So I'm having a devil of a time finding out information on this new player and somehow, there doesn't seem to be a thread on it yet. I can't be the only one excited about this, can I?
Panasonic website has it listed as "Coming in May" but it's May now and I can't find it for sale (or pre-order) anywhere but on the Panasonic site. Any intel?
I verified that I have 2.4. Thanks for the instructions for finding the firmware version. I'm asking Panasonic support for help. I will be pleasantly surprised if I get a response that is useful from Panasonic support.
My experience is that they will eventually respond but may take a while. I had an Oppo player and got spoiled - they would call/e-mail back within a day. I had a problem with a Blu-ray title that stalled at one of the warning screens and inquired about when the next firmware was going to be released. They actually called back but it took them so long I didn't remember what I had called about.
Looks like it was. I just checked the press release, and it doesn't list the BD70V. I checked Google's cache, and it shows that on Oct. 1, the BD70V was listed between the BD65 and the B500. It's not there now.
I've got a Panasonic DMP-BD70V player and I was interested in what you guys think of the VHS playback.
When I play Blu-Rays, everything is perfect. And even when I play my standard DVD's, the 1080p upscaling typically works great, and the image quality is quite good IMO. However, when I played several of my VHS tapes, the image quality was really crappy, and I even encountered some sound issues here and there.
On the other hand, based on his 3/9/10 post to this thread, T2k raved about his upscaled VHS tape playback, so I'm not sure what to make of that in relation to what I am experiencing.
I frankly got the DMP-BD70V player in part so we could occasionally play VHS tapes on one HDMI machine based on our extensive VHS collection, but I am now questioning this decision based on the really lackluster image quality I am seeing from the VHS section of this player.
If anyone has any insights and suggestions, or can share their upscaled VHS viewing exeriences, I would sure appreciate it.
Originally Posted by DECJ
I've got a Panasonic DMP-BD70V player and I was interested in what you guys think of the VHS playback.
When I play Blu-Rays, everything is perfect. And even when I play my standard DVD's, the 1080p upscaling typically works great, and the image quality is quite good IMO. However, when I played several of my VHS tapes, the image quality was really crappy, and I even encountered some sound issues here and there.
On the other hand, based on his 3/9/10 post to this thread, T2k raved about his upscaled VHS tape playback, so I'm not sure what to make of that in relation to what I am experiencing.
I frankly got the DMP-BD70V player in part so we could occasionally play VHS tapes on one HDMI machine based on our extensive VHS collection, but I am now questioning this decision based on the really lackluster image quality I am seeing from the VHS section of this player.
If anyone has any insights and suggestions, or can share their upscaled VHS viewing exeriences, I would sure appreciate it.
Thanks in advance,
Don
VHS playback looks great on mine. However, I have a 37 in. screen and I'm doing 720p HDMI input. I can imagine that the perceived quality will go down as the screen size gets larger.
Originally Posted by Sea3
VHS playback looks great on mine. However, I have a 37 in. screen and I'm doing 720p HDMI input. I can imagine that the perceived quality will go down as the screen size gets larger.
Thanks for the input. I have a 42" Vizio HDTV, so while it is a larger screen than yours, it isn't that much bigger IMO. Anyway, I will have to back off from 1080p and try some other resolutions and see if that does anything.
I find VHS playback disappointing, but then again I find that on any machine after watching high quality DVDs. I don't think VHS playback is any better or worse on this machine.
Your experience is closer to mine then when it comes to VHS playback on the BD70V player.
What I don't get is why some have reported that their VHS tapes have never looked so good and that the upconverting for VHS is nothing short of fantastic. I of course never realistically expected VHS playback on this machine to rival Blue-Ray quality, but I was hoping that it would at least noticeably improve it and move it a bit towards standard definition DVD. Not one bit so far in my case.
I'll still try experimenting a bit with different resolutions to see if that does anything positive.
I didn't remember any problem with VHS quality so I went and played a couple of titles last night, an old Rumpole of the Bailey manufactured in '99 and a tape of Lady Bird Johnson that we picked up in Austin two years ago. To me, both looked as good as or better than my SD channels from DirecTV. I watched on a 26" Vizio at about 6-7 ft and had the resolution set to 1080i. Both tapes were commercial tapes. Neither was close to DVD quality but after a few minutes it was the story that grabbed my attention and I forgot about the eye candy.
It has quasi S-VHS playback. What that means is it will play a S-VHS tape but it will only be the quality of VHS
DECJ, what speed was your VHS tapes recorded in? If anything other than SP they will probably look pretty poor on a flat screen TV. It's not really the fault of the 70v but just the VHS source. Even SP VHS doesn't really compare to a good DVD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jjeff /forum/post/20149266
DECJ, what speed was your VHS tapes recorded in? If anything other than SP they will probably look pretty poor on a flat screen TV. It's not really the fault of the 70v but just the VHS source. Even SP VHS doesn't really compare to a good DVD.
I have only played SP speed commercial tapes in my BD70V unit (and although I haven't played any of my self recorded tapes yet, I always used SP with premium grade tapes when I did that).
Quote:
Originally Posted by DECJ /forum/post/20146722
Your experience is closer to mine then when it comes to VHS playback on the BD70V player.
What I don't get is why some have reported that their VHS tapes have never looked so good and that the upconverting for VHS is nothing short of fantastic. I of course never realistically expected VHS playback on this machine to rival Blue-Ray quality, but I was hoping that it would at least noticeably improve it and move it a bit towards standard definition DVD. Not one bit so far in my case.
I'll still try experimenting a bit with different resolutions to see if that does anything positive.
I think some may exaggerate a bit. Your results can only be as good as the source. Upconverting a tape that doesn't have the resolution to begin with, and degrades over time, is not going to result in DVD like quality.
Again, I wasn't really expecting true DVD-like quality. But in my VHS playbacks on the BD70V (at 1080p), they looked worse to me than when I previously played them through our old 26" CRT TV using a standard VHS player (as best as I can remember).
Maybe what I need to do is haul that old VHS player out, and play some of the same tapes directly into our HDTV and see what relative quality I get. If they are worse than what I saw coming out of the BD70V, then I need to quit complaining. On the other hand, if they look better (or even equal), then it seems to me that says something not so good about the BD70V player (as far as the VHS section goes).
However, before I do that, I still need to experiment with some different resolutions on my BD70V to see if that does anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DECJ /forum/post/20154576
Again, I wasn't really expecting true DVD-like quality. But in my VHS playbacks on the BD70V (at 1080p), they looked worse to me than when I previously played them through our old 26" CRT TV using a standard VHS player (as best as I can remember).
Maybe what I need to do is haul that old VHS player out, and play some of the same tapes directly into our HDTV and see what relative quality I get. If they are worse than what I saw coming out of the BD70V, then I need to quit complaining. On the other hand, if they look better (or even equal), then it seems to me that says something not so good about the BD70V player (as far as the VHS section goes).
However, before I do that, I still need to experiment with some different resolutions on my BD70V to see if that does anything.
OK, if that's the case (which I am not arguing by the way), why are some folks saying that their VHS tapes have never looked so good as played on their BD70V and HDTV's? Is it simply exaggeration as patruns suggested?
OK, if that's the case (which I am not arguing by the way), why are some folks saying that their VHS tapes have never looked so good as played on their BD70V and HDTV's? Is it simply exaggeration as patruns suggested?
Could be, I think for VHS they look good on the 70. I did some duping last month of shows recorded years ago from OTA sources. They really were poor but it's strange, after about five minutes of watching I forgot about how crappy the video was because the stories were so good.
Look, some folks have extensive collections of VHS tapes, both commercial and personally taped material that they would like to be able to still play. If you're not interested in VHS you don't have to worry about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DECJ /forum/post/20155094
Yeah ... yet another funny guy.
Look, some folks have extensive collections of VHS tapes, both commercial and personally taped material that they would like to be able to still play. If you're not interested in VHS you don't have to worry about it.
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