» Panasonic DMP-BD30K 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

Panasonic DMP-BD30K 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great picture, lacking in features
Comment: This is my first Blu-ray player and I have to say it's a mixture of good and bad.

Good: The picture quality is outstanding on both BD and DVD. I previously had an upconverting DVD player and I thought the picture looked only marginally better than my standard DVD player. But this player makes DVDs look surprisingly good! Sometimes I can't tell the picture apart from a true HD image.

The SD card slot is a neat idea. If I get an SD camcorder in the future I'll definitely take advantage of it.

The player itself is attractive. I like how they hid slots and buttons behind doors; it gives the face a sleek and simple look.

The bad: No zoom function whatsoever. I bought a 47" TV because I want to see a nice, big 47" picture on it. I don't care if the sides are clipped off a little or the aspect ratio is slightly distorted. Because of this bewildering oversight I'm forced to endure these huge black bars flanking my picture. Unfortunately, my TV's zoom options are disabled for HD images for some reason, so I can't fix the problem there either.

No DivX support: DivX playback is supported on even the cheapest of DVD players nowadays, so why wouldn't they include it on a $300 Blu-ray player? Beats me, but I'm not thrilled about it.

Painfully slow tray: I timed it. The time it takes from being completely off to when the tray is open and ready for a disc is a whopping 23 seconds. I would consider about 2-5 seconds to be a reasonable amount of time.

Because of the drawbacks I almost gave this player three stars but because of the oustanding video quality I'll be generous and give it four. However, I'll most likely replace it when something more suitable comes along.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Better than 1080p?
Comment: I don't know sony does it(blue ray).But now I know how they won the HD war.This player was as cheap as the sony and all aspects of it's operation and function'installation,and set up are simple and quick.Picture is amazing,even compared to 1080p satellite!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Some important features missing versus DVD players
Comment: I will say I am impressed with the audio/video quality of this machine. However, it seems that the more sophisticated user interface features depend upon the disk, not the machine, so some features like stop-resume described in the manual may not (and often don't) work. Furthermore, basics like resuming playback after switching off power are missing. This is a damn nuisance - each time you switch the power on you have to go through the entire disk initialization (quite slow at 30 seconds), and then through the forced copyright warnings, and then through the chapters to find your previous position - about 1.5 minutes total. The controls also seem to have a slow response (~1 second) in many cases. This is like going back to the stone age after using a recent DVD player.

Furthermore my DVD player has a 5-disk carousel (essential if different family members watch different films), and it can remember the last played position for up to 500 movies. When are they going to make carousel players for blu-ray? It may seem that I am unjustly picking on this player if others lack these same features - but it is my first player, and I can only write as I find.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: My first Blu-Ray
Comment: This is my first Blu-Ray player. I purchased it after updating from a 27" CRT to a 50" Plasma. I bought this around the first of September from Amazon and I was very pleased with their customer service. Fast shipping on the product and no issues with it working. I chose this player based on reviews from [...]

The menus were really easy to navigate for set-up of first time features. Remote buttons are well labeled. I am most impressed with this player due to it's short load times. After putting in a movie I am at the main menu usually within 20 seconds. Some movies take a little longer but not much. I was really concerned about this when purchasing the player because I'd read several comments about some players taking minutes to load.

Picture quality and colors are great. This is my first HD television and Blu-Ray player so I cannot compare it to others, but for a first set-up I am more than satisfied. I've seen some upconversion of SD material that was really good, and some that was mediocre at best so I think the quality of the source material has a huge impact on upconversion quality.

Recently Panasonic has released the BD-35 so these units are going obsolete. The price of them should fall pretty low soon when the stores get desperate to close them out so keep an eye out.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: first blu ray
Comment: Does everything i wanted it for. right now it is just hooked to a tv, no surround. works great, easy to set up and use. later it will be hooked to a panasonic tv. would buy again. also compared prices and this dvd player was $[...] MORE at [...]- just fyi.

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