Shinco PMP-1700 40GB

Big screen, but not necessarily better.

One of the problems with the new wave of portable media players is that they generally have pretty pokey displays. That's certainly not the case with this model from Shinco as it boasts a large seven-inch widescreen LCD.

The player can be used for watching movies in DivX or XviD formats, listening to MP3, WMA or Ogg music tracks and viewing JPEG pictures. Files can be held either on the built-in 40GB hard drive or on memory cards inserted into the multi-format card reader. Annoyingly, though, the player has to reset itself every time you plug in a card.

There's no software supplied for converting movies into DivX, so you need to be pretty techno-literate to be able to do the job yourself. The upside is that you can store around 60 full-length movies in the DivX format on the built-in drive.

However, the player does have a number of problems. For starters, although the screen is relatively large, it's not particularly sharp and has a poor contrast ratio. Also the user interface is pretty basic and annoyingly you can only fast-forward through a movie at a single, relatively slow, speed. Battery life is pretty anaemic, too, at just 2.5 hours.

If you were thinking of purchasing a portable DVD player rather than a video jukebox, this unit might persuade you otherwise. But, you'll have to be prepared to put up with its quirky operation and so-so screen for the privilege of being able to carry around a lot of movies in a relatively small package. Unfortunately, not an easy choice.