Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Second-Gen Panasonic Blu-ray player is better and much less expensive

Panasonic just announced the availability of their second generation Blu-ray Disc player, at a suggested retail price of $599.95 (less than half the price of the first-gen DMP-BD10 that I bought last fall).

The new DMP-BD10A features improved audio with 7.1 channel surround, Dolby True HD and dts-HD High Resolution Audio decoding technology; and incorporates Panasonic's EZ-Sync system for integrated one-touch operation of Panasonic home theater components.

The new unit includes five freebie Blu-ray discs: Pirates of the Caribbean -- Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean -- Dead Man's Chest, Transporter, Fantastic 4, and Crash.

In addition to playing Blu-ray movie discs, the DMP-BD10A plays conventional standard-definition DVDs (with automatic 1080p up-conversion via HDMI) and conventional CDs. Other features include technology for IP conversion at the pixel level for ultra-fine details, a 297MHz 14bit Video D/A Converter with 4X oversampling, video noise shaping that improves signal-to-noise ratios by shifting noise to an unused band, and theoretical support for nearly 4.4 TRILLION COLORS. The DMP-BD10A also incorporates Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital and dts decoding, and BD-J (Java application) interactive capability. (This is a preview, not a review.)

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