Panasonic's DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player already reviewed

The folks over at CNET aren't wasting a moment getting to know Panasonic's latest Blu-ray player, so why should you? Reviewers started off by praising Panny for getting a Profile 1.1-compliant player out before the actual deadline, and minor gripes about the DMP-BD10A (namely, the remote and the fold-down door) have been addressed satisfactorily. Additionally, it was noted that audiophiles would find lots to love courtesy of its ability to output DTS-HD Master Audio / Dolby TrueHD soundtracks in bitstream format, and sticklers for image quality are likely to be equally impressed. Put simply, this unit "performed excellently by properly deinterlacing 1080i signals to 1080p without artifacts or jaggies," and it managed to measure up quite well with other highly-regarded BD players when playing back films. All in all, the BD30 was awarded a 7.4 out of 10 rating, and we're pretty certain that adding an Ethernet jack and built-in decoders for high-resolution audio formats would've made this thing even more attractive.

[pigfister @ Oct 31st 2007 9:56AM]

DRM is great and sony do it best!

[pigfister @ Oct 31st 2007 9:56AM]

great more sony (MPAA) propertarian DRM lets rush and purchase one today so they can continue to get us all to bend over and lube up when the next anti consumer format is released!

[Deezul @ Oct 31st 2007 10:34AM]

Ehternet is optional on Blu-Ray, so companies are saving a few pennies by not including it. One thing HD DVD got right - mandatory Ethernet.

[pscs @ Oct 31st 2007 10:47AM]

whats the difference between this and a PS3 to play bluray videos?

[TeddyN @ Oct 31st 2007 10:52AM]

I don't think the PS3 has a separate secondary video decoder to handle 'Picture in Picture'.

[Tahiri @ Nov 1st 2007 4:49PM]

It does, that's why it has so many SPUs

[TeddyN @ Oct 31st 2007 10:54AM]

Lack of ethernet is a deal-breaker for me. I love having the little 'update available' message come up on my 360 when I put a new HD-DVD in... It makes me feel like I'm getting more for my money.

[Reid Conti @ Oct 31st 2007 2:01PM]

If value is measured by number of updates, Windows users are rich!

[DaveTehWave @ Oct 31st 2007 11:13AM]

"... built-in decoders for high-resolution audio formats would've made this thing even more attractive."

That's what the newer A/V Recievers are for (Onkyo 605). They do that job beautifully. Besides, licensing all those would add to the cost of the player.

[Phil @ Oct 31st 2007 7:56PM]

If it doesn't have built in Hi-def audio decoders, it makes the PiP completely useless. On HD-DVD, PiP combines 2 feeds into one. It decodes 2 video feeds, and decodes 2 audio feeds and mixes them into one PCM stream. If it doesn't decode audio then it can't do PiP properly. Outputting the undecoded bitstream is useless, because you can only put out one at a time.

[Jeebus @ Oct 31st 2007 11:38PM]

It probably doesn't matter that it can't merge two lossless sound streams for PiP, as it can probably merge two DD or DTS sound streams. If your audio is merge anyway, lossless is not THAT important.

[dman @ Oct 31st 2007 11:44AM]

"we're pretty certain that adding an Ethernet jack and built-in decoders for high-resolution audio formats would've made this thing even more attractive"

Maybe to you, not to me. a $300 price drop would have done the trick though.