Panasonic DVD-LA95 9-Inch Portable DVD Player Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this product primarily for use by my 4-year-old daughter so she can stay occupied when we take long flights.I have only used it for one such case so far, in which we flew to Mexico from Seattle, but I was very impressed at Panasonic's execution with this DVD player.(Note that there is a newer unit, the DVD-LX9, available from Panasonic that has progressive scanning technology and stand-alone speakers, but it is also significantly more expensive and probably not worth it given the typical use cases of a portable DVD player.)The LA95 basically does everything right.For example, it has good sound quality and a more than sufficient amplifier so both the external speakers and headphones actually work reasonably.(Most portable devices have lousy external speakers and some even suffer from poor volume level even with headphones.)It also has a very clean picture and I saw no instances of pixelation or other bad DVD processing artifacts as I played with the forward and reverse controls.The best thing, though, was the optional extended life battery (the CGP-H501A).It lasts for up to 10 hours of DVD play:on one charge, we flew to Mexico and back, playing multiple movies in both directions, and I used it to watch two movies while in Mexico, and the battery pack is not all that heavy or obtrusive.If you're looking for a very strong portable DVD player, you will definitely not be disappointed if you purchase the DVD-LA95.Just be sure to purchase the extended life battery (there is an H502 also, but that has a *lower* life than the H501 - get the H501) and you might want to pick up a headphone jack splitter so you can have more than one person listen in with headphones.

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Product Description:
Panasonic's DVD-LA95 offers the versatility of a portable DVD player alongside the performance of a sophisticated home-theater component--and you can use it as both. The player handles DVD-Video, high-resolution DVD-Audio, and DVD-RAM playback--as well as standard and recordable CDs, including MP3-encoded discs. Its slender chassis holds a massive, 9-inch widescreen (16:9) LCD screen and a built-in rechargeable battery (good for about 2.5 hours between charges).
Designed to take full advantage of both audio and traditional video DVD formats, the DVD-LA95 delivers the immersive six-channel surround sound of the DVD-Audio music format. DVD-Audio offers super high-fidelity (192 kHz/24-bit) sound, in both multichannel and stereo. Because the DVD-Audio signal is too high-resolution for the digital converters in current surround receivers (and also as an anti-piracy measure), the DVD-LA95 performs its own decoding of DVD-Audio signals, passing high-resolution analog, not digital, audio to your surround receiver. This means you'll need an audio/video receiver with multichannel analog-audio inputs to appreciate this feature.
Audio features include DTS and Dolby Digital decoding with 5.1-channel analog- and digital-audio outputs, built-in stereo speakers, and Dialogue Enhancer for DVD movie viewing (which boosts the center-channel level by 6 dB during playback of Dolby Digital 5.1 discs, since most of the principal dialogue is channeled there). Advanced Surround Sound (VSS) simulates surround effects from any two speakers or from headphones. Other features include chapter preview, high-speed smooth-motion scan in forward and reverse (up to 100 times normal speed), repeat mode, title/chapter search with marker function, skip forward/reverse, auto power off, and resume play.
In addition to playing favorite DVD movie and music discs, the DVD-LA95 also plays video recorded on DVD-RAMs. DVD-RAM lets you record high-quality MPEG-2 video on DVDs, offering fast data transmission, speedy random access to chapters, and rewritability up to 100,000 times.