8.7" Portable DVD player?
 

Wow. Being bored, I was looking for information/reviews for Sharp's new 8" portable DVD player, the DV-L80U, when I came across Press Release for the new Sharp DV-L90TC. This portable DVD player features a huge 8.7" screen, a 4+ hour battery, Dolby Headphone processing, an SD (secure digital) card slot for viewing digital photographs stored on SD memory cards, and a VHF/UHF television tuner. Watching television on a portable DVD player? What a great idea!

The player, apparently, is just being introduced into the Japanese market at this point. Hopefully it'll find it's way to the United States sometime in the future. At 138,000 Yen (approximately $1,150 USD), it looks like this machine will be incredible. I'm also sure that online discounts will make it considerably less expensive. Even the DV-L80U, with a MSRP $1500, can be found for 1/3 that price online.

Here's the Press Release if you're interested:

http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/010620.html

Wow !! Looks quite impressive. This news makes my decision that much tougher. I've really had my eye on the Toshiba SDP-1500 or the SDP-1000. I'm guessing that it may time to throw one of the Sharp models into the mix.....

Only negatives I see are no component video out and no progressive video.

Nice to have would be an 8VSB tuner so it would pickup the local digital channels instead of analog.

I hope the increased pixel count makes it look better than the Toshiba 1500 does today. Can't wait to see it up close.

Mowork: Yeah, I know how you feel. Buying any other model right now with that coming out seems like a bad idea to me. There's no way the picture quality could be bad, and even if it doesn't turn out to be the best out there, unless it absolutely terrible, I don't think it would matter too much to me with all the other stuff it has going for it. I wonder how big these things are going to end up getting? Any larger and they won't be very "portable" anymore. :)

True, any larger and your talking lap top PC. Although I'm sure the picture quality wouldn't compare?

Laptop screens are larger but the pixel count should make the portables win out IMHO. I've seen enough dvds playing on laptop screens and I think the portables are (or will be soon w/ this sharp model) better.