First Impressions on New Blu-ray Players.

[that1guystudios]

I'm a Best Buy/Magnolia Home Theater Employee, and this weekend we received the vast majority of new Blu-ray players for 2010. I spent several hours testing and playing them. Here are some impressions.

Panasonic 65

Cheers: Much Improved start up time. Discs load much quicker.
Viera Cast has improved quite a bit. Great Price point. Netflix finally on a Panasonic product! Wireless signal received very strong (unlike Samsung and Sony's from last year.)
Jeers: Only way to get wireless is to buy the wireless dongle from Panasonic.
Wireless dongle can only fit in the FRONT port, and it's the size of an engagement ring box! Yikes! Should have put the USB port on the back.
USB port only plays photos, no videos. Exact same Graphic user interface. Kind of boring looking.

Panasonic 85
Same as above, but features Tube Aomplifier sound simulation...seemed to work well. Gave a warmer sound when I tried it on some Martin Logan speakers. Also came with the wireless dongle in the box, plugs in the back, and also features an extension cord so you can put the wireless dongle somewhere else. Probably a good idea, since it's so huge.

Samsung 5500
Huge dust magnet. Same boot up time. Played with the app store, slick interface. Kind of like an iPhone app store. Wish it came pre-loaded with a few apps though. Each app has to be downloaded before you can use it, which becomes quite a chore. Someone decided to put ridges in the disc tray to keep the discs from sliding. It looks slick, but it scratches DVD's to hell.
Blu-rays will be fine though. USB port will play most video files I tossed at it.
Divx, AVI, Mp4, M4v, and even MKV! However, no m2ts support. And it has trouble viewing photos or Mp3 files when there are more than just a few contained in one folder. Disc loading times don't seem to be any improvement from last years models.

Samsung 5900
Same as above but with a much nicer frame design. Very slim player, very slick front. Top is a dust magnet, but the front plate isn't, which is nice. Wireless is built into the player, there is no dongle. Wireless signal received very strong, and was VERY easy to set up. Disc load times don't seem to be much of an improvement from last year, though the Samsung's were already pretty fast. Felt like this was a good one for the $.

Sony 570
Slick design on front, strange little place to put buttons on front though.
Remote finally has an eject button. Notably faster than all previous Blu-ray players I tested. Even faster than my PS3. Impressed with it's price tag. Wireless connection was pretty terrible. Dropped signal all the time, had low bars when in use. Wouldn't play any video. (Keep in mind it was in the same room with the Samsung and Panasonic which worked fine.)
USB slot is very picky with files. Wouldn't play most of what I threw at it.
iPhone remote was slick, but the regular remote was just as good in my opinion. Will access gracenote to download Blu-ray, DVD and CD cover art
and track listings. Much nicer graphic user interface.

LG 570
This player is SICK. Ultra fast disc loading. Really cool menu interface...Ice cubes floating in a glass of water. Wireless connection was superb. Vudu interface is exactly the same, netcast interface is MUCH improved. Love what it did. Played every video file I could think of. Locked up when trying to view more than one or two photos via USB. Outside of that minor issue, I think this is the best player out there after the Oppo and PS3.

LG 590.
Exactly the same player as the 570,
it adds a 250GB hard drive, and access to gracenote.
Tried to copy a few files over worked well. Also allows you to network with your computer for file sharing. Mentions on the install disc that it only works with XP, Vista. No Mac or Windows 7 support, which I found odd. Maybe it'll work with both anyway? I couldn't test this in the store.

Let me know what you think!