We’re planning a long road trip and I’m looking for a way to let the kids watch a movie in the car. We used to have a portable DVD player which broke down, and I’m reluctant to buy a new one, because I’m pretty sure there’s a cheap digital way to do some watching. What do you recommend?

Interestingly, we still have a DVD player we cart around, but given a choice, I would go for a digital media player. My phone is pretty good at displaying video, but you can get devices with a bigger screen that lend themselves to the task at hand in a much better way.

One such device is the ViewSonic VPD400 4.3″ Portable MovieBook. It’s a Portable Entertainment Centre that’s currently on sale from Buy.com for $60. It’s a pocket-sized device that can play HD videos on it’s inbuilt screen, or even on an external TV if you wanted to. It has 8Gb of internal memory and also takes a Micro SDHC card. It supports a range of different formats and the internal battery lasts up to 12 hours if used for audio, or six hours if used for video.

It’s a great option if you can get one, and I’m sure your family will be thrilled to be able to play with this little gadget. Have a great road trip!