Toshiba SD-P2700: Twist and shout

We first mentioned Toshiba's flagship portable DVD player back in May, but with the season of goodwill (and glorious capitalism) approaching, we thought we'd better get our hands on this Christmas contender. The Toshiba SD-P2700 turned our grumpy morning faces into smily wonders. While we've moved on to hard-drive players like the Archos AV500, we concede that sometimes watching your DVDs on the train is a mite easier than having to convert everything on your computer to DivX first. But Toshiba's player has the best of both worlds -- while its main purpose will be to spin DVD delights on-the-go, it will also play back DivX movies from CD and DVD. And that cheeky little port on the side will even play photos from MMC, SD and Memory Stick media.

The big news, though, is that this is the first portable player we've seen to output progressive-scan video to a flat-screen TV. Progressive scan is much higher quality than S-video and Scart, and it means that this is good enough for home use as well. If you decide to let the player take up permanent residence in your home, then you might also want to output Dolby Digital and DTS to your home cinema system -- this will effectively do everything a normal DVD player does.

Picture quality on the built-in LCD isn't brilliant -- there's a lack of contrast and the colours lacked the life necessary to draw us right in to Monsters Inc., but it's certainly better than Panasonic's recent DVD-LS90. It's also too big for our tastes -- the 8.9-inch screen means it'll take up a good portion of your bag. And you'll have to carry it in your rucksack, as the package doesn't come with a carry case of its own. Toshiba's portable DVD players have always come with dual headphone sockets, so you can share the movie love with a fellow passenger. And if you're the considerate sort, you can even twist the LCD itself round so that you both get to see the screen.

The player is available now for £300. -GC