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Panasonic DMP-BD10 Review |
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The Good
Excellent picture quality.
The Bad
Price, average looks, average normal dvd play back.
Design
While describing it as ugly might be slightly unfair, this certainly isn't among the best-looking disc-spinners on the market. The main casing is a fairly dull silver colour (it looks better in photographs than it does in the flesh), while the front LED display and disc tray look like something from a much cheaper device. Considering the premium price tag, we really expected more from Panasonic on this front.
The one eye-catching piece of styling is the thick glass plate that slowly flips down to reveal the front panel, but even that has to be done manually, rather than with the remote. Like the Samsung Blu-ray player, the Panasonic lacks the rock-solid build quality you'd get with a DVD player in this price range -- but at least the shiny black Samsung is a lovely piece of design.
The connections on offer, however, manage to outdo the Samsung's selection by virtue of the 7.1-channel analogue audio output (the Samsung only manages 5.1). This means that, given enough cables, you can output eight discrete channels of surround sound to a receiver with the corresponding inputs -- nice stuff if you have a Blu-ray disc with a 7.1-channel soundtrack. You also get optical and coaxial digital audio outputs, and a basic stereo analogue output.
In terms of video, the chief output is the HDMI socket. While this isn't a fabled v1.3 HDMI that will be able to carry lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD audio in the near future, it can carry both surround sound and video, the latter in anything up to 1080p quality. (For the uninitiated, 1080p is the best form of hi-def Blu-ray is capable of delivering, but you'll also need a TV or projector capable of showing it -- any old HD Ready display will not do.) This, then, is the connection you really want to use. Other options are component video (capable of carrying up to 1080i hi-def), Scart, S-Video and composite video.
Features
Audio: Dolby Digital/DTS Dimensions (W x H x D): 430 x 85 x 332 mm Weight: 4.7 kg PLAYABLE MEDIA: DVD-A, MP3, JPEG, Blu-Ray SOCKETS: Composite - 1 output, S-video - 1 output, RGB Scart - 1 output, Component - Yes, HDMI - Yes, Stereo audio - 1 output, Optical audio - 1 output, Coaxial audio - 1 output
The biggest reason to get excited about Blu-ray at the moment is its hi-def abilities. Whereas DVDs have a native resolution of 576p, Blu-ray's extra memory capacity means it can deliver movies at 720p, 1080i and 1080p resolution - that's up to four times the detail of a DVD.
The DMP-BD10 will output all these hi-def formats when you stick a Blu-ray Disc in the tray, provided the conditions are correct (ie 1080p requires you use an HDMI cable and have a compatible screen or projector). To set your preferred output format, you simply dip into the setup menu and select it from the list - any unavailable formats will be greyed out and unselectable. It will also upscale DVD video to your selected format using its Pixel Precision Progressive Processing (P4HD) video technology, which should make them look much sharper and more detailed.
Panasonic has included several image-adjustment tools, which are accessible both in the setup menu and via a dedicated button while a disc is playing. These can be used to sharpen a picture, adjust the contrast and so on. It doesn't hurt to have them there, but as your HD Ready television or projector probably has much the same options it's not always necessary to touch them.
Unfortunately, the remote control bundled with the player is, well, rubbish. It seems pretty good on first viewing: the main controls are well laid-out, and there's a clean, uncluttered feel thanks to many of the less-used functions being hidden away underneath a flap. Picking it up and using it, however, reveals it to be annoyingly unresponsive, especially when you're trying to change menu settings. The fact that the navigation buttons are part of a loose, spinning wheel (used to skip forwards and backwards when watching films) doesn't help either. It's quite simply a dog's dinner of a remote control - and a device as cutting-edge as this deserves a really good one.
Performance
To test out the 1080p quality, we hooked the DMP-BD10 up to a 50-inch Pioneer PDP-5000EX - one of only a handful of 1080p-compatible plasma screens available. It's fair to say that it looks streets ahead of DVD, even DVD upscaled by the most expensive players on the market, and there's also more detail and far less noise and fewer compression artefacts than you see with the movies on Sky HD - it's quite simply the best picture you can get at home (without shipping in a proper cinema projector and a few reels of film, anyway).
In fact, it's better than the Samsung BD-P1000 - and this is where that extra £200 really makes itself known. We should point out, however, that having also tried 1080i and found it really looks no worse, we're not sure all the fuss over 1080p is justified. At least, not yet - it could well be due to the discs having to improve slightly. Sound quality is also very good, but not really any better than DVD at the moment.
Upscaled DVD playback isn't quite so impressive, and there are cheapish DVD players out there that do a better job of this - but this isn't the point, the Panasonic is simply the best High Definition DVD player out there at the moment.
