The DVD-LA95 Palm Theater from Panasonic is light, small, ultra-slick, and very expensive. Luckily, when you buy one, you get the added bonus of being rocketed into the 22nd century.
The DVD-LA95 is going to start hitting store shelves this October, and when they do they're going to carry a $1,299.95 price tag. As cool as the unit is, that's a pretty hefty price to pay for an average person to watch movies. It will definitely keep the kids occupied in the back seat, but for that price, so will a laptop with a DVD player built in.
As far as portable DVD players go however, this is the one. It's the first that can play a variety of formats including DVD Video, DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM, CDs, MP3, CD-R, and CD-RW. It features a wide 9-inch LCD screen that tracks movement accurately, delivering movies at 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios (regular and widescreen). It's also got a built-in rechargeable battery that takes about 3 hours to charge and delivers about two hours of power. Just plug it in and it recharges itself.
The DVD-LA95 is forward-looking in its aesthetics. It's silver, weighs just over two pounds, and folds up to fit in a briefcase or backpack. A glowing, blue joystick punctuates the tight rows of buttons and the remote looks like the Silver Surfer's surfboard. It comes wrapped with a vacuum pack that we recommend keeping. Compared to the player's sleek looks, the packaging's dreadfully ugly, but it does provide some measure of safety against breakage.
Because of the overall design, we chose to watch movies with the same forward-looking aesthetic. We watched "Ghost in the Shell," "Wizard of Oz," "Dune," "The Pokemon Movie," "Akira," "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon," and "Metropolis." Ultimately, the animated movies without a lot of detail looked the best. The black-and-white movies looked all right, and the color movies looked the worst. Traditionally, LCD screens have had trouble tracking the movement of live-action color video. Yet the DVD-LA95 did a pretty decent job, so that even though the color movies looked worse than the black and white, they still looked acceptable.
One great thing about this is its sound. It features DVD-Audio, 6-channel surround sound, at 194kHz/24-bit audio DAC. It also has an optional two-channel mode in case you don't have six speakers. This mode makes its sound good on headphones or computer speakers. Unfortunately, there are no volume controls on the remote. If you want to change the sound levels, you have to do it on the main unit. The remote would have been a lot more useful with the volume controls built in.
There are two sets of controls, the controls on the remote and the controls on the player itself. There's a joystick on the remote that makes moving through the menus on the main screen a lot easier. The glowing blue joystick on the front of the unit looks good and works well. The controls allow you to do everything a DVD player should do, as far as searching through chapters, moving through scenes, and so on.
This terrific portable DVD player, LCD screen combo has audio and video outs so that you can hook it up to most televisions and get 5.1 surround sound. Except for the lofty price tag and the fact that there aren't volume buttons on the remote, we can't fault it for much. It's a class act.
Pros: Style
Cons: No volume controls on remote; pricey
Product: DVD-LA95
Company: Panasonic
Price: $1,299.95
Available: October
Category: Portable DVD player
