PANASONIC DMP-BD55 (Sound and Vision November 2008 review link)

[HDTV1080P]

Panasonic DMP-BD55 Blu-ray Disc Player

(Sound and Vision November 2008 review link)

This Panasonic DMP-BD55 is almost perfect for just about anyone. It only took 20 seconds for a BD-LIVE BLU-RAY disc to load and 15 seconds for a normal BLU-RAY disc to load according to the review. These standalone BLU-RAY players are getting faster and faster and one day may load movies faster then the PS3.

Quote
“The first high-def disc players were painfully slow at loading. The BD55 is a speed demon by comparison: It only took 20 seconds to power up and load a BD-Live Blu-ray Disc, while DVDs and non-BD-Live Blu-ray Discs started playing in a mere 15 seconds.”

The Panasonic DMP-55 onboard 7.1 analog outputs with advanced audio decoding is ideal for consumers with older surround receivers that do not want to upgrade to a HDMI 1.3 surround receiver that accepts 7.1 bitstream.

The DVD upconversion is also excellent according to the review.

Quote
“The player’s upconversion of regular DVDs was also very impressive. It passed all of the tough upconversion tests on the Silicon Optix HQV DVD with the exception of the Assorted Cadence test. Compared with other high-def disc and upconverting DVD players I’ve handled, its performance here rivals, if not exceeds, the best of them.”

One negative about the Panasonic DMP-BD55 is that it does not include 1GB of internal memory for BD-LIVE. The ideal standalone BLU-RAY player should have at least 1GB of internal memory with a SD card slot as a option for external storage. As one can see from the following quote from the Sound and Vision review that even a professional reviewer using this player forgot that they needed to insert 1GB of external memory for BD-LIVE. The average consumer is use to DVD players which require no external memory to be purchased for any bonus material. It would be in the BLU-RAY camps best interest in 2009 to release all new standalone BLU-RAY players with internal memory built in. One advantage of the Panasonic DMP-BD50 and DMP-BD55 is that the SD memory card slot is in the front of the player which is a huge plus. With the Sony BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 the USB memory card slot is in the rear. On my Sony BDP-S350 in order to make standard size USB flash memory fit in the micro USB slot I had to install a USB extension cable along with a USB flash memory. I like how Panasonic has chosen to use SD cards in the front versus USB slots in the back. If the Panasonic just had 1GB of internal memory also it would be a perfect player for the average consumer. Right now it is just a good player for the average consumer as long as they remember to buy a 1GB or larger SD memory card with the player.

Quote
"After I unsuccessfully tried to access the BD-Live features of a few discs, however, it dawned on me that there was no SD card inserted in the player. (Panasonic doesn’t include one with the BD55.) But once I filled that slot with a 1-GB card, BD-Live was up and running.”

The full review o the Panasonic DMP-BD55 can be read at this link

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/bluray/2991/panasonic-dmp-bd55-blu-ray-disc-player.html[