Official Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-Ray player thread

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

A little update:

Having spent some more time with this machine now, I can say I really like and it is absolutely solid.

I did some very minor tweaking to the picture settings on the unit in the form of turning down the colour saturation by one notch and the black levels by one notch using the Digital Video Essentials test patterns and the Sony BR test patterns (which really don''t help much at all for the home user like myself) to guide me. I should say that the Panasonic is the first component I've had that is actually capable of passing the below black information on the DVE black level test patterns. Since all of my other DVD players failed to do this, I'd always thought it may have been my televisions, but I guess not. It is really no wonder to me now that the blacks on the Panasonic look so deep and solid, all the while maintaining a pretty high level of shadow detail.

I have watched a couple more titles now - Good Night and Good Luck and I watched The Corpse Bride straight through finally.

I began watching Rattle & Hum, and did a brief comparison of the SD DVD played back from both the Panasonic and my Denon DVD-2200 - with the Denon over component and set to progressive 480p - versus the Blu-ray. I compared the scene where it first turns to colour for the beginning of Where the Streets Have no Name. The Blu-ray disc destroyed the Denon which looked liked a blurry mess in comparison. Played back from the Panasonic, the SD DVD looked somewhat better but there was still an obvious difference between the DVD and the Blu-ray. The Blu-ray just looked more film-like, less soft (amazing for a film so grainy to begin with) and the colours popped more, were more natural, and deeper.

As for Good Night and Good Luck and The Corpse Bride, well, they both looked stellar, IMO, but I guess that isn't difficult to accomplish with those sorts of films - the former being black and white and the latter being animated. Whatever it is, they looked brilliant nonetheless. Good Night and Good Luck, next to the BR of Legends of Jazz has to be some of the best HD Mpeg2 I've ever seen. I've heard that the VC-1 encoding on HD DVD is better, but I can't begin to imagine what could have been improved.

Anyhow, I just got word from Amazon that my copy of Reds is on its way, so stay tuned as the titles keep rolling in....


One other thing - my two free titles from Panasonic (The Great Raid and Gone in Sixty Seconds) arrived on Saturday along with my copy of Reds from Amazon. One of these days, I'll find the time to watch them all.
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Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Next paycheck I will start saving up for the Panasonic DMP-BD10 unless a better player comes along. I curretly have 10 discs to play in the Panasonic as soon as I bring one home. So far the Panasonic seems to be the best buy of all the currently available blu-ray players. I am hoping to get the player around March so until then I will keep my eye on this thread.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Hi, my panny is arrived! It is a region B player ... I'm italian.
I've some region B Sony titles:
Hostel; Underworld E.; Exorcism of E.R.; SWAT.

But I'm not able to find this test patterns!
Can you help me?
Are them hidden?

Thank u so much,
Actarus.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

On the Sony titles, hit 7,6,6,9 while on the disc menu.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

This is correct, although, to be absolutely honest, I'm not really sure how to use the Sony test patterns.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

It's great to see so many of you enjoying the Panny! As time wears on, I am more and more impressed with this player. Its shocking to me that this is a first gen unit! It has performed flawlessly for me - - not even the slightest hint of a glitch. Now, if only we could get that advanced audio support... these new Fox titles are driving me crazy!

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Speaking of advanced audio, once the firmware upgrade is done for this player, does that mean that we will be able to play the lossless tracks int heir full glory or do we still have to upgrade receivers to hdmi 1.3? How ill you connect for audio, hdmi or analog audio, and will hdmi 1.1 play the advanced tracks if the processing is done by the blu-ray player?

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

I assume the player will decode the lossless codecs and pass them through the 7.1 analogue outs and through the HDMI outs as LPCM. HDMI 1.1 will suffice, but you will still need an A/V receiver capable of playing 5.1/7.1 LPCM via HDMI if you plan on using HDMI.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

I think you are correct. The BD10 has HDMI 1.2a. Here's the HDMI 1.3 spec:

"HDMI 1.3

"Released 22 June 2006.

" * Increases single-link bandwidth to 340 Mhz (10.2 Gbps)
" * Supports 30-bit, 36-bit, and 48-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths or over one billion colors, up from 24-bit in previous versions.
" * Supports xvYCC color standards.
" * Incorporates automatic audio syncing (lip sync) capability.
" * Supports output of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams for external decoding by AV receivers. TrueHD and DTS-HD are lossless audio codec formats used on HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. If the disk player can decode these streams into uncompressed audio, then HDMI 1.3 is not necessary, as all versions of HDMI can transport uncompressed audio.
" * Availability of a new mini connector for devices such as camcorders.[4]
" * PlayStation 3 is the first product available on consumer market with HDMI 1.3."

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

Note the sentence in Bold (my emphasis). HDMI 1.3 permits a player to offload Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams to a receiver for decoding. In my opinion, the significance of the Sony PlayStation 3 being the first Blu-ray disc player to have HDMI 1.3 is to avoid having the PS 3 process the new codecs.

HDMI 1.3 really necessitates that the consumer determine which component - player or receiver - is capable of decoding them. It really is a warning flag of sorts.

Dana

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

This is also correct, I believe.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

All correct.

The upgrade for the Panny will give it the ability to "unzip" or decompress/unpack the advanced-compressed audio streams to LPCM to pass over its current non-1.3 HDMI interface for any HDMI recevier.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

This is a sticky now? Wow, the Panasonic has reached Star Wars-like status.

Except no one is cursing it or its creators.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

I like that, if only Lucas could be so lucky.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

I finally got to see the Panasonic in action when I stopped in at Tweeter over the weekend, but I couldn't really appreciate it since it was hooked up to Pioneer's Elite plasma or LCD display. Those displays do nothing for me, so there was no way for me to judge the quality of the image. Wasn't an ideal environment either. Way too much light.

The Panny was playing 8 Below. They had the Pioneer player hooked up too which was just playing some lame Pioneer demo disc.

I was a little taken aback by the slight delay when I chapter skipped, being accustomed to how fast DVD players have gotten, but I know that's something that will only speed up in subsequent generations, just as it did with DVD before. And not something that bothers me as long at the the AV quality is there.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Well, I managed to see a much better demo of the Panny (again, with 8 Below) at Best Buy today. On their HUGE Panasonic plasma display (which still wouldn't be my first choice, but looked a LOT better than whatever I saw before; the Tweeter display was about half the size and looked HORRID by comparison). The image at Best Buy was Quite Impressive. This just goes to show you how important it is to find a presentation with the right equipment, setup, and lighting conditions. One could easily have walked out of Tweeter thinking the Panasonic and 8 Below looked like ass, which is likely what's happened based on what I read on AVS Forum regarding this particular store (Tysons Corner), saying they couldn't sell the things. Had to have been LCD and with lots of sunlight hitting it too.

Ironically, I could apreciate it much more standing up, looking down at the screen thanks to all the reflections the screen was picking up when I was on the comfy leather couch. I thought maybe I saw some posterization with beard stubble in a couple scenes, but this may have been related to the screen, if not this particular transfer, which seemed otherwise flawless, and I was only about 2 feet away from the screen when I noticed it. I was amazed how close I could get and still see a pristine image. It seemed to have been calibrated pretty well, with VERY solid blacks and nice color overall. It looked darn close to accurate to me, and considering I'm rather attached to my big-ass tube set and it's rendition, that says something.

While seated, I was amazed at the detail I could see in the fabric of everyone's clothes. The threads in a denim shirt, the intricacies of a plaid pattern, and true film grain well preserved in the image. The humongoid screen made the film grain much more detectable than it otherwise would have been as it certainly didn't seem to be a grainy film, it just seemed true to what woulld have been a projected image of the true film at that size.

The image wouldn't be nearly as blown up for me at home, but it was nice to really be able to analyze it that way just to see how good the picture really was, even on a type of display I'm not interested in. I'd have loved to have been able to pop in the DVD for comparison because I'm sure the image at that size would be far, far less flattering. Seems like just a few years ago we got the maximum quality possible from our SDTV's with DVD, and now we're maxing out the HDTVs!

There was a 3D-like effect at times. Certainly not a flat-looking film at all, though I can see how this sort of thing is going to confuse people when they DO see flatter looking images. I think "Academy Flat" is going to become more fitting a term for a lot of people when they see those films compared to the pristine images of films shot wider with anamorphic or spherical lenses. It's going to be the look of Alien vs. Aliens and people raging about it, not understanding WHY there's a difference. And those who detest film grain and a flatter look will detest Super 35 more too. But I'm just glad we can get such a faithful presentation of these images. Certainly, if they want to sell Blu-ray (or any HD format) to the masses, though, care must be taken in choosing appropriate material for demonstration, and then properly setting up the equipment and environment. Especially when even the same player and same BD can generate wildly different images under different circumstances. They'd probably sell more if they just sent a professional to every home with an HD set to do a demo. Wonder what kind of commission we could get for doing that? I bet a lot of HTFers would do it for next to nothing.

As for 8 Below, I walked in on a thoroughly depressing point of the movie, and after doing some counting was more depressed. I'll never be able to sit down and watch that movie, that's for sure.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Rachael or anyone else? Can someone send me the firmware disc as well? I just picked up the Panny as well but it wouldn't play Kingdom of Heaven. I only have a work computer at home and we're not allowed to download stuff.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

You must have the Panasonic's firmware updated to 1.2 in order to play Fox discs.

Dan

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Yes, I was wondering if someone could send me that firmware disc so I can watch the dual layer BD's. My panny came with firmware #1.0

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Steve,

Yes, I can. Send me a PM with your postal address.

Dana

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Thanks Dana! PM sent...

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Got it. Consider it done!

Dana

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Gotta love the HTF and the helpful members I'll update later this week when the CD arrives. So far I like the player and am calibrating,etc.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

I was wondering if there was anyone who could send me the firmware upgrade for this PanasonicDMP-BD10 BR player to get me to the latest code level.

Thanks,

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Neil... I'd be happy to send it to you. PM me with an address.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

I thought I'd post some of the Blu-ray titles I have now and another little update on my time with the Panasonic:

Actually have them:
U2: Rattle & Hum
Black Hawk Down
Kingdom of Heaven
Reds
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
Stealth
Good Night and Good Luck
The Great Raid
Gone in 60 Seconds
Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis
The Black Crowes - Freak and Roll into the Fog
John Legend Live at the House of Blues

On order at Amazon:
From Hell
One Last Thing
The Unforgiven
Superman Returns
Underworld: Evolution
The Da Vinci Code


On order at CD Universe:
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe

I've put all the titles I've watched in 'Blu'. I still have not come across a single problem with this player - no glitches, no problems with any discs. Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven, so far were the best looking discs I've watched by far. This proves that high bitrate Mpeg2 can look very good, but I'd still liked to have seen these in high bitrate AVC instead. BHD's LPCM surround was the best sounding I have heard. I wish Panasonic would hurry up with that firmware update for the TrueHD and DTS-HD decoding so that I could listen to the DTS-HD MA program on KoH in its full resolution, or the TrueHD program of Legends of Jazz.

I watched The Black Crowes disc this past Friday night. The video is encoded on the disc in 1080i, and, disappointingly, there are only LPCM stereo, dts 5.1 surround, and DD surround options, no LPCM surround. I listened to the dts surround program and, IMO, it did not sound that great, but I think it had more to do with the actual recording than the format. The picture quality, though not stellar, was definitely far superior than what I saw on DirecTV when this ran on HDNet. There is just no comparison.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

One Last Thing has amazing PQ.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Would you happen to know what codec it uses?

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

No, sorry, unless there is a way for my Samsung to display it. It does have a DTS track that my SD copy didn't have though. Nice debut from Magnolia films.

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Has anybody had problems displaying a 4:3 Aspect Ratio DVD correctly with side bars using component video outputs?

I just received my Panasonic BD player, and I have it hooked into an older Pioneer Elite 710 HDTV using component analog connections (there is no HDMI, only a RGB input besides the component inputs). My player is using the latest firmware (1.2). I followed the manual closely to set up the Panny, but to no effect. I then tried theie suggestions in the troubleshooting guide - still to no effect. My older Pioneer Elite DVD player (DV-47AI) and Panasonic player (DVD-H1000) play those discs fine. I experimented with a DVD with 16:9 menus and 4:3 content, and discs with 4:3 menus and 16:9 content. The Panasonic BD player expanded 4:3 content to full screen depite it being set to center the content and display side bars.

Any suggestions?

Re: Panasonic DMP-BD10

Disturbing news at AVS Forum that you guys might want to look into:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=758197