New Blu-ray player Panasonic DMP-BD50 reviewed by Alex Hruby.

June 28, 2008

I aquired a Panasonic DMP-BD30E, SharpBD-HP20S, and PS3. In the 1 week that I've had this player, it's done a marvelous job on video and audio quality. I'm watching it on a 49" Pioneer connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned. This player started having hardware/software problems. It would simply quit playing during the middle of the movie The BR players are all updatable so it's possible to play the latest movies. However, this player has a VERY difficult failure mode and upgrade procedure. Since Bluray is still in its infancy (so-to-speak) there aren't many options for players.

I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY DISC PLAY OR CONNECTION ISSUES AS HAVE BEEN REPORTED BY OTHER USERS. MY ONLY ADVICE ON THIS IS TO KEEP THE FIRMWARE UPDATED EITHER BY LAN OR BY CALLING SAMSUNG AND REQUESTING A FIRMWARE DISC. For those who wonder if it will play homemade Blu-Ray DVDs I can report that I have sucessfully created a Blu-Ray DVD with menus on a 25G Single Layer BD-RE (Rewritable) disk using the LG GGW-H20L burner. Other firmware updatres are available but I haven't needed them yet. This player is good as far as disks that work on it but it does not support 48kHz/24-bit HD true sound that other blu-ray disks come with. The sound will pop out of sync with the visual. Before you buy call the manufacturer and ask if they have solved this problem by issuing a firmware (disk to put in the machine to update the harddrive) or not.

Upconversion on this player is great, which is paramount if you have vast library of DVDs. I figured instead of spending $75 or so on upconvert DVD player to work with my new TV, I decided to go directly to Blu-Ray, since the Blu-Ray is now standard of HD DVDs. This player is by far the best picture quality on DVD upconversions thanks to the HQV chip that player uses. The audio and video quality is also great for blu-rays. Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.

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