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>Can anyone recommend what equipment will allow me to play the
>video/DVD and have it loop continuously?


We've had great experiences with MedeaWiz DV-66 MPEG players.  We've 
had a couple on the floor in continuous use for about a year with no 
problems.  They required a little bit of fiddling when we first set 
them up (due mainly to poor documentation and an ultra-low-tech user 
interface (dip switches!!)), but once we figured out how to get them 
to do what we wanted, they've been rock-solid.

A new model, the DV-68, has come out since we bought our DV-66's, and 
it seems like a solid improvement in several ways.

Advantages of these players:

o  No moving parts (we used to go through 1-3 consumer DVD players 
per video per year, which had to just get junked when they eventually 
wore out)

o  Media is CompactFlash cards, which seem to get cheaper every day

o  The units can be set to play automatically and auto-repeat on 
power-up, and they're fine with being turned off at the breaker panel 
--> totally hands-off operation for daily turn-on/turn-off

o  Tiny enclosure (about the size of a paperback book), no 
limitations on mounting orientation

o  Good assortment of formats (MPEG-1, 2, and 4, and even jpeg 
slideshows, apparently) and outputs (S-video, composite video, and 
VGA)

o  Can be set up to respond to button selections (with optional extra 
components) (we haven't tried this yet, but plan to)

o  Relatively cheap: around $200 (not including CF card)



The only drawback we've found is that we happened to record some of 
the audio for a prototype video at too high a bitrate, and the poor 
machine can't keep up, so that audio is annoyingly out of sync with 
the video.  But that problem should be easy to solve, and it may not 
even be an issue in the new model.

More info is here:

http://www.medeawiz.com/products/Dv68.htm


I love these little players.  They do what they say they're going to 
do and then get out of the way -- my criterion for a good gadget.



-- 
~~

Allan Ayres
Exhibit Developer
Lawrence Hall of Science
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-5200
[log in to unmask]
510-642-1254

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