Panasonic DVD-LS55 Portable DVD Player with 7'' Widescreen LCD

Panasonic DVD-LS55 Portable DVD Player with 7'' Widescreen LCD

Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
The Panasonic DVD-LS55 portable DVD player's slender, 1.1-inch chassis hides a built-in rechargeable battery good for 10 hours between charges--that's right, just about time enough to take in all of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The player offers a 7-inch widescreen (16:9 aspect-ratio) display whose adjustable freestyle design broadens the range of available viewing angles, making the player perfect for suddenly bright/suddenly dark airplane cabins or desktop use in an office. The player handles DVD-Video, high-resolution DVD-Audio, DVD-R, and DVD-RAM playback--as well as standard and recordable audio CDs, including MP3- and WMA-encoded discs.

Designed to take full advantage of both audio and traditional video DVD formats, the DVD-LS55 delivers super high-fidelity (192 kHz/24-bit) sound of DVD-Audio. DVD-Audio software titles offer classic music titles in both multichannel and stereo, though be aware that this model plays discs in stereo only. Most DVD-A discs have compressed Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 surround tracks, however; these can be passed through the unit's digital-audio output to a compatible surround receiver and speaker system.

Audio features also include DTS and Dolby Digital 2-channel decoding and multichannel passthrough, built-in stereo speakers, and Panasonic's Dialogue Enhancer for DVD movie viewing. Advanced Surround Sound (VSS) simulates surround effects from any two speakers or from headphones.

Cinema Mode reduces the detrimental effects of screen glare from ambient light, rendering cinematic colors in pictures that are gentle on the eyes. Further, Cinema Mode improves the visibility of details in dark scenes by automatically adjusting picture contrast. High-speed, five-step Smooth Motion Scan provides crystal-clear forward and reverse scan. At the highest setting, the unit scans at an incredible 200 times normal speed.

Panasonic's Dialogue Enhancer boosts the center channel volume--where most of the principal dialogue emanates when playing a Dolby Digital 5.1 disc--by 6 dB. Cinema Mode lessens glare, providing colors that are more cinema-like, and picture resolution that is gentler to the eyes. It also improves the visibility of details in dark scenes by automatically adjusting picture contrast, and helps to suppress color smearing as well.

This player is HighMAT compatible. High-Performance Media Access Technology is a standard co-developed by Panasonic and Microsoft to improve interoperability for digital media programming between PCs and electronics devices. HighMAT provides an efficient method for arranging digital photo, music, and video collections on recordable media.

What's in the Box
DVD player, a remote control, a remote battery, an AC/DC power adapter, audio/video cables, a rechargeable battery pack, a user's manual, and warranty information.

Product Description:
Multiple Display Angles for Comfortable ViewingThe large, bright widescreen display on this portable DVD player pivots to different viewing angles so you can adjust its position for optimum comfort and image quality.Slim and Stylish DesignIts slim profile and light weight makes this portable DVD player easy to carry around and store, while its stylish good looks make it easy on the eyes. It'll fit right in with whatever hi-tech gear you're toting around.Long Playback TimeWatch the whole movie and not just part of it thanks to the extended battery life in this portable DVD player - up to 10 hours - with the built-in rechargeable battery. For those really long car rides and flights, add an optional external battery pack and extend your viewing time even further.Listen to Many Different Music FormatsIf you're not in the mood for a movie, give your eyes a rest and try some tunes instead. This portable DVD player not only handles movies, but lots of the most popular audio formats including MP3s, CDs, CD-R/RW discs, WMA, and DVD-Audio discs.Share the Experience With a FriendTwo of you can watch the same movie with privacy using the dual headphone jacks. HOok up two pairs of headphones and watch together on a plane or in the back of the car. Even better, use the FM transmitter on the DVD-LS55 to send your portable DVD player's audio to your car stereo so everyone in the car can enjoy the show.Use It As a Home DVD Player Too

Panasonic DVD-LS55 Portable DVD Player with 7" Widescreen LCD
Average customer rating:

Thanks to mkb for - "Easy HO 3 error fix"

Had this for over a year and still going strong!

HO3 Success Story

Player was good...for as long as it worked (which was not long).

Superb battery life and a DIY fix for that dreaded H03 problem!

Panasonic DVD-LS55 Portable DVD Player with 7" Widescreen LCD

Manufacturer: Panasonic
ProductGroup: CE
Binding: Electronics

Portable DVD Players | Portable Audio & Video | Audio & Video | Categories | Electronics
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DVD Players | Home Video | Panasonic | Brands | Electronics Features | Electronics
DVD Players | Portable Audio & Video | Panasonic | Brands | Electronics Features | Electronics
DVD Players | Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics
DVD Players | Portable Audio & Video | Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics
Audio & Video | Refurbished & Used | Special Features | Electronics Features | Electronics
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Product Features:

Portable DVD player with 7-inch, 16:9 high-resolution LCD; versatile screen arm grants increased options when choosing a viewing angle

10 hours playback time using supplied rechargeable battery; features built-in stereo speakers and dual headphone jacks

Compatible with DVD-Video, 2-channel DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, audio CD, MP3 CD, WMA CD, HighMAT

High-speed, 5-step Smooth Motion Scan provides crystal-clear forward and reverse scan

Measures 7.5 x 1.1 x 6.5 inches (W x H x D)

ASIN: B0002EZ2KM

Amazon.com Product Description

The Panasonic DVD-LS55 portable DVD player's slender, 1.1-inch chassis hides a built-in rechargeable battery good for 10 hours between charges--that's right, just about time enough to take in all of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The player offers a 7-inch widescreen (16:9 aspect-ratio) display whose adjustable freestyle design broadens the range of available viewing angles, making the player perfect for suddenly bright/suddenly dark airplane cabins or desktop use in an office. The player handles DVD-Video, high-resolution DVD-Audio, DVD-R, and DVD-RAM playback--as well as standard and recordable audio CDs, including MP3- and WMA-encoded discs.

What's in the Box
DVD player, a remote control, a remote battery, an AC/DC power adapter, audio/video cables, a rechargeable battery pack, a user's manual, and warranty information.

Product Description

The large, bright wide screen display on this portable DVD player pivots to different viewing angles so you can adjust its position for optimum comfort and image quality. Slim profile and light weight makes this portable DVD player easy to carry around and store, while its stylish good looks make it easy on the eyes. It'll fit right in with whatever hi-tech gear you're toting around.With this portable DVD player you will watch the whole movie and not just part of it thanks to the extended battery life - up to 10 hours with the built-in rechargeable battery. For those really long car rides and flights, add an optional external battery pack and extend your viewing time even further. If you're not in the mood for a movie, give your eyes a rest and try some tunes instead. This portable DVD player not only handles movies, but lots of the most popular audio formats including MP3s, CDs, CD-R/RW discs, WMA, and DVD-Audio discs. Two of you can watch the same movie with privacy using the dual headphone jacks. Hook up two pairs of headphones and watch together on a plane or in the back of the car. Even better, use the FM transmitter on the DVD-LS55 to send your portable DVD player's audio to your car stereo so everyone in the car can enjoy the show5.Go from the portable screen on the road to the big screen at home-this portable DVD player does double duty as a home DVD player too. Use the A/V output to connect your portable DVD player to your TV, kick back in your favorite chair with the included remote control, and relax. It even has an optical digital audio output so you can hook it up to your surround sound receiver and play Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks.

Customer Reviews:

Thanks to mkb for - "Easy HO 3 error fix".......2007-04-18

We bought our Panasonic DVD-LS55 in Nov '04 and it lasted until Jul '06, when we finally got the dreaded HO3 error and the player stopped working. It sat in the closet collecting dust after I heard from a Panasonic tech rep how much it would cost to fix it. Before purchasing a new portable player, we decided to see if anyone else had this error and if anyone else new of a way to fix it.
That's when we found the Amazon review for the DVD-LS90 by mkb that gave step by step instructions on how to try one thing that fixed the HO 3 error on 2-3 players he worked on. We tried the procedure and it worked!!
So thanks to mkb, wherever you are. We owe you big time!
Here is what we did:
1) Find a clean place to work and the following tools: you;ll need a very small precision screwdriver set, tweezers, exacto knife, a small magnet, and canned air to remove dust.
2) Unplug and take out the battery for safety. Remove the 12 screws on the back of the player. I used the small magnet to help get the screws out of the holes and hold on to them. Put in a safe place, you don't want to lose these.
3) Pick up disc tray off of the 3 rubber suspension feet. Be careful with the 2 flat wire cables. Turn this tray over.
4) Find a small black cover on the back of the tray that has 2 screws. Take the this black cover off to reveal a small electric motor and a set of small plastic gears. Use tweezers and canned air to clean/pick out any debris. I had small plastic shavings caught up in mine.
5) I'm not sure if this was really necessary, but I picked up the small white gear in the middle with the tweezers and used the exacto blade to trim a small amount of platic away from the side of the large cog that comes very close to rubbing against the large black gear.
6) Put the white gear back in place. Make sure the metal axle it rotates on is in place. Make sure the cog from the electric motor engages the white plastic gear. Try to gently rotate the white gear to make sure it will rotate the other gears smoothly and move the laser reader assembly along its track.
7) Use the canned air to remove any more dust/debris from the inside of the player.
8) Put the cover back together and the screws back in place. There were 2 screws that go down by the battery compartment that took me forever to find where they went.
9) Give it some power and try it out.

This procedure may seem daunting at first, but really, if you are about to trash the machine anyway, what do you have to lose? In my opinion, loosening and getting all the screws out, in order to open up the machine, was the hardest part.

After these steps, our player started working again. I hope this saves someone else the money of having to go out and buy another player just like it helped us. Good luck!

Had this for over a year and still going strong!.......2006-11-09

I received the Panasonic LS55 in July 2005 and it still works wonderfully. I love how you can adjust the viewing screen, and the two headphone jacks are essential when watching movies with a friend on those long bus, plane, and train rides. It has been over a year but this baby's battery life still amazes me. I watched 10-11 hours of dvds in a row when flying to Asia and then checked the battery life display - it had 2 out of the 3 bars available. Like a reviewer mentioned below, you will tire of watching dvds before the battery runs out! The screen has some minor scratches from carting it around, but they are hardly noticeable when watching a movie.

Note: Be sure to remove the battery from the player when not in use. When the player is fully charged, make sure to remove the battery soon after as well. This will ensure the battery's life over time.

I haven't encountered this dreaded H03 signal (knock on wood). but if I do, I will surely follow the instructions that Now Voyager so nicely provided below.

HO3 Success Story.......2006-07-13

After 16 months, I finally received the H03 message two days ago. I considered all fixes recommended on this site and others. Manually spinning the disc worked once, but the message reappeared. Re-initialization did not work. Ultimately, I needed to open the machine. I was surprised to find a lot of dog hair inside the machine, and I imagine there was a lot of other dirt/dust inside the machine that was not visible. After spending ten minutes cleaning the insides (using a tweezer), the machine now works again perfectly. I think that, in my case, the H03 message was caused simply by the accumulation of dog hair/dirt/dust inside the machine.

If this wasn't a great gadget, I wouldn't have bothered trying to fix it. Hopefully, it will work for another 16 months.

Player was good...for as long as it worked (which was not long)........2006-05-04

It's pretty much the same story that so many others have told. Unit works well for a short time, H03 pops up, unit is now not working so well. The DIY repair procedures detailed on several web sites did not work. The 90 day labor warranty is a joke. The cost of getting this thing repaired is almost 50% of the price of the unit when purchased new.

I will not even go too deep into the sub-standard customer service provided by Panasonic. I will say that I sent the unit in for repairs and Panasonic kept shooting letters back to me asking for such things as a proof-of-purchase (which I had already sent with the unit),what repair option I wanted to take, etc, and introduced a whole lot of delay in the process. So the unit sat at the repair center for 30 days, because Panasonic could not get their facts straight, and it was returned before I could even get the work authorized. Even so, once your 90 day warranty on labor has passed, all you will get is a refurbished unit - unless you send it to a faciltiy besides the central service, in which case you will get your own unit repaired and returned. Then you may find that the labor charges are even higher than those quoted by the central service facility.

Sure, the battery life is great, etc, etc. What good is a ten-hour battery for a unit that works for a few months and then will have to be reparied for an exorbinant cost?

Bottom line: Find another player from another manufacturer. Avoid this thing like a pack of Ebola monkeys.

Superb battery life and a DIY fix for that dreaded H03 problem!.......2006-04-08

There are several easy DIY fixes for the H03 problem to try before despairing and turning your back on the otherwise excellent Panasonic LS55 DVD portable DVD player!

I've owned my LS55 for about a year and lived in dread of the much discussed H03 message appearing. To be fair I travel a great deal and although my DVD player has a snug neoprene case and I've never dropped it off a tray table or hotel bed, nonetheless it really does get stuffed into bags, and carried around a lot. The LS55 has been a pretty solid performer and the 10+ hour battery is absolutely incredible. My last Panasonic 5" screen portable payer was amazing and super durable until lost. However I did have to carry around the regular battery as well as an extended play one to be able to watch a couple of movies (say 2 1/2). The LS55 allows me to watch at least 3 or 4 plus a few TV episodes (on DVD) including skipping around alot. If I've charged it fully before a long distance international flight, I've never ever run out of juice! The battery is genuinely good for at least 10 hours which is an incredible and puts this player ahead of the competition in this respect. Whatever else it's faults, battery life is not one of them!

However the picture is also excellent. I still think my Panasonic 5" screen was crisper but the number of lines and resolution for smaller screens is the same as 7" and 9" models (I believe) so a small screen is always going to be sharper. A 9" model is just a little too big for convenient portability and the 7" is just about right for 1 or 2 people.

The sound via (noise cancelling) headphones is incredible. The speakers are a bit weak but if played in a car using the FM transmitter, the quality is superb. Instead of using the player's speakers, I tend to plug the DVD player into my ipod speakers for very good strong stereo sound. I've had half a dozen people crowded around entralled in a movie with big sound making the 7" screen seem much larger.

All in all an excellent DVD player. However no discussion of the LS55 is complete without addressing the dreaded H0 problems. The H03 message seems the most common certainly here on Amazon. Many people have spoken of very indifferent treatment from Panasonic and repair bills/estimates ranging from $100 to $200. I agree with many people that there is a serious issue that Panasonic has not addressed at all and I think this has seriously impacted customer trust in what I've always felt was a very superior brand for quality and durability. Anyway, I myself recently got an H03 message. I feared the worst - that the DVD player was essentially a write-off with prohibitive repair costs. However I quickly found several posts on line with various solutions/fixes. Some ranged from removing the bottom plate of the player with a small (jeweller's) screw driver and very carefully using compressed air (Dust Off etc...) to spritz away any dust and debris. Other options included moving the laser head along the track or straightening bent parts, unhooking and re-attaching the electric ribbon wire connectors etc... You can read all the various solutions.

Personally I decided that I was going to start with the simplest and most benign methods and gradually take more intrusive steps.

I was lucky. The most simple step is to switch the DVD player off and leave it off for a couple of minutes. Then power on. You'll still see the H03 message (unless you're really lucky!). Then press the skip back (l < <) and skip forward (>>l) buttons (bottom left 2 buttons on the LS55 at the same time you press the play button (>). Hold all three buttons down for 4 or 5 seconds. Apparently this will re-initialise the DVD player's system software/firmware. In many cases especially where there are stories of brand new players getting an H03 message, the H03 message does not refer to an actual physical problem but a diagnostic glitch. The method I described worked for me and I really hope it works for everyone who experiences this problem. If it doesn't work if I ever experience this problem again, I'll take the next step - of unscrewing the bottom plate (10 small screws - no problem) and carefully dusting the exposed mechanism with Dust-Off to dislodge any dust or debris that might have triggered a H03 diagnosis that then tells the player to disable itself.

Apparently there are several steps one can take with this and most other DVD players using a combination of keys pressed down while powering on or after powering on to reboot the system just as one would with a computer (of course this player has a micro-chip of it's own).

Good luch with this method if you experience an H03 message. Don't despair - go online to research a number of methods one can take to reboot the system or solve the problem. It's very likely that there isn't a serious problem and certainly not one that justifies immediately throwing the player in the trash after getting no where with Panasonic or deciding to spend $100+ on getting it "repaired". I'm not sure why Panasonic hasn't done more to help it's customers solve these problems - perhaps it would be an admission of a problem that is probably a software/firmware gremlin instead of a mechanical flaw.

Anyway H03 suffers - don't despair there are lots of success stories of people no more technical than you, fixing their LS55 DVD players with a bit of ingenuity and refusal to accept that an otherwise pretty solid little machine could inexplicably tell you it's "broken" - thing is, the thing just thinks it is but it's probably fine, just needs a little prod. I recommend you start with the method I described - took all of 6 seconds and I felt so smart (happy and relieved) after. The more intrusive methods are pretty easy too. So far from all the stuff I've read online, the success rate with the button method has been very high. Combined with other quick fixes some more intrepid using a small screw driver - I believe the chances of "fixing" the H03 message is incredibly good.

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