Shop For Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Disc Player, Black

I immediately ran into a technical difficulty the first time I hooked up this player to my receiver (Onkyo TX-SR604 with HDMI 1.1). I had the player hooked up through an HDMI switcher, XtremeMac HD. The receiver couldn't detect the signal. I hooked up the cable directly to the receiver. Again, the receiver couldn't detect the signal. Maybe I need a newer receiver that has HDMI 1.3 inputs, I don't know. This is an issue to consider for those who have TVs with only one HDMI input and one or more HDMI components (like XBOX 360, Tivo HD, etc). Thinking that perhaps I needed to update the firmware, I ran a update setup and found that I had version 1.1 and could update to 1.5. It took, maybe, about 3-4 minutes to update, using ethernet.


I was hoping that the update would fix the HDMI issue. But, it didn't. In any case, in worked perfectly fine when I hooked up the HDMI cable directly to my TV (Samsung PN-50A55 plasma) . I had to hook up a Toslink/Optical audio cable to the receiver for sound. Out of the box settings were fine for the most part--I tweaked the front light to be dimmer, set the resolution from "auto" to 1080p, set the 24p output to ON, and HDMI RGB output range to enhanced. I popped in a Blu Ray Disc (Sunshine) to test; It took around 40 second to get to the main menu. The quality is, as expected excellent and is better than 1080i HD TV broadcast (I have Comcast). I was actually surprised to find that the sound quality was amazing for both BR and DVD.

Now, what I was really concerned was how well it would upconvert DVD discs. I wanted it to be as good as my Oppo 981HD DVD player so I could sell it. I didn't want too many components. Panasonic upconversion is quite good but not as great as the Oppo. What I saw in Panasonic which I hadn't seen in the Oppo player was, 1) occasional jaggies in fast motion scenes, 2) the images were slightly softer and black levels could only be adjusted to high and low. That said, I was still very happy with the result and would have no problem giving up the Oppo player to minimize the setup.

Finally, I tried the Viera link option--currently available are YouTube, Picassa, Weather and Stock. I wasn't impressed. I have Tivo HD which has YouTube, Netflix, and more. Weather graphics were pretty amazing, though. But I really don't care for it.

All in all, I am pretty happy with it. I picked it over the new Samsung BD-P1600 because I read everywhere that the DVD upconversion was better. I am now kind of curious to try out the Samsung.Get more detail about Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Disc Player, Black.