Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Player

[Pirate]

Panasonic’s DMP-BD30K Blu-ray player will ship to stores within a week, packed with full Profile 1.1 compliance and advanced audio support.

The next-gen player had been expected sometime before Christmas, but the announced November 5th, 2007 ship date is sure to come as a pleasant surprise to those wondering how soon after the BDA’s October 31st profile 1.1 compliance deadline a stand-alone final profile Blu-ray player would be made available. Conflicting reports peg the official release date for either the 12th or 19th of November, but Panasonic VP of Corporate Development Eisuke Tsuyuzaki told Home Media Magazine that the player will be available “by the bucketload” for the holiday season.

According to specs posted on Panasonic’s website the DMP-BD30K will support a number of new features for a Blu-ray player. Its Profile 1.1 compliance means it will include dual stream audio/video support, enabling true picture-in-picture, a feature previously available only on HD DVD players.

The new deck will also support advanced audio codecs via bitstream right out of the box. The DMP-BD30K complies with “dts-HD Advanced Digital Out,” which means it will bitstream both dts-HD High Resolution and dts-HD Master Audio to any HDMI 1.3 receiver with dts-HD Master Audio decoding. This has been confirmed via an early first review of the player by Big Picture Big Sound’s Chris Boylan.

For those with older HDMI receivers without advanced audio codec decoding or multi-channel inputs, the DMP-BD30K will support internal decoding of dts Encore (up to 1.5 Mbps) and Dolby Digital only, both of which are extracted from the Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD and/or MA tracks on select Blu-ray discs.

The DMP-BD30K also supports 1080p/24, 1080p/60, Panasonic’s P4HD (Precise Pixel Progressive Processing for HD), an SD memory card slot for AVCHD and JPEG playback and a host of output options including HDMI version 1.3b.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...c_player_/1128

[Ruined]

In your case PH, though, instead of this for 499 it would be smarter to get the dual-format LG gen2 player and/or samsung bd-up5000 for 799.

Still, if you are a BD-only person, this panny looks like the best value BD standalone to date.

[Pirate]

Originally Posted by Ruined

In your case PH, though, instead of this for 499 it would be smarter to get the dual-format LG gen2 player and/or samsung bd-up5000 for 799.

Oh, I plan on gettting the Sammy if the reviews are good. I was just reporting th news.

[sub780lime]

and this will drive current hardware (older gen) prices down to $299 and sub will get a BD player...

[Ruined]

I just realized. From what I can tell this player might not be "truly" compliant with things like PiP despite it being Profile 1.1 capable.

This player has no onboard audio decoders. Even though it reportedly supports BD profile 1.1, if you were to watch IME (real IME, not the fake BD1.0 implementation on T3 BD) on it you may get no sound - in order for IME to work properly it requires two A/V streams - both the main movie's audio and the IME's subaudio need to be decoded and mixed internally within the player. This player has no way of doing that, hence you would end up with only audio for the main feature (much as if you were outputting direct digital bitstream instead of internally transcoded PCM output on an A35/XA2 HD DVD player) and nothing for the PiP.

edit: I believe the Panasonic actually DOES have builtin decoders despite them not being listed in the specs based on the press release I read - however they are only for standard DD/DTS. So you would be able to get full PiP but if you choose to do so you can only get it with lossy audio.

[Derb]

I wish there was an option to cut the HD DVD film audio entirely when a pop-up is presented. Why would ya want to listen to to streams simultaneously anyway?

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

I wish there was an option to cut the HD DVD film audio entirely when a pop-up is presented. Why would ya want to listen to to streams simultaneously anyway?

Its a lot smoother when you can fade from one into the other rather than an abrupt cutting of audio back and forth. The former is probably healthier for your speakers, too. It's also worth mentioned that many HD DVDs allow you to adjust the volume of the IME/U-Control somewhere in the disc's setup menus - so look for that in the future.