Portable entertainment

Portable entertainment was the department for audio and video that leaves the living room. Car and marine head units, headphones, boomboxes, clock radios, pocket players, and portable DVD players all hung off this menu. Those old rows open this page.

Car and marine

A car stereo is a chassis size, a wiring harness, and a dash kit. The common single-DIN slot is a rectangle about 2 inches tall. Double-DIN is about twice that. The harness adapter has to match the car, or the constant-power wire and the switched wire get swapped and the radio forgets its presets. Marine audio adds corrosion: different speakers, a covered head unit, and tinned wire. A car speaker on a boat fails at the terminals.

Headphones and pocket players

Headphones on this shelf ran from earbuds to closed over-ear sets. Impedance is the figure that decides whether a pocket player can drive them. A high-impedance studio set sounds faint on a small player. Portable DVD players are a screen, a slot or a tray, and a short battery. Region codes on the disc still apply. Clock radios and shortwave sets were listed beside them because they are small and self-contained, not because they share a part with a DVD player.