Life increasingly has become a series of starts and stops, of fast journeys and long waits for the journey to begin. For the movie buff, portable DVD players offer the ideal way to fill in those waits.

When choosing the best portable DVD player to meet your needs, the first questions you should ask yourself is how and where you intend to use that DVD player. Is it to be a personal time-filler at airports, or a backseat distraction for the children while you drive? Will you have access to an electrical outlet or a recharger, or will you be reliant solely on battery life? A backseat portable DVD player, with access to the car's own battery and a relatively stable screen platform, will have very different requirements from one you would like to take with you when backpacking through a different country.

Two major considerations are screen size and battery life. As many users of laptops and cellphones have discovered, portable technologies are only as useful as your ability to access them. If a screen is too small, you might as well be listening to a movie in audio-only. Without a minimum two-hour battery life and/or access to electrical outlets, you won't be able to see even a single movie to its end. Always be sure to personally test out store displays to see how you feel about a given screen size.

Battery life is a tricker thing. Laptop and cellphone research has translated easily into portable DVD player technology, and an ever-increasing number of models now offer six-hour battery life as standard. While lazy battery effect (sometimes called 'memory effect'), where batteries lose maximum energy capacity if recharged too soon, used to be very common in nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries five years ago, this problem has been completely resolved in modern lithium batteries. Much more relevant for users is the relative reliance upon battery vs. electrical outlet, as well as how long the battery will take to recharge. And of course, if you are travelling into a country with different standard voltage, be sure to take along a voltage converter.

Depending on your preferences, it may be relevant for your portable DVD player to be able to play formats beyond the standard zonal movie studio release. Check before buying to see which DVD formats the player can handle.

Backseat DVD players commonly offer two additional options: a built-in car power adapter, and dual screen capacity. The first allows DVDs to play for as long as the car is running. The second

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