Audio Video News

We saw Panasonic's portable Blu-ray player back at CES, but it will soon be making its way into the carry-on luggage of HD-addicts. $800 gets you an 8.9-inch WSVGA LCD screen attached to a full-featured BD player that supports both BD Live and Panasonic's own Viera Cast technologies. Inside is the PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus that is supposed to greatly increased color accuracy. The battery lasts a respectable 2.5 hours and it has an HDMI out so you can us it as a standard Blu-ray player if you're not crammed into an airplane seat.

It will save you a few hundred dollars and several pounds in your pack when compared to buying a BD-equipped laptop, but with a screen that small, the Blu-ray difference may not be all that obvious. Still, it would be excellent to be able to check into a nice hotel and hook up your own player to their HDTV. Thanks, but no thanks expensive and lousy quality hotel room on-demand movies.