Which to get: Panny or Sony?

[gmoney]

I am strongly considering picking up a blu ray player within the next few months and I want to know if anyone has any particular recommendations. Right now, I think I am leaning toward the Panasonic, but the only thing that is holding me back is its lack of 1080p24 output. I know that the Sony has it and the Pioneer is supposed to, but I am not sure how important that feature really is for me. I have a Pioneer PDP-5070HD which is a native 768p display but can accept a 1080p24 signal and display at 72hz.
I really like the reviews I have heard so far for the Panny (most seem to think it's slightly better than the Sony), but I just want to know if 1080p24 on the Sony would actually provide a significant benefit for me and therefore provide better picture quality than the Panny.
Thanks!

[Rio]

I can't comment about 1080p24 output on Sony BDP-S1, since the setup I checked (Pioneer PRO-FHD1) and it was just a quick check, I could not see much difference between 1080i and 1080p24. 1080p24 aside, PQ is quite similar between Panasonic DMP-BD10 and S1, except 1080p60 output for S1. Somehow, when I chose 1080p60 on S1, luminance level went down and details were lost. I prefer 1080i or 1080p24 output over 1080p60 on S1.

For the build quality, S1 looks and weights much better than BD10. S1's Remote is also better designed than BD10.

S1 can display the playback status like bit rate meter for the video, elapsed time, total run time, elapsed time from the beginning of current chapter, chapter run time, etc. BD10 only shows title and chapter number, elapsed time and some sort of progress bar against the total run time, but no total run time is shown. Response time of S1 like chapter skip, fast forward is slighly slower than BD10, but it's not a big difference.

Biggest difference is start up time. Unlike BD10, S1 doesn't accept "Open/Close" button as a power on button. From power off, it takes about 35 seconds to start displaying player's initial screen, and user interaction (tray open, for example) is not accepted by about 38 seconds from power on. After disc is loaded, it takes about 40 seconds to start playing the disc content (total 75 to 80 seconds from power on). As to BD10, from power off to tray open takes about 12 seconds, total 43 seconds to start playing the disc content, almost twice faster than S1.

In case of BD-J titles like Fox's "Speed" and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", S1's start up time gets even worse. LXG takes about 170 seconds from power off, while BD10 takes about 75 seconds from power off. PS3 is the fastest player to boot up in this regard.

Also, menu performance of BD-J titles on S1 is slower, more stuttering than BD10 for menus (video playback is fine), but much better than Samsung's BDP-1000 (Samsung is painfully slow for BD-J menus).

I didn't do audio test, so can't say for it.

[gmoney]

Thanks for the reply. I kind of figured the 1080p24 output wasn't really that big of a deal for me.