Panasonic DMP-BD30K

Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray Disc Player

DMP-BD30K Review, by Lincoln Spector May 28, 2008

Show More Show Less

0 Comments | 0 Topics | Print Only This Review

• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: plays all audio formats for blu-ray

  Weaknesses: not internet capable but with ps3 you got it all!

  Overall: if you want dts hd master audio bitstreamed to a receiver then this is the player to get! Great player! Picture quality is excellent and the player is easy to use.

• Reviewed by:

  Strengths: great sound great picture

  Weaknesses: none

  Overall: great sound great picture great 1.1 player. dts hd master audio bitstreamed to receiver. The best player currently available and if you have the ps3 and this player you should be set to utilize all blu ray features.

• Reviewed by: egale

  Strengths: Blu-ray disks look really great. Load up times are good.

  Weaknesses: Non blu-ray discs don't look that good.

  Overall: I decided to jump on the Blu-Ray wagon once I knew it was the format winner. This unit got pretty good reviews so I went with this one.First, I am hooked up to a HDTV only. I don't have a receiver or a home theater system so all the advanced audio capabilities are wasted on me. I upgraded the firmware on the unit I received to 1.6 before I tried anything. That was a relatively painless process.Picture wise, at 1080p, blu-ray disks look fantastic. I have only tried a couple of titles but they load up quickly and play fine, no problems. I can't complain at all about its blu-ray capabilities so far.My problem is with non blu-ray disks. A good DVD looks fine when this unit plays it. The problem is with the titles where the quality wasn't the best to begin with. When upsampled to 1080P, artifacts that didn't look too bad or were hardly noticeable, become very noticeable. You can soften the picture some which helps but the best thing to do is to set the unit to play at 480p. This is not impossible to do but not as easy as a button on the remote.When processing digital photos, you have the same problem of trying to extrapolate more detail out of an image than is recorded. You can only estimate and its not perfect. Sometimes it is more pleasant to view a low res image than a low res image upsampled to try and be hi res.Rather than automatically upsample a DVD, I wish there were a very simple way to just play it at its recorded resolution without having to go through a bunch of menus.Only time will tell though as I build up my collection of Blu-ray DVDs how well this unit will fare.

• Reviewed by: keyonman

  Strengths: Nice built and faster than the previous generation of bluray players. Comes with HDMI 1.3b and will do 1080P plus decode true HD.

  Weaknesses: Still too expensive as compared to HD DVD.

  Overall: I got this paired with a Panasonic 42 inch plasma and the picture is just gorgeous when playing those bluray movies. This is much faster than the previous generation of bluray.

• Reviewed by: P&PT

  Strengths: Picture, audio, features.

  Weaknesses: Nothing significant for me.

  Overall: I don't find the remote difficult but does require some looking at the manual to uncover some advanced features. I had to change audio to bitstream and turn off second audio to get the audio working correctly for my setup. As new equipment comes out with upgrades for probably lower prices, I will still be using this unit as it does all that I need it to do extremely well.