Well known consumer electronics band Panasonic was out in force with three new portable DVD players for 2006. The flagship of these three is the $699.95 DVD-LX110, which will be available in June. Features on this pricey player include a large 11-inch viewing screen, an adjustable arm which allows for a variety of viewing angles, support for DVD video, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, +R, +RW, audio CD and video CDs, as well as CD-R/-RW discs (HighMAT Level II, WMA, MP3 and JPEG), a SD memory card slot for sharing images from a digital camera, DVD-Audio playback capability, FM transmission for playback of audio over a radio, five hours of video playback via a rechargeable battery and a center channel option for better understood dialogue from a movie.
Also in Panasonic’s line up are the $349.95, 9-inch screen DVD-LS91, which gets up to six hours of video playback and will be available in April, and the 9-inch screen, $499.95 DVD-LX97, which offers up to 10 hours of video playback and will be available in May. Both of these players offer subsets of the features found on the DVD-LX110.
Thomson/RCA:
Thomson, through their RCA consumer electronics brand, was showing off the new DRC630N. Priced at $229 and set to be available in the spring, this player sports two 7-inch screens which connect to one another via a single cable. Each screen has its own headphone jack. The player can also double as a video game system, sporting over 30 games and a video game controller.
