So far the Customer Reviews on Amazon a very favorable for the Panasonic DVD-LA95 Portable DVD Player. With 22 5-star from a total of 39 and zero 1-star (as of Nov 8th 2010), that's a good sign that this portable movie player pleases most.
So what does the Panasonic DVD 9-Inch Portable DVD Player do?
The DVD-LA95 offers both a portable DVD player and a sophisticated home-theater component. The player handles DVD-Video, high-resolution DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM playback and recordable and standard CDs, including MP3-encoded discs.
Its holds a massive, 9-inch widescreen (16:9) LCD screen and a built-in rechargeable battery which lasts about 2.5 hours between each charge.
Designed to take full control of traditional and audio video DVD formats, the LA95 delivers the six-channel surround sound of the DVD-Audio music format.
The DVD-Audio offers very high-fidelity, approximately 192 kHz/24-bit sound, in both multichannel and stereo, and because the DVD-Audio signal is too high a resolution for the digital converters in current surround receivers, the DVD-LA95 performs its own decoding of DVD-Audio signals, passing high-resolution analog, not digital but audio to your surround receiver. As a result this means you'll have to have an audio/video receiver with multichannel analog-audio inputs to appreciate this feature.
The audio features include both DTS and Dolby Digital decoding with a 5.1 channel analog and digital-audio outputs, with both built-in stereo speakers and Dialogue Enhancer for DVD movie viewing. The advanced Surround Sound (VSS) simulates surround effects from headphones or from any of the two speakers.
Other features on the Panasonic DVD LA-95 include high-speed smooth-motion scan in forward and reverse (up to 100 times normal speed), title/chapter search with marker function, skip forward/reverse, repeat mode, chapter preview, auto power off, and resume play.
As an added bonus to watching your favorite DVD movies and music discs, the DVD-LA95 also plays video recorded on DVD-RAMs. The advantage of this is that DVD-RAM lets you record high-quality MPEG-2 video on DVDs, offering fast data transmission, rewritable by up to 100,000 times and speedy random access to chapters.
Price: 8.95
Benefits and Features:
9-inch LCD screen: Provides for a Sleek, lightweight portable DVD-Video and DVD-Audio player.
Plays: DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD, and recordable MP3 CDs.
Widescreen: 16:9 aspect ratio.
Battery Length: 2.5 hours battery life from included rechargeable battery.
Audio Stats: Multichannel analog and optical digital-audio outputs, built-in DVD-Audio, DTS, and Dolby Digital surround decoding, Dialogue Enhancer, VSS virtual surround enhance surround sound and stereo listening Improvements from DVD-LV75 to DVD.
LA-95: The fit and finish of the la-95 is much improved over last year's dvd-lv75.
Negatives:
Under the consumer reviews for this product, one "Mixed bag" Review stands out.
This is an excellent account of one users personal experience which should be read in full if you are interested in buying this product. In short, the points listed were as follows:
a) 9-inch screen, although larger, is of poorer quality than the LV-75.
b) Images aren't as sharp or as bright as older model's 7-inch screen - Consumer notes that: "the older screen is truly and engineering marvel.
c) LCD screen itself goes very dark when you try to view it from an open angle, leaving you with a smaller viewing radius - as opposed to older LV75.
Do we Recommend it?
As stated, with 22 5-star reviews from 39 with Zero 1-star and 4 2-star (as of Nov 8th 2010), what consumers have contributed to the reviews sections potentially sets the tone that most users are pretty happy with it's performance.
If your looking for a cheaper and well respected Panasonic model though, then described as the "engineering marvel" - the Panasonic LV75 - may be more your cup of tea.
