Ok, I know what most of you must be saying by now, "Great, it’s another portable DVD player, big deal". And while that might be true, Teac have at least delivered a DVD player worth taking on the bus/plane. But is it enough to make it stand out from a crowded marketplace? We think so.

Ever since the early 2000’s, a lot of cheap portable DVD players have appeared. Fortunately the $199 DVP703 is a sturdy and well designed unit and we imagine if you knocked the unit around a few times on the bus, it wouldn’t suddenly fall apart.

The best part of the DVP703, which is on sale now, is the DivX functionality of the unit. It’s being promoted as Mpeg4 on the side of the box, but were keen to point out that DivX is all part of the same video codec family. We trialled a number of DivX discs and didn’t find any problems with buffering or frame rates. DivX really makes this player so much better than ones without, especially when you consider how many DivX films you can fit on a single sided DVD.

The other great part of this Teac player is the way it can connect via the coaxial Video and Audio inputs on the side of your big screen telly. The DVP703 performs adamantly at projecting a DivX or a DVD movie with a good picture on the 40 inch plasma we tested it on. The cables are supplied, along with a car charger, so it’s bound to come in handy on those long road trips in the car.

We played a few DVD discs in the unit and found it very easy to use. The buttons are similar to a regular DVD player, it comes with a remote control and features excellent quality video playback on the 7inch widescreen LCD. It was easy to change standard settings such as video sharpness and display contrast using the menu. However, you are not able toggle the subtitles or onscreen display without using the remote, which is slightly annoying if you happen to forget to bring the remote with you.

In the looks department, the unit resembles a chunkier version of the popular Eee PC. The DVP703 is housed in a hard white plastic shell, with a couple of small speakers on board. The sound is good, though slightly tinny, and doesn’t get very loud, even when turned to maximum. However it sounded great with headphones plugged in, and it supports Dolby Digital. Unfortunately you don't get headphones, so you’ll need to supply your own.

One of the things we did wish for was a longer lasting battery. The supplied Li polymer battery is integrated into the back of the unit, and is charged while you use the unit via the AC adapter. It gets around 2 hours of playback before it shuts down. Sadly, that’s not quite long enough for a full viewing of Lord of the Rings. And don’t expect to watch Titanic in one sitting either.