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

[Harminder]

Courtesy of our friends at The Digital Bits:

Panasonic has confirmed that their DMP-BD10 Blu-ray Disc player will be available in September for an SRP of around $1,299.95.

Hopefully at that price, it will be an improvement over the Samsung Blu-Ray player.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Which one of you are going to buy it while I stick to my Samsung player?

 

[Ron-P]

Wow, $1,300. Prices are going up instead of down. Hope it gets better reviews then the Samsung is currently getting. Wonder if this machine will be able to improve PQ over the Sammy?

 

[Walter Kittel]

I won't get into the specifics of Samsung vs. Panasonic, as it perturbs me quite a bit when folks who don't own the Toshiba HD-A1, or have any real experience with the player, proceed to bash it; but I will add this...

One of the changes in player/media dynamics that occurred during the transition from VHS and LaserDisc to DVD was that prior analog formats had a higher correlation between player price and performance levels, whereas DVD due to it's digital nature tended to level the playing field to some extent. I wouldn't suggest that all digital players are equal, but I believe the variance is not substantial and consequently I am unsure how much of a performance delta should be expected on future players vs. 1st generation players. (Additional audio support and HDMI 1.3 may invalidate this argument, but I am uncertain to what degree this will improve current performance levels.)

Many of the advances on DVD were in the software domain and I expect this paradigm will continue with HD media (both HD DVD and Bd.)

- Walter.

 

[Edwin-S]

Panasonic apparently stated that they would be providing a free firmware update for Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD support, according to one of the articles I read. *shrug* Who knows if it is true though.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

As much as I love Panasonic, I'll probably wait till Sony releases
its player in October.

I figure it's their format and if anybody is going to put out hardware
that takes best advantage of its format it's gonna be Sony.

I'm also anticipating the Sony will be cheaper than the Panasonic.

 

[PeterTHX]

The Sony will be cheaper than the Panasonic ($999 vs. $1299)

Still, Panasonic should provide an excellent player. They are the 2nd biggest member of the Blu-ray group (via Matsushita). A lot of their patents are tied into the hardware here. Remember: Blu-ray just isn't Sony!

 

[Terry-A]

think i'll wait it put for the pioneer blu ray....if i'm going to spend 1300 dollars 200 more for a pioneer elite wont break me....

 

[Brad HP]

I ended up taking back the Samsung. If the movies look better in the fall and the other studios actually start putting some out I would consider a Panasonic BD player. I have been very pleased with my RP-91 DVD player which is still my main SDVD player.

 

[Neil Joseph]

I was also planning on playing the waiting game (patiently) so by the time this player and the sony player come out and the reviews are in then hopefully the format should be mature enough for me to decide or not decide to jump in at that time. Glad to see more players though, they should play off of each other and help bring the prices down.

 

[MannyE]

I love that the price of admission is much lower than I remember for the top of the line players back when DVD came out... I remember the Sony S7000 being over a grand, and even the lowly 300 (which I bought and is STILL going strong) was almost 500 bucks and that was over 10 years ago...so in 06 dollars, these players are relative bargains!

Sony tends to de-engineer or backwards engineer (whatever you want to call it) players as newer generations come along...kind of a little thank you for early adopters I figure...so I'm probably going to take the plunge as soonas they debut... I'd have the Toshiba already if I wasn't going to get the xbox360... I just can't resist seeing hi-def games on my Panny AE900...

 

[Neil Joseph]

Dumb quesiton but with all the delays, was there ever a new release date on the Sony player?

 

[David Judah]

If I remember correctly from an article in Twice magazine, Neil, the Sony is scheduled for an October release.

 

[Felix Martinez]

Panasonic is coming to South Florida on July 25 to demo the player, and unless I have a last minute conflict, I will be there and asking Q's. If anyone wants me to ask anything specific to Panasonic's HDTV Product Executive, Jeff Cove, either PM me, or post here (whatever's appropriate), and I'll post back with what I can dig up.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Sure. Ask them from a consumer's perspective what exactly makes their player worth $800 more than the Toshiba.

Thanks,
- Steve

 

[Harminder]

Ask them why the Blu-Ray discs released so far suck and why it justifies a higher price to be paid for such an inferior product so far.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Actually, my question is serious... and can be asked with the utmost respect.

- Steve

 

[Juan C]

Felix, thanks for the offer. Here are some constructive questions I can think of right now:

-Which of the advanced audio codecs (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD,etc.) will be fully supported (at launch or via future firmware upgrade)?

-Will the player do native 1080p as opposed to the 1080p-1080i-1080p thing the Samsung does?

-Will the player have a good-quality 720p mode as opposed to the overly soft one on the Toshiba HD-A1?

 

[Brian-W]

The S7000 still kicks ass, and was one of the best players (save for the fact that it didn't support DTS or progressive, but nothing did at launch). I agree with your assessment, as even the newer Sony players kinda suck in terms of picture (chroma problems, bad deinterlacing). Owning a first gen Sony has always generally been a treat.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Not that this makes up for subpar MPEG-2 releases, but Samsung's player has a "defect" (ie, poor implementation maybe?) in its Genesis video chipset having to do with DNR that may be causing some (not all)of the picture problems people are noticing with this unit.

AVS Forum has more details in their Blu-Ray player section.