Sylvania SDVD7040B-RB 7 Swivel Screen Portable DVD Player

The item was described as refurbished but when I received it it does not appear to have a very low volume. The item comes with a car charger but no way to put the item hanging in the car. It also says that it has a remote but there is no remote inside the package.

I bought it for my special needs son. It's pretty durable to withstand his rough handling.

Product reviews can be cross-posted on other products so let me say that this is a review of a recently purchased (Feb 2016) refurbished Sylvania SDVD7040B portable DVD/MP3 audio and video player.I ordered a refurb for $21. It looks to be new. I bought it to play mp3 from CD but it won't really do that. That was a major disappointment but since it cost so little, I'll keep it for the other things it can do. For mp3 files on an optical disc (optical = CD or DVD), it will only go into its "browser mode." The "browser mode" is severely limited. In that "browser mode," you can view the files and you can select one to play, but you can't go fast forward and you can't go fast backward. Isn't that wierd? So, for mp3 on an optical disc, you can play a file but it must start at the beginning and play to the end of the file. That's rough on me since I use mp3 mostly for audiobooks and audio podcasts. I'll often need to re-enter the file at the spot where I left off in a 38 minute file but that browser mode won't let me fast forward to pick up where I left off.Most of my stuff is archived on CD and DVD so this little Sylvania SDVD7040B player really let me down. Now that I go back to look at the operator's instruction pdf, I see that it does exclude mp3 from optical disc features. It's just so inconspicuous I didn't catch it. I've used many digital devices but I have never experienced this discrepancy. I just didn't expect it.However, if you put those same files on a flash drive, it will then allow you to choose what it calls its "music mode" for rendering the files and you can then select a file, and play it, or fast forward it, or fast reverse it, and whatever. It will go forward and reverse up to 32x and that's useful for getting back to where I left off last time.It doesn't show any metadata information (ID3 and such). It does display 16 characters of a file name. Strangely, though, it sorts according to the DOS 8.3 file name that Windows hides from you. So, when you load your flash drive up with files using your computer, your list of files on the flash drive will be properly alphabetized in Windows because Windows is showing you the long file name using the Joliet file naming scheme. But, when you insert that flash drive into this Sylvania SDVD7040B, the files list will be jumbled up and out of sequence. That's because the Sylvania will be sorting the files according to the DOS 8.3 file name that Windows hides from you. The Sylvania will show you the first 16 characters of your Windows long file name but it has sorted the files according to the DOS file name and they will be out of sequence as a result.You can fix this with free 3rd party software. My Honda car has a similarly afflicted media player so I discovered a work around a long time ago. The one I like is called DriveSort v 1.223 . You put the files on your flash drive then run DriveSort to fix the short DOS file names to correspond with the long Joliet file names of the files on your flash drive. DriveSort will show you the DOS file names. You must sort each folder separately using this utility. You old DOS people remember the tilde?You can avoid this problem altogether if you rename all your files with DOS 8.3 file names but who wants to do that? I don't. My archived podcasts have file names that are over 150 characters long so that the topics, hosts, guests, and other information are all in the file name for me to search and browse. I'll keep the file names as they are. I'll put them on the flash drive. I'll use DriveSort to rename the short name to match the alphabetical order of the long file names. Then, the little Sylvania SDVD7040B will show me the files in proper order and play them in proper order. It will only show me the first 16 characters of the long file name, though.The flash drive port is USB 1.1 but that's good enough for what you need to do. It's got a SD slot. But, that means old-style SD where the limitation was 2GB. I haven't tried any SD cards in the player so I don't know if it can do SDHC or SDXC. I haven't had time to test the flash drive size capability. I know that I'm using 8GB SanDisk Cruzers that have a little over 5.3GB on each and the player is having no difficulty addressing and playing files from them.The instruction manual says it will do XviD video. It actually works with DivX and XviD. It doesn't care. I have tried XviD, DivX, and DX50 FourCC codes and they work fine from both optical disc and flash drive. This Sylvania SDVD7040B must have been made before the disputes ruined our lives. (Note that current LG players, however, will only do XviD and that means they will NOT do DivX unless you use a software utility to change the FourCC to xvid.)

I bought this "used like new" from the Amazon warehouse and it matched the description perfectly. It is solid and put together well and the screen is nice and clear. One design flaw that bugs me is the fact that there is no exterior volume dial. You have to press and hold on the Stop button down to lower the volume or use the remote. You press and hold the play button to increase the volume. The problem though is every time you turn the unit off and back on it defaults to the highest volume level so you have keep lowering it down every time you turn it on. Other than that it is a solid product and works well.

We purchased this particular player because it had 4 stars however our remote doesn't work and we have yet to get a DVD to play even though it's been charging for a bit. Anyone else have this problem? We will try again in a few hours and return it if it doesn't work.

Has black spots on the front screen so the picture looks bad.

This was exactly what I expected at a very reasonable price it is true they make better ones but not in this price range so if you want a portable DVD player for the car or to use occasionally this will get the job done I found both the picture and sound to be good and I am very satisfied

I bought this and the Philips PET741B (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OVBE0LY) at the same time. Both were refurbished, and same price of $40. The Philips one would freeze and skip at random times, whether it was a DVD or an audio CD. Some time the Philips would play fine, but when you rewind (hit the |<< button), it'd play the same part of video that it's just played, freezing and skipping all the way. The Sylvania handled every disc without a problem, fast forward or rewind, doesn't matter as it just keeps playing. The Sylvania's issue is its volume. It just doesn't play loud enough. If it's sitting one foot away from your face, the loudest setting is fine, for the one person that's watching. I was intending to use this in a classroom to play audio CDs of Chinese teaching material to my student, so it'd be a bit of challenge for everyone to hear it loud and clear. But this player is the one that can play every disc I threw at it. I'll make do for now while keep searching.The Philips plays noticeably louder, and it uses an analog wheel/dial for the volume, very easy to use. The Sylvania uses the Play and Stop buttons that double as the volume up and down. You press the buttons once for Play and Stop, you hold the buttons down for changing volume. It goes from 0 to 20 (at 20 it barely match the Philips at 2/3 of the dial). The Philips doesn't have a remote, while the Sylvania does. But the buttons on the machine of the Sylvania don't duplicate all the functions on the remote, so don't lose the remote (and there is no on-board storage for the remote). The Sylvania also has the ability to play material from USB flash drives and SD media cards, and spin its display around to face the other way or close the lid with the display facing out to resemble a rather thick tablet (the buttons will be all hidden under the display so you'd have to use the remote).I'll keep the Sylvania and return the Philips. I might have to bring a powered speaker with me to play CDs on the Sylvania, but at least it *plays* everything fine. That part is dependable.