Panasonic DMP-BDT320 3D Blu-ray player

Panasonic’s DMP-BDT320 is both fabulous and frustrating. Leading the brand’s mainstream Blu-ray brigade, and positioned as an understudy to the audiophile grade DMP-BDT500, it packs a towering performance into a chassis barely 27mm tall. It also comes with a new-style remote control that tries far too hard to be clever. …

[Rob Davis]

Indeed it looks great, but will it compete against Sony Playstation 3 at that price?

For that money one could buy a Playstation 3 and have some change.

I'm guessing the Panasonic has more refinements aimed at the audio fan (like the Super Clarity Mode) as mentioned and perhaps the disc transport itself is quieter.

I hope it does well but there is competition as said.

Thoughts?

[Citizen Kaned]

Re: Indeed it looks great, but will it compete against Sony Playstation 3 at that price?

agreed you could.

i bought a standalone player as it has a better DAC, better picture and its silent. horses for courses i guess. my aging ps3 fat is a noisy bugger.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Indeed it looks great, but will it compete against Sony Playstation 3 at that price?

"it has a better DAC"

Unless you are using component video or 6 channel discrete audio, there is no "DAC" in the commonly used sense - HDMI and SPDIF are all digital - the DACs are in the TV and Stereo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Indeed it looks great, but will it compete against Sony Playstation 3 at that price?

The PS3 has that nastly little drm thingy called Cinavia in it so you can't play your legal (cough) rips.

[Anonymous Coward]

More Foxconn rebranded stuff

Not very consistent are you El Reg?

[TheProf]

Why

Why can these types of players handle all sorts of file formats from USB but not over LAN?

[Citizen Kaned]

Re: Why

i find this really annoying. its almost like its been deliberately done. surely a device doesnt really know where the data sits. whether its via lan, HDD or some other magical method. it should just read, buffer and play the data.

[Nick Ryan]

"The player sucked in a Java heavy copy of Goldfinger and had the 007 menu onscreen in a respectable 52 seconds. A less complicated platter reached its menu in just 31s."

And an HD ripped version of Goldfinger starts to play immediately and without all the crap and fancy effects and menus that nobody really cares for much. Oh, and you also don't have to sit and admire the "Piracy is copyright theft" lies screens as well (there is such thing as "copyright violation", but not "theft"), and in the case of much Disney tat, the unskippable trailers.

[Richard 116]

"this compliancy doesn’t extend to streaming the same content from a Nas across a LAN."

Please include a variation on this statement for all your player reviews. It's enormously helpful. I don't know how many times I've thought I've found the Holy Grail of players just to be disappointed after a frustrating search through user reviews or manufacturers tech specs. I have no idea why manufacturers seem to think it necessary to bury some vital info about format/container support but they do.

[Stacy]

Optical Digital...

How can a player of this price not include a coax digital as well! (Nothing against optical digital, just that I have two inputs of each and it's nice on the expensive components to pick which to use, so that the cheaper ones can take the optical inputs where you don't get a choice!)

[Citizen Kaned]

Re: Optical Digital...

AV amp or optical splitter is what you need. splitters are dirt cheap.

'surely a player of this price' isnt aimed at people without a full hdmi setup anyway? i have 9 hdmi sockets on my AVR :) and will get superior sound than coax/optical.

[Stacy]

Re: Optical Digital...

I have a system that is aimed more at music than AV (centred around a Cyrus AV Master for DAC and Sound Processor functions, with several AMPS to drive the speakers). No HDMI, just 2 Optical, 2 COAX Digital and 2 analogue.

The music reproduction is amazing, but the lack of inputs is a pain in the neck!

I hadn't though of a splitter though (I was concentrating on Optical to COAX converters, expensive and difficult to find) - I'll have to search for one; thanks for the tip!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully better than my DMP-BDT110

I really hope Panasonic are turning the corner here. I love their kit but I'm bitterly disappointed with my network enabled TV and Blu-Ray player.

Their file format support is poor on USB and **** poor over the network. The manuals even state that they will play some files off a USB device but not off a server. I totally agree with Citizen Kaned and I too wonder if they have caved in to the copyright lobby. On top of this, the TV can record Freeview or Freesat onto a USB HDD but it reformats it in a BSD-centric filesystem and messes the files about so no standard media player will play them. The files are also keyed to the TV that recorded them so you can't play them on your other Panasonic TV and if you have to return your TV for service, the manual warns you your recordings may not play when you get it back. IMO, Panasonic need to think long and hard about who their customers are and who is paying.

My Panasonics' file navigation is awful. They flatten the file system but leave the files in the order they were found in their folders, creating a seemingly random file order. The TV will only display a certain number of files (not many) before it refuses to show you any more. My friend's £90 WD TV is paradise by comparison. It plays every file I ever threw at it and keeps everything sorted in folders (so Debby Does Dallas shows up in the Adult Movies folder, not next to Downton Abbey when my Mum comes round)

I'm waiting to get a Raspberry Pi to run XBMC on so I can have a proper media centre. If that doesn't do it for me, I'll buy a dedicated network player. I'm at a loss to understand why I should have to as both my TV and BD have Ethernet sockets.