Sharp DV-L70U 7" Portable DVD Player
A very impressive piece of technology
The portable DVD player is a marvel of technology, and the Sharp Moviegoer is an excellent example of the genre.  Although it is very much a luxury, it's something that any movie-lover or fan of gadgets would love.  At the  moment there seem to be three main options for portable DVD players, and I  considered them all before deciding on the Sharp.  They are: the Panasonic  Palm Theater, the Pioneer LC-10 and the Sharp DV-L70U Moviegoer.<br />The  Panasonic is the most popular, easiest to find and also the cheapest  (especially given recent price reductions).  It is also a nice size, but  the trade-off is that you only get a 5&quot; screen, which is a bit on the  small size.  I was able to try it out at a local electronics store, but  wasn't that impressed with its performance when using non-anamorphic discs  (those not enhanced for widescreen TVs).  I found that &quot;zooming&quot;  the image to fill the screen resulted in too much pixelation, and  stretching it also resulted in some noticeable distortion.  Given the large  number of non-anamorphic discs out there, I found that unacceptable.<br />The  Pioneer has a 7&quot; screen and is at a similar price, but from what I  have heard, it is somewhat large and heavy with the battery.  Thus, I  decided on the Sharp.  I am quite pleased with my decision, with a few  minor exceptions.<br />First of all, I am very happy that I decided to go for  the bigger screen. Although the 2&quot; difference between the 5&quot;  screen of the Panasonic and the 7&quot; screen on the Sharp may not sound  like much, it really does make a difference.  The screen seems almost twice  as big to me.  It is a very good quality screen (and Sharp is famous for  their LCDs).  The colors are vibrant and bright and I found no  &quot;dead&quot; pixels or other imperfections, although it did seem  slightly brighter towards the bottom.  There are several controls that you  can use to adjust the color, brightness and tint of the LCD as well.<br />I  was also pleasantly surprised at how well the unit handles non-anamorphic  movies.  I didn't find a big difference in picture quality with these  discs.  There are several options for viewing non-widescreen enhanced  movies.  You can display them with no modification at all (showing black  bars to either side of the screen), you can stretch the image with the  &quot;stretch&quot; and &quot;smart stretch&quot; options (which distort  the image a little by stretching it horizontally to fill the screen, but  don't really result in a loss of picture quality) or you can  &quot;zoom&quot; them, which means that you digitally resize the picture to  fit the screen.  This last option resulted in the same sort of pixelation I  noticed on the Panasonic, although it was slightly less noticeable.  One  last option that may not be immediately obvious is using the image zoom  option.  This allows you to zoom in on one portion of the screen (and there  are three different levels of magnification).  This is fun to play with,  since you can see small details with surprisingly little pixelation.  But I  also found that using the lowest level of magnification zoomed the image on  1.85:1 letterboxed discs just enough to fill the screen.  This resulted in  almost no pixelation (as opposed to the &quot;zoom&quot; viewing option I  mentioned above) and you only lose a small portion of the image on the  sides.  In any case, there are plenty of options to play with -- which one  you choose is largely a matter of personal preference.<br />The unit itself  is good looking, with a high-tech brushed aluminum look.  It is  impressively thin and light without the battery.  With the battery it does  become a bit more bulky (about the same size as three DVD cases stacked),  but is still relatively light.  My only complaint about the esthetics of  the player is that the battery connects to the unit with an external cord.  You can see this in the images that are available on this site, but I  didn't really notice it until the player was here in front of me. I found  this to be a somewhat inelegant solution, and it stands out a bit when  compared with the otherwise excellent design of the player.  One other  small complaint is that despite the large number of buttons on the unit,  there are several features that are only accessible via the remote (the  most important being forward/reverse search, slow motion and zoom).  The  remote itself is also fairly large, which does limit its portability a  bit.<br />Battery life actually seems slightly surpass Sharp's claims of 3  hours -- you should easily be able to finish any movie with plenty of time  to spare.  The recharge time for the battery is a bit long (5 hours) and  the battery also doesn't charge when you are using the player.<br />A few  random features that I liked: optical digital output so I can record  mindiscs digitally; the ability to use the LCD to monitor an outside source  like a TV signal, a camcorder or video game; adjustable backlight that you  can also turn off when connected to a separate TV; the unit will also  output DTS and Dolby Digital signals to your audio equipment.<br />Despite a  few minor flaws, I think the Sharp is the best overall player on the  market, and anyone looking for a portable player should give it a close  look.