Panasonic officially announces its Blu-Ray Player (1 Viewer)

[Felix Martinez]

Well, the demo was not very helpful as far as showcasing the new player. They had an early prototype that could not even pause the disc playing, and what was playing was a demo disc (clips of Chicken Little, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, et al) encoded with H.264. Looked beautiful, tho.

As to the Q's:


I did not get a straight answer on any of them - they are getting back to me. However, the "tech" guy in the room thought the player did internal conversion 1080p-1080i-1080p, but was going to double check and see if it was straight 1080p.

I even asked if the player, for the price, would support DVD-Audio and SACD. At first they said yes to DVD-A, and then they said they had to confirm. Definite no on SACD.

I'll post back more info if/when I receive it.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I hope it comes with native support for DTS-HD, DD+ and DTHD.

But... if not this would be great if true:

 

[MarioMon]

"I did not get a straight answer on any of them - they are getting back to me. However, the "tech" guy in the room thought the player did internal conversion 1080p-1080i-1080p, but was going to double check and see if it was straight 1080p"


Is there a technical reason why companies do what I would think is such a "stupid" thing as back and forth conversion? Are they just trying to save a few lines of software code or a few bucks of hardware? I really don't follow such logic.

 

[Felix Martinez]

The brief exchange I had with them - and again, it wasn't confirmed - was that if it did go 1080p-1080i-1080p it was because of a limitation of the chip they're using.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

That may be true.

The chip in the Tosh and Sammy playes (which is the same) isnt' capable of outputting the native 1080p24 or 1080p60 stream... so it requires a 2nd deinterlacing algorithm to do it.

Also, when streaming content (like video and film mixed together in a documentary) a (good) deinterlacer could actually improve progressive-playback quality versus just "bobbing" the whole thing as if it were native video.

 

[MarioMon]

Thanks for the info Felix.

At the prices they are charging for these players, they should be ashamed in using chips that have such limitations. JMHO.

 

[Felix Martinez]

I just shot an e-mail to one of the tech Panny guys, so let's give 'em a chance to respond.