Orbit Portable DVD Player with TV, Freeview, USB, and Game (300+ Games)

P. Towle says:

Review by P. Towle for Orbit Portable DVD Player with TV, Freeview, USB, and Game (300+ Games)
Rating:
I bought one of these units for my son for Christmas 2007.

The unit was dispatched very quickly from `Allcam World of Portables’ although their chosen courier (Citylink) is quite simply appalling. They delivered it to someone half way up the road & never even attempted to deliver it here. After calling City Link many times, we managed to locate & recover the parcel!

The box for the DVD player/TV doesn’t give any indication that this unit has Freeview & quotes Model No. PTDVD-768. Having bought this unit as a present, I didn’t want to remove the outer cellophane from the box or, break the seal to check. I e-mailed Allcam & they were adamant that the unit did have Freeview. A visit to the Orbit Website underlined my concerns when I discovered that there are two version of this unit – one with Freeview (Model PTDVD-768DVB) & one without (Model PTDVD-768) No fear though, Christmas day, my son opened his present and ….. the unit does indeed have Freeview. Allcam said that they regularly get calls about this & claim that the box doesn’t use the word `Freeview’ because it’s a tradename!?! …. yet the box for my son’s unit doesn’t even say `DVB’ or quote the correct model number!

The instructions for the unit are a bit cheesy & written in pseudo English/Chinese! When first tested with a DVD, the unit made an applauding noise & wouldn’t read a DVDs. Upon close inspection, I discovered that the DVD has a very thin plastic (transport?) shield over the lens & this needs to be removed before use (…. of course, the instructions were absolutely no help here!) Once we got over that hurdle, the unit worked like a dream. The DVD motor drive is slightly noisy but otherwise ok. Picture quality is excellent.

The rechargeable battery unit (which is external & looks more like a docking unit) also provides a portable telescopic aerial. For Freeview reception this isn’t much use …. unless you’re sat on top of the TV transmitter! A 12V car adapter is also supplied.

To set up the DVB & Analogue TV channels, we plugged the unit into a good (external) aerial. Again, this all worked ok apart from the DVB which seems to place the channels in a `non-standard’ order. Although there is a channel sort facility, none of the options put the channels in the correct order (as per a `normal’ Freeview box). There is a facility to manually sort the channels, but accidentally invoke the auto setting & all your hard work can be undone in a flash!

According to the manual, the unit is supposed to be supplied with a car antenna but this wasn’t in the box.

Although you can control virtually everything via the remote control, for some odd reason there’s no remote control of the volume!! This is controlled via a very basic volume control on the side of the unit.

The unit also comes with a Games controller & a disc full of games – which my son loves.

In all, this is an excellent unit & very good value for money.

Plus points ……

1). Excellent Picture quality on DVD & Freeview

2). Value for money

3). Packed FULL of features

4). Dual headphone sockets (so 2 people with headphones can watch at same time)

Bad points

1). Poor Instructions

2). Battery pack makes unit a bit cumbersome

3). No volume control via the remote.