 and it has worked great. Picture is darn good, speakers are nothing great but with headphones it sounds great and in the car I hook up my irock FM signal transmitter (any Radio Shack 29$) and play it over the car speakers and talk about surround sound.
I've had none of the problems that others on here have mentioned. Maybe if you want this to be a work horse DVD player for you. You might want to spend the extra money. But for my money and usage this is a great buy. I gave it only 4 stars out of 5 because it would have to be perfect in everything to get a perfect score. I've never found anything to be flawless. So for me this is about as good a score as I could give it.
Sure the motor makes a little noise when you first start it maybe 5 sec after that I can't hear it unless I turn the volume off. And then you have to be in perfect silence. Headphones are cheap so that little thing doesn't bother me. Plus I've got about 5 pairs that have come with other things that I don't use because they sound bad or are awkward.
With any kind of electronics you have to take care of it for it to last.

1-year and still going (Rating: 4.00)
Review : I purchased this model for my daughter for Christmas 2003 and we've had no problems. It works as well as the day I purchased it. However, I suggest you purchase the warranty, just in case. These items can be fragile. I'm going to purchase the same model as a Christmas present for my niece this year.

Cheap (Rating: 2.00)
Review : We purchased this player about a year ago and have taken it on many trips. Overall, everything worked great but the motor is very loud. Also, it is now broken and will not play with the car adapter. The small metal piece that connects to the car adapter is loose and in order to fix it, we would have to open up the whole player and sauter the piece back on. It would cost more to do that than just to go and buy a new one. I am going to purchase a brand name because essentially, you get what you pay for.

Car Trip Lifesaver (Rating: 5.00)
Review : We were a little apprehensive about buying this DVD player after reading some of the other reviews. We decided to take a chance, because of the great price. We took an eleven hour car trip with a two year old, and we survived! This DVD player was perfect. We did not store our player in a padded holder, instead we figured out a way to keep the dvd player cool by placing it in front of the air vents. This player never skipped a beat! The only complaint that I have is that I had to watch the same three Dora episodes over and over again. Now I can sing all of the songs in my sleep :)! I would highly recommend this player to anyone on a budget. Just keep the player cool, and I think you will be fine!

Good for what it does and what it costs! (Rating: 3.00)
Review : We have had this unit for about two weeks, and have just returned from a car trip to Boston, where our daughter used it in the car (with optional headphones), and we used it every night in our hotel room thru the TV set's RCA jacks.
A fully charged battery lasted through one full DVD in the car, and we used it on AC in the hotel room. While the video on the internal screen isn't spectacular, it is usable, while the video thru the TV was perfectly acceptable. Contrary to other reviewers, you can set "bookmarks" to return to specific scenes, however, the menus are not very "user friendly." The remote is handy, however, it would have been nice to be able to shut off all power AND be able to control the volume of the TV.
We have not yet tried using the external DC power cord in the car, but I'm sure that it works as specified.
It will probably save us it's price in DVD rentals, or room charges, when we travel!