Panasonic's DVD-LX95

We hope everyone well recalls Panasonic's LX8 portable DVD player—it was one of the first we'd seen decked out not only with a huge, adjustable 9-inch screen, as well as such amenities as an SD slot, and TV tuner. Well, they're back with the DVD-LX95, and while the TV tuner and 9-inch display haven't gone anywhere, they've found the time to add MPEG-4 support (in addition to all those standard audio formats like MP3 and WMA) and an FM-transmitter to the mix. But it's gonna cost ya: roughly $760 US, that is.

[Via Akihabara News]

[Blue @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

I'm in the market for a 7" DVD player with at least 4 hours of battery life. On the cheap.

Anyone got any suggestions?

[gadgetman @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

http://www.circuitcity.com/rpsm/catOid/-12874/N/20012866+20012872+20012874/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do

Just CC players, don't know anything about them...

[otakucode @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

What I wouldn't give to be 12 years old with rich gadget-obsessed parents right now. That's about the only circumstance in which any of these portable media players would do me much good since I don't fly very often at all. I COULD, however, use a device about that size with decent speakers made for the car. Right now none of the car or car/portable hybrid solutions seem to fit my needs. They're either too complicated to deal with while driving, don't support the things I want them to support (audiobooks AND music... iPod comes close with a good amount of work on the users part in preparing the files... but the interface is absolutely not for while-driving use), or are just too damn small.

[gadgetman @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

http://www.deal7.com/cgi-bin/forward.pl?ID=EEEuyyFVAEybkFQqjW&Forward=http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?DPNo=545010&Merchant=eCost

$99 portable DVD player

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

MPEG-4 support in these things is really overrated... people naturally assume "it's MPEG-4, it must be like, two better than MPEG-2!" But it's really pretty much the same thing, just optimized for low bit-rate web streaming. The higher quality compression levels are not really any better; it was not created for better compression, it was created as an alternative to MPEG-2 for web use. In tightly controlled encodes at higher bit rates, MPEG-2 can actually give you better results. It's just lacking a lot of features MPEG-4 has that make it less suitable for downloading and streaming (MPEG-4 has "interactive" features, for example).

In other words, it's a good feature to have in a player if you've downloaded a lot of MPEG-4 files and want a player to play them, but it's useless otherwise... it's not like you're generally going to get better quality or smaller file sizes if you start encoding stuff to MPEG-4 yourself.

[Frangible @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

Or you could just pay $760 and get a laptop with a DVD drive and 10.4" display that will play whatever you want.

[David @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

What laptop is that, frangible? I'd be very interested in something like that.

[Galley @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

I'd rather pay $150 for a nice 8" widescreen for a slim Sony PS2 for use in the car.

[Cameron @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

I keep hearing people berate MPEG4 as 'just a streaming media codec'. If MPEG4 is just a streaming media codec desigined for the internet, then why are DirecTV, HD-DVD, BluRay, etc all using MPEG4 for High Def content? MPEG4 H.264 (not so much H.263) has been designed to scale all the way down to streaming video on a cell phone and all they way up to providing high def content. This Panasonic player is most likely an H.263 device made to play DivX/XviD content. H.263 does have some issues with high motion content, but is a decent video codec. But please understand that MPEG4 is not JUST for streaming media.

[MaxSMoke @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

They say Mpeg-4, but they don't say Divx, Xvid, and any ACTUAL codex. As us PSP owners are WELL aware, being able to play Mpeg-4 video is kinda of a blessing and a curse, since you have to re-transcode all of your video to some new format that nobody uses, like 3G video. And tools for handling that are rare.

If you want to cover some *REAL* news, why not look into the Shinco SDP1720A. It's a $300 7" DVD player that REALLY supports Divx. Shinco has a whole series of Divx/Xvid compatible Portable DVD players. You should *REALLY* check them out!


This is the only English site that sells the Shinco, at least that I know of. You can also find them on Ebay for less then $300.

http://www.allcam.biz/products/sdp-1720.html

[Diniz @ Dec 19th 2005 12:53AM]

The device really has TV to tuner? I ask this because in the official site this information does not exist.