Pioneer Dvd Player Firmware Upgrade
Panasonic DMP-BD35K 1080p Blu-ray Player
Best Customer Review for Cheap Panasonic DMP-BD35K 1080p Blu-ray Player:
As BD is still a relatively new format, and considering it’s flexibility and vast potential, I prefer to stick with players that you can count on. For BD, that usually means Panasonic and Sony (PS3 anyway, as some Sony stand alones have actually been made by Pioneer, which have had more problems than I’m willing to put up with) as they are the two principle developers of the format. I’ve tried and researched other machines and also owned a Samsung, but would be very reluctant to buy from them again until the format has fully matured (stopped coming up with new uses for java and BDLive that require player updates to work right in older players). Firmware updates are almost crucial for BD and Samsung has been spotty in supporting their products at best, usually issuing fixes months after problem discs (or players) surface at best. Panasonic on the other hand was very quick to resolve problems early on, usually having firmware patches for new discs before the discs even hit shelves, as most BDs were being tested on Panasonic players prior to release.
Playing movies, this player is as good as it gets, supporting full 1080p/24 with optional decoded or bitstreaming support for all of the new audio codecs. Since 3D spec hadn’t been finalized when this player was designed, it likely won’t be upgradable; but I’m not in the market to upgrade my display anyway and won’t be until I’m sure it won’t be just a passing fad or novelty preferred with select films shot specifically for 3D. Of course I’m one of those that think 3D still has a long way to go. It’s still a bit too much like a pop-up picture book to me, somewhat gimmicky layers of 2D more than a real 3 dimensional effect. But I’m still open-minded, if not hopefull it’ll someday live up to all the studio hype. OK, back on topic…
Outside of it’s BD movie perforance, reliability, and cost, this player loses some appeal. It’s standard definition DVD performance is average at best. Whether to cut costs or because the company is utterly clueless as to how inferior their own proprietary deinterlacing is, but just about every DVD I’ve watched using this unit has been plagued by combing to one degree or another. TV shows like Jack of All Trades, that were shot on video, comb badly unless you switch to video mode. But that shouldn’t be necessary with good deinterlacing and doesn’t help with improperly flagged film-based dvds, which are far from uncommon. If you still watch a lot of standard DVD, which I admittedly don’t, making this downside, mostly a non-issue for me, you’d be better off with a BD player that features either VRS, HQV, or Faroudja deinterlacing. I think you can also turn off the progressive output and let your display or AVR do the heavy lifting for DVD sources, if they feature something better. Poor dienterlacing isn’t unique to Panasonic players by any means. Sadly, few manufacturers give deinterlacing performance the attention it deserves. But as a company who was once highly praised for incorporating some of the best deinterlacing available, I expect a lot better from Panasonic.
We also own a PS3, and while basic BD movie playback is pretty uniform in comparison, the Panasonic and PS3 are a world apart in terms of processing BD discs. The Panasonic is slow to the point that it hardly seems the high tech, sophisticated piece of electronics that it is. The player can do everything with a BD disc that the PS3 can, it just does it much slower – painfully slow with some discs even with a DSL connection, like Universals brilliant idea to exploit the format by streaming advertising into their BD menus. All that junk has to be loaded, before you can access your movie. For me, that means loading the disc 5 minutes before I plan to watch the movie, for my parents who are in their 60s, it means getting frustrated, giving up on watching the movie and calling me to asky why it isn’t working and why I gave them such a piece of junk. The Panasonic is a little faster if you don’t have the player hooked up online, so that it doesn’t actually load all the extra junk, but it still seems to try and is still much slower than the PS3 even compared to when the PS3 is connected. Menu navigation is also much slower. Button response with the PS3 is pretty much instantaneous, but takes a few seconds to register with the Panasonic. The Panasonic also doesn’t feature any internal memory, so you’ll have to plop down 15 bucks on a memory card for BD-Live functionality.
If you’re looking for a quality inexpensive BD player that can do anything BD is capable of (short of 3D), has top notch 1080p BD performance, and is reliable enough that you won’t have to worry about the occasional disc not working right or locking up the machine (I haven’t had a single movie that wouldn’t play since I bought the player 1 to 2 yrs ago, despite watching a new BD almost every night – knock on wood), which is still a fairly common issue from most other BD manufacturers it would seem from all the complaints I’ve read in online forums, I would chose a player like this one from Panasonic over just about any other on the market (sans maybe the top of the line Oppo, which retails for 0, but has had nothing but rave reviews and also features about the best DVD playback currently possible). If you want the same great BD performance and reliablity as the Panasonic, but also require faster loading and command processing, get a PS3.
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Panasonic DMP-BD35K
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