Home > Consumer Reviews > Sharp DV-L70U 7" Portable DVD Player

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.

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" 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 "zooming" 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.

The Pioneer has a 7" 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.

First of all, I am very happy that I decided to go for the bigger screen. Although the 2" difference between the 5" screen of the Panasonic and the 7" 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 "dead" 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.

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 "stretch" and "smart stretch" 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 "zoom" 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 "zoom" 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Awesome player for the gadget minded. I've also tried the Pioneer PDV-LC10; it too has a 7" screen. Both are great machines, but the Sharp has better picture resolution. The buttons and button layout are definitely not very well thought out on the Sharp though. There are a few basic functions and a button for a Graphical User Interface (not too useful), but most of the common functions you will uses are on the remote (a fast fwd on the unit should have been mandatory), which is the size of most common TV remotes (not too portable). I liked the slim Pioneer remote much better. If I can find a universal remote as slim as the Pioneer's remote, I am ditching the Sharp remote. The great thing about the Sharp (other than its image resolution) is the batter. The battery attaches directly under the unit and only adds about 1.5 cm to the height of the unit and absolutely none to the depth or width of the unit. The Pioneer battery pack adds about double that and seems much heavier. Without the battery pack though, the unit is an incredible 2.75 cm thick (approx. measurements). I still give this unit 5 stars though. As a portable unit, you want to see your DVD movies with the best quality possible. With its 7-inch TFT LCD screen with approximately 337,000 pixels, Sharp delivers in spades. Its sound is also decent through the built in speakers, but use a good pair of headphones and you won't miss your home theater. On an airplane, just watch heads turn when you pop in your favorite movie and enjoy. If you have the bucks. This is definitely worth looking at.

I recently picked up this product at Sam's Wholesale Club on a closeout sale (they weren't selling to well). I picked it up for the ridiculously low sum of $640! Well, after salivating over the product for months and not wanting to drop over a thousand bucks on a decent one, I was pumped! I tried it out immediately and was amazed at how well it displayed movies. You can take it anywhere and it I have found the battery life to be over Sharp's claims. I got about 3.5 hours out of it. The screen is much better than the screens on competing models (ie: Panasonic, Sony, Pioneer), believe me, I've checked them all out! It hooks up really easy to a TV too. My favorite feature is it's size, or lack there of. I can pack it and a ton of movies in a space slightly larger than that of a CD player and CD's in a case. Oh, you can also use it to play CD's. I use mine for both and personally think the sound is better than my CD player. The sound is another great feature as its speakers are awesome in their quality. But, if you really want surround sound, pick up a good set of headphones. In closing, this product is a must have for travelers with extra dough to drop as it performs multiple roles (home DVD player, CD player, portable DVD player). Just think of it this way: wouldn't it be nice if you had something like this on a long flight? You could just sit back and watch everyone else around you turn green with envy! So, do yourself a favor and buy this unit!

I do agree that the sharp is a superior unit to the Sony, Pioneer, & Panasonic, though not by as much as most, but be aware that the battery life is definately shorter than the panasonic and pioneer.

Even more annoying is how fast the Sharp's battery bleeds energy after about two hours, so it's almost pointless to carry more than one battery.

I bought extra batteries direct for my Pioneer and my Sharp, and with S&H the Pioneer's came to 152.00 and the Sharp came to 310.00. That's right, two hundred and seventy-five dollars for a new battery.

Lastly, the Sharp has a silly non-standard adapter plug, which makes third parties jobs very difficult; A serious ramifacation of this for frequent flyers is that xtend makes airplane power plugs for both the Panasonic and the Pioneer, but not the Sharp. Just something to think about.

I have spent a while reading different reviews on different portable dvd players want to share my findings and why I believe the Sharp DVD-L70 is the best. A while ago I bought a Panasonic L10 which was good, but when the Panasonic L50 was released, I upgraded to this model because the screen image looked a lot better and films were more enjoyable. The problem I have found with the L50 was visible horizontal scan lines. The visible scan lines did get on my nerves after a few weeks of watch films (forget about watching in zoom mode unless you want an epileptic fit). Now I have upgraded again to the Sharp player. I find the 7" screen a lot better for watching films and the sound through Sharp's small speakers are, in my opinion very good. I do have a couple of gripes about the player though, 1. The pixels are larger on Sharp's TFT panel and even though it has 337,000 of them compared to Panasonic's (L50) 280,000, the Panasonic's TFT image is sharper and doesn't show jagged edges on objects or diagonal lines. 2. The Sharp player should have all of the features on the remote made available on the player. One thing that really bothers me was that there was no resume button on the player. On the Panasonic player when you pressed stop/start, it resumed. On the Sharp player, you can press the Resume button on the remote but not through the play button on the player. If this is not the case, can someone enlighten me? My conclusion is: If you want a player which offers the best (non-blocky) image and don't mind scan lines then buy the Panasonic L50 (be warned that this player gets very, very, hot). If you don't mind a slightly blocky image then buy the Sharp player. I have, and have no regrets. I believe this is currently the best player on the market and prices are coming down. You could always wait until manufactures bring out the new models after Christmas in early 2001, which have 8", screens as these may be better, but who knows?