Panasonic DVD-LV70 7 in. Portable DVD Player

Since moving to the fringes of the Chicago urban sprawl, I have had to deal with a 1-hour, twice-daily commute. To mitigate this horror, I received permission from the family book-keeper (my wife) to buy a portable DVD player.

In the past, I've tried to use my laptop for DVD entertainment on planes and trains. This has been cumbersome for a several reasons. Today's high-powered laptops generate many BTU's, and get my lap more than a little toasty on the train. Also, no doubt related to the waste-heat generated, the batteries rarely last for a full two hours of DVD play. In my case, the laptop, spare battery, and accessories are also an inconvenient weight to be lugging around, especially through the airports of the world.

For all these reasons and more, I wanted to get a more dedicated-use gadget for my entertainment. In my research, I had a few parameters to consider. Number one, battery life; it must be able to play all of movies like "Das Boot" (ie, minimum of 3 hours play time on one charge). Number two, I have to happy with the image quality at close range of about two feet (60cm). Three, I will be carrying this player to & from train stations every day, so it must be light & compact.

For battery life, I was unable to find any player that came close to the 4.5 hour rating of the LV-70. All others, including higher-end Panasonics, seem to emulate the laptop lifespan of 2-3 hours. Professional reviewers tested it to a consistent 4:50 of playtime at a '0' brightness setting (on a scale from -5 to 5). I use this setting as well, and experience similar play times. As is the case with most (all?) players, the charger is built in. One unfortunate thing is that the battery cannot be charged while a DVD is playing. This means that I can't both recharge the battery and watch a movie while on a long stopover at an airport; I may have to *gasp* read a book!

If you stay in the 5-7" screen size range, then most players have the same form-factor and weight; the LV-70 has a 7" screen and is about the size of two Pocket PC's placed side-by-side. It's also a quite manageable 1.5 pounds (with the battery attached). Without the battery, it feels like a little over a half-pound.

When considering screen size, I recommend 7". 5" is suffcient, bit a little small for extended viewing. The 9" players are too large for me to consider, since portability is a concern of mine, and they have close to laptop-size cases. 7" seems to be the perfect fit for this device category, and of course the LV-70 has such a screen. No bad pixels, sharp picture, good color. The decoding has yet to produce any blocking or artifacts (with one exception in 16:9 'stretching', noted at the end of the review).

The sound is of at least equal importance as video in a good player. The built-in speakers are kind of dinky, but good considering their size (about the size of a $0.25). Portable DVD players should all be used either with headphones, or an auxiliary amplifier (like a car stereo, if used as a back-seat entertainment system). I bought a set of noice-cancelling headphones for my personal use; I highly recommend this new breed of headphones for people listening to music/videos in settings with high ambient noise levels (see my review of the Aiwa HP-CN5 for details).
The player has a VSS (virtual surround sound) processor to 'enhance' stereo listening. The VSS on the LV70 is only for the speakers, for some reason. All higher-numbered models support headphone VSS; I can't imagine why this is missing on the LV70. It's not a really important feature to me, but it would improve the experience somewhat.

Advanced features / controls:

Aside from the ubiquitous 'headphone out' jack, the player includes 1/8" audio and video outputs, and an S-video jack. One innovative feature is an 'in/out' button that allows these same jacks to become inputs to the player, to allow it be a monitor for other video sources (digital camera slideshow, camcorder, etc).

The actual controls for the player are on the right-hand side of the lower half of the open clamshell (ie, where the keyboard would be if this were a laptop). The controls are simple, with the traditional on-screen controls. Shuttling (variable-speed fast-forward and rewinf) is smooth. Menu navigation is simple. Some controls (VSS, monitor mode) are managed via a small LCD screen in the bottom panel. This is ok, except that the LCD is unlit, and in darkened lighting it can be difficult to know what it is saying.

Regarding 'monitor modes', there are four modes for rendering the picture to the 16:9 ratio screen. These include a an unstretched 4:3 mode (black sidebars), a horizontally stretched mode, and a vertically stretched mode. With an anamorphic DVD, all modes play very well. A non-anamorphic DVD in mode 2 (horizontal stretch) causes some rather annoying horizontal pixelation problems; this is the one configuration that I am unsatisfied with. I do not know if this is a problem with the rendering algorithm or an LCD-display problem which would be present in any player.

The player can handle most popular media formats: DVD, VCD, and CD-R burned VCD & CD. Sorry, no mp3 playback.

All in all, I am very happy with my purchase; it has made my (non driving :) ) travel much more relaxing. I am actually looking forward to this evening's commute since I will finally get to see "Rashamon".

This is the best portable DVD player for the money.

(Final note: at this time, there is a mail-in offer from Panasonic for a free carrying case an noice-cancelling headphones, good for purchases from 9/1/02 through 1/31/03)