Use Your Tablet PC as a Portable DVD Player

Recently as we prepared for a driving trip, my husband and I were undecided about whether to buy a portable DVD player to amuse our two-year-old for the trip. (I know that I ought to feel guilty about our plan to drug her with video, but I don't.) Our minivan doesn't have a built-in DVD player, and a quick search at Best Buy told us we'd be spending about $200 for a 7- to 9-inch portable DVD player.

In addition, we'd need to spend about $30 on a carrying case that would mount to the back of the passenger seat, since a two-year-old can't be expected to hold an expensive piece of electronic equipment in her lap without dropping it.

A couple hundred bucks is a small price to pay for not hearing the ABC song over and over again for five hours. But we weren't sure whether our daughter would even watch DVDs for that long. We thought two hundred would be a little steep if the distraction lasted only until we got out of our neighborhood.

Eventually, we hit on the idea of rigging up our tablet PC as a portable DVD player. It worked like a charm, and we only spent about ten dollars on Velcro -- although I admit, we already owned most of what we needed for the project.

What's a tablet PC?

A tablet PC is a laptop that has a special screen, input device, and various software so you can "write" on it just like you would write on a paper tablet. Our tablet PC, a Toshiba Portege M205, is a "convertible" tablet, meaning that it operates like a regular laptop but you can swivel the screen and snap it down over the keyboard if you want to use it in tablet mode.

There've been quite a few blog posts claiming that tablet PCs are dead in the consumer market and have a future only in verticals such as hospitals and the military. But I, for one, love my tablet and would never buy a new laptop unless it converted into a tablet -- especially now that we've discovered this new use for it.

Could you do this with a regular laptop?

Maybe. But you'd probably have to do some pretty fancy rigging with the Velcro, and if you didn't find a way to hide the keyboard from the toddler, she'd be pressing the buttons and stopping the video. You'd probably be better off spending the money on a "regular" portable DVD player and case.

What you'll need

Essentials include:

- A tablet PC with software that plays DVDs
- A PC carrying case that unzips into two sides
- Software to play DVDs on PC (ours is InterVideo's WinDVD)
- 24" - 36" of heavy duty Velcro (craft department at Wal-Mart)

Nice to have:

- Software to rip DVDs onto your hard drive (legally)
- Cigarette lighter power adapter for your tablet PC
- Headphones, if you're doing this for an older child

Ripping the DVDs

Even though your tablet PC has a DVD drive, it's great to be able to rip your DVDs to the hard drive to avoid "skips" when you hit bumps, and simply for convenience so you don't have to take all the DVDs with you.

According to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, it is illegal to rip commercial DVDs to your hard drive even if you own them, since you would have to break the encryption in order to rip them. However, we also have a digital video recorder (DVR) -- what can I say, we're geeks. I had made some DVDs of my daughter's favorite TV shows which were not encrypted, and I was able to rip them to our tablet PC's hard drive using a program called DVD Fab. You can download a free 30-day trial version.

Power adapter

Another convenience is an adapter for your tablet PC to allow it to be powered from the car's cigarette lighter, since playing DVDs can eat up the battery life and leave you several hours short of your destination, with no video to soothe the savage two-year-old. You can usually buy one made specifically for your tablet PC, or you can buy a "generic" car power adapter that has a regular socket. Prices for these range from $30-$60.

Instructions

1. (Optional) If you have some unencrypted DVDs, use DVD Fab or another program to rip your DVDs onto the tablet PC's hard drive.

2. Experiment with the DVD player software and your tablet PC's "orientation" utility. You want the video window to be "right side up" when your tablet screen has been swiveled and snapped down to cover the keyboard.

3. Unzip your tablet PC case so it opens fully, and you can lay it flat.

4. Place the base of the tablet PC in the case so the video window will be "right side up" toward the handle of the tablet PC case when it is swiveled. But, do NOT swivel the screen down into "tablet mode" yet.

5. Most laptop cases have velcro straps that hold the laptop in place inside the case. Slip these straps between the keyboard and the upright screen of your tablet PC, and secure them across the keyboard only. This will hold your tablet inside the case, when you hang the case from the back of your passenger seat.

TIP: If you only have one strap inside your case and it is not centered, use safety pins to attach some additional velcro strips inside your case, creating a second strap. The straps do not have to be strong enough to hold the full weight of your tablet PC, but if you only have one strap and it is not centered, the tablet PC might slip out of the case when you hang it.

6. Swivel the screen into "tablet" position so it covers the keyboard. With the velcro straps in the way, you may not be able to snap the screen into place, but this did not matter in our case. Folding the screen down close to the keyboard was good enough.

7. Ensure that you can play a DVD with your tablet PC mounted inside the case as described. Try holding the case upright to make sure the DVD still plays, before you go out to your car. If the DVD won't play, this solution won't work for you.

8. Go out to the car with the rest of your Velcro, and experiment to find the best way to securely attach the tablet PC case to your passenger seat so the screen is at eye level. We used velcro to attach the handle of the tablet PC carrying case to the headrest of the passenger seat. Then we folded the empty side of the carrying case up behind the other side, and passed another length of velcro in between the two sides of the case and around the base of the headrest.

9. Plug in the power adapter and headphones if you have them, and you are good to go.

The Pros

For us, this solution worked very well because we already owned the power adapter for the tablet PC, and the DVD ripping and playing software. We only had to spend about ten bucks on Velcro, and my daughter got to watch a screen that was a lot larger than a 9-inch portable DVD screen. (And yes, she did watch for nearly the whole five hours we were on the road -- we were amazed!)

The LCD screen of the tablet PC appeared to be visible even in strong sunlight if you were sitting directly in front of it -- at least, I didn't hear any complaints from the peanut gallery that she couldn't see. In the past when we've watched movies in "laptop mode," the heat from the PC became uncomfortable on the viewer's legs. But rigged up as described, this wouldn't be a problem. So this isn't a bad solution even if it's an older child watching movies on the PC in the car.

The Cons

We did not like the fact that we had to leave our laptop hanging in plain sight inside the van when we went into restaurants, and it was a little cumbersome to start a new DVD from the hard drive once the tablet PC was mounted on the passenger seat. But we felt like we saved a couple hundred dollars for now, and we'll invest in a "real" portable DVD player later, when our daughter is old enough to hold it in her lap and switch the DVDs herself.

The biggest downside? Now my daughter wants to watch TV in the car all the time. Oops.