Panasonic DMP-BD85EB-K Blu-Ray Disc Player
Posted by Notcot on Jul 16, 2010 in Home Cinema & Video |
- Audio: Digital Plus/Dts HD/Dolby True HD
- Playback Formats: BD-ROM (Movie) / BD-RE / BD-R / DVD-ROM / DVD-R/RW / DVD+R/RW
- 1080/24p Playback: Yes
- Sd Card Slot: Yes
- Bd Live
This is my first blu ray player and an upgrade from a good upscaling Toshiba DVD player. Blu-ray performance was always going to impress (probably with any player) so no disappointments there. Pictures looks stunning.
Upscaled DVD seems pretty good too, perhaps not quite as pleasing as my old Toshiba player but good.
The player menu system is not what you would call zippy but it is bearably responsive and boot times and disk load times are OK for blu-ray I suppose, I have not set it to fast boot mode in order to save a few bob by keeping it in lower power true standby mode.
The wireless LAN is easy enough to set up (as long as network settings are known) and works OK. I downloaded the latest firmware no problem over the wireless link after initial setup. The USB WLAN dongle is a mixed blessing – yes would be tidier ‘in the box’ but it seems to work fine and does give the option of repositioning for better signal/tucking out the way so I think all in all no gripes there.
Panasonic’s Viera Cast service is very limited in UK at moment and doesn’t do much for me at the moment. If they could get BBC iPlayer on there that would be more impressive…
However the BIG disappointment for me is (and I am kicking myself for not picking this up before I ordered it) is the DLNA support will not allow streaming of mp3 files from a server. The primary reason I shelled out extra for a wireless model was so I could play mp3’s through it served from my PC but I just assumed wrongly that it would be able to play mp3’s. The DLNA file browser can even see the mp3 files on the server but just unhelpfully says it can’t play them. I know the codec is in the box as it plays them off USB stick no problem so this is a ridiculous omission.
I phoned Panasonic UK tech support as I had though I must be doing something wrong but the guy told me that audio streaming was not supported.
An additional irritation (which I was aware of before buying) is limited media support. It doesn’t play wav or wma audio files for example and I believe video formats are similarly poorly supported.
But lets just spell my main gripe out again – the DMP-BD850EB-K can ‘see’ an mp3 file on a server and can play mp3 files off a USB stick, but can’t play mp3 files off a DLNA server so LAN/WLAN music is possible.
The obvious competitors- LG’s 390 player and some of Sony’s new blu ray models e.g. 370 can both stream music from a DLNA server as far as I am aware.
I am returning this player – it was expensive and fails to deliver something which I considered so basic a feature I never even bothered to check – as apparently neither did Home Cinema Choice magazine’s reviewer – he also seems to have assumed that the Panasonic could stream audio in the March/April 2010 edition…
Rating: 3 / 5
Prior to buying this player I had a Denon dvd player: DVD-1910 which is capable of up 720p or 1080i outputs. DVDs looked very good on that player. Using a 32 inch monitor and feeding the audio through a separate hi-fi sytem, this Panasonic Blu-ray plays my DVDs with extreme clarity. The audio channels have an ‘enhanced dialogue’ capability which makes a great improvement. I used to have to use headphones on my Denon, but now can hear clearly without them. Playing Blu-ray discs is also excellent, very sharp and good saturation and again very clear audio. It takes some time to set the player up with the paramters that you wish to have and the instruction book is sparse on detail, in particular connecting the audio channels correctly. The buttons on the remote are rather close together and when watching a film in subdued ambient lighting, it is easy to press the wrong button when wishing to change something. Overall,when everything is correctly set up, this player far exceeds my expectations in both visual and audio fidelity.
Rating: 5 / 5
The unit is a great blu-ray player. Its simple to connect to both the TV and the network. Picture and sound quality are great. However the unit does advertise support for MP3 and video on the network. Yes it will play most .vob files, but for some reason will not play lord of the rings, even if I reduce the file size to 2 files per film. It also states it will play MP3, apparently it will but not through the network. You have to put MP3 on disk or a USB stick, which is a waste of time you might as well play the CD. It is a second rate machine as a network media player, and there is no supoprt for lossless audio, such as wav or wma at all, except CD.
If you want to play files from your network, it seems you still have to get a media player, none of the mainstream companies seem to make a machine that will competently play media files and blu-ray.
My gripe with a lot of these audio video companies is that their advertising, specifications and instruction manuals are missleading and you only find out what your product can and cant do when you call to find out why it wont work. Though it did take them less than 5 minutes from dialing to tell me rather than wasting a lot more of my time.
Rating: 3 / 5
Excellent product. The only hiccough was that the documentation regarding the setting up of the remote control to be different to my DVD player rercorder was not clear enough and I had to contact Panasonic
Rating: 4 / 5