Panasonic DVD-LV75 7 in. Portable DVD Player

Picture yourself sitting on your couch, in front of a 50 inch Widescreen television, watching a DVD, with speakers set up for surround sound. Now, imagine that you can take all that, and put it in a drawer, or a briefcase. Sound impossible? "Nonsense!" you say. Well, it would have been a few years ago, but since the addition of Portable DVD players, you can now.

The Panasonic LV-75 DVD player is not the first of it's kind, but it's likely to be the best of it's kind.

The Video:
For a portable DVD player, the video is amazingly sharp. I'd have expected less from this, well I did expect less, and I was pleasantly surprised.
On the DVD player is a feature that changes the size of the picture on the monitor. There is the DVD's Default screen size, which is either fullscreen, or a much lesser 4:3 size into the 16:9 monitor (1). Then you could stretch the left and right sides to the edge of the screen (2). Next you could zoom in on the picture, but this dramatically kills the sharpness, and the splendid resolution (3). Or you could have the monitor off, and just listen to the audio (4).
Also on the DVD player is a feature for the brightness of the screen. This is a pretty obvious feature. If the screen is too light for you likings, darken it, and if it's too dark, lighten it.
The Color Feature is also there. This is feature is less obvious than the brightness one, but still quite obvious for it's purpose. You can turn the color down so it's almost black and white, or have it filled with vibrant colors.
The three past features I mentioned (Color, Brightness, Screen Size) are on one single button labeled Monitor on the control panel. You toggle each one by pressing the button again, changing by pressing up or down on the directional pad.

The Audio:
The two speakers that this player is equipped with are nice, but not perfect. After all, they're two small speakers. But for what they are, they're nice. You would enjoy the audio a whole lot more, if you were to wear headphones.
The Virtual Surround Sound (VSS as I'll call it in the rest of this review) is a neat thing. First, there's two different VSSs. The first is with the player's speakers, and the other with headphones. And, there is two settings for VSS. The first is what the manual says is the Natural Effect, and the second is Emphasized Effect, and thirdly VSS could be turned Off. I do not know what those mean, but you can clearly hear a difference between the 3 of them. I can't say what changed, but you can tell there is a change.

The DVD Player's Panel and Others
Control Panel
I already discussed the Monitor button, which changes the screen size, brightness, and color, respectively. The VSS button I've covered as well, which changes the audio ever so slightly, but enough to know it's been changed some. A return key is here, which I haven't pressed a single time. The Display button is also here. This will bring up the Panasonic Display Menu, and I will cover this in a little bit. Top Menu and Menu, these'll take you to a menu on the DVD. Some DVDs have more than one menu, some don't. Just to be safe, Press Menu. Obviously, if you were to make a DVD player, you'd have the play controls easily accessible from the main unit. And, not to worry, Panasonic did so here. They've also got a directional pad, so you can navigate through menus, and an Enter key, so you can select items in the menus.
The Plugs
The plugs available in the back are a headphone jack, a 5.1 channel audio out (two plugs for this), a single plug audio out, and my favorite, S-Video out.

Panasonic's Display Menu
This is standard with all panasonic DVD players, I believe. It's a menu that comes onscreen, and you can change things on it. You can change the Title (I've never been able to do this), Chapter, Play time (it'll jump to the exact second you plug in here), the audio channels and which language you want, angles, set up a loop, set up bookmarks, and change the VSS.

What is included in the box (besides the dvd player:
The Battery Pack
A battery pack which slide-locks underneath the player, will allow about 3-4 hours of playback. You can get 7 hours if you have the screen turned off (IE if you plugged it into a larger television. And, it only takes about 5 hours to recharge. There is a small LCD next to the control panel and it will show you how much battery power is left. I've read other people have the battery life is too short, but for 3-4 hours, you could watch a movie like Gettysburg, and be able to watch it all. Or, if it's available on DVD, watch the Sorrow and the Pity, a 265 minute long documentary on WW2 (Mentioned in Annie Hall). So that's not a short battery life. If you couldn't watch a single movie, even a 1.5 hour long movie, that would be short, and insufficient.

The Remote Controller
When you thought nothing could be thinner than the DVD player, they give you something like a remote controller, which is about a third of an inch thick. It has 35 buttons on it, and can do anything the control panel can do, and then some. I will mention the control panel in a little bit, but right now, remote controller. From the controller, you can change the VSS setting, the Angle (if it's available), the Audio, or Subtitles. You can stop the movie and go back into the menu, you can turn on the panasonic Display screen. There's Power, play controls (stop, pause, search forward, search backward, skip a chapter, reverse a chapter) and a directional pad for the menu, and a numerical pad for whenever needed. The last keys I haven't mentioned are labeled as so: "Action", "Play Mode", "Return", and "Cancel". There, that's 35.

AC Adapter
Self Explanatory. You can plug it into the wall to save battery power. Or, you plug it into the wall to recharge the battery.

Video Cables (RCA style)
You can plug them into the back, and you'll be able to play it onto a larger television set.