Panasonic players and the Pause button

[Bruce Morrison]

I have two Panasonic players - the UK BD35 and the US BD50. I've noticed that, if I press Pause when playing a BD and leave the player in that state for several minutes, when I press Play, there is a slight delay (no more than a second or so) before playback resumes.

Is this because the disc is no longer spinning? I'm wondering whether the player automatically stops the disc if it has remained paused for a certain elapsed time, while still "remembering" the point on the disc where playback was paused.

It would be nice to know if this does happen, because I've always been reluctant to leave a BD in pause mode for a long time, thinking that the drive mechanism would incur unnecessary wear. On the other hand, of course, using the Stop button is not convenient for most BDs as there is no "last memory" capability if the disc has Java-related encoding.

Any info would be welcome.