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Originally Posted by
bakerwi 
You don't have to justify your purchase.
If you see value in the above features then you've made a good decision. As I stated in my previous post some perspective buyers may find value in the features in the Oppo BDP-80 and not in those features you’ve mentioned above.
Here is a novel thought. How about you just take the Oppo out of the equation and compare the Panasonic to another model that you may be interested in. The Panasonic and Oppo are not aimed at the same buyer.
I don't see why the Oppo and Panasonic could not be aimed at the same market. Are you implying that there is a certain market that likes hifi video/audio but also does not wish to see the film as the director originally intended, i.e. Avatar/Monster vs. Aliens/Journey to the Center of the Earth/etc in 3-D? That seems unlikely to me.
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You or I would be silly to try and "guess" what features would be important to perspective buyers. Remember what they say about "thinking" that it comes from not knowing. Also, you may want to substitute the BDP-80 where you have the Oppo BDP-83. The Panasonic and Oppo BDP-83 are not in the same zip code and cater to two different audiences. (lol) I doubt people are trying to decide between the BDP-83 and this Panasonic model.
Considering the Panasonic BDT-350 is not out until May 2nd you don't know what zip code it is in, nor do you know who it is catering to. Panasonic Blu-ray players in the past may have been geared towards J6P (although considering Denon used their design for every portion of their past players except case and PSU that is debatable), but J6P is not going to buy a $2500 TV and a $400 player. Panasonic released some of the best DVD players that existed later on in DVD's life (RP82, RP91), there is no reason they could not do the same with Blu-ray. It is better to be product smart than brand loyal.
Note that the computing power needed to decode 1080p dual stream H264 is much higher than the power needed for single 1080p stream. Panasonic claims they put this extra processing power to use to improve upscale & deinterlace quality - we'll see if they've succeeded in that effort when the product arrives.
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Yeah, you've been foaming at the mouth about 3D since early last year and has evidently been stocking up the necessary equipment.
I'm presently transitioning (moving my Pioneer Elite Pro-151FD to my family room) to a front projector (no 3D for me) for my home theater.
“If it matches the 51FD in a/v quality Panasonic has an unmatched killer player on their hands.” let’s not state your potential “subjective” opinion as fact. There isn’t a Panasonic past or present that competes with my 51FD on pure performance. I don’t care about streaming, 3D, DNLA, etc. Those are just features and I’m talking about performance.
"matches the 51FD in a/v quality" implies a/v performance obviously. The point is the BDT-350 does have the potential to combine the features that Panasonic is touting with the performance of the BDP-51FD as a result of the more powerful SoC it requires to decode dual 1080p streams. Whether it reaches that potential is yet to be seen. IMO it is just a matter of software, if the BDT-350 has the computing power to decode dual stream 1080p it should be able to provide high quality upscaling/deinterlacing as well - just a matter of implementing it in software.
If it can do both, though, that is quite the revolution. High quality A/V plus cutting edge features the competition lacks.
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I sincerely hope 3D and the Panasonic bring you much joy, but let us let the buying public decide what features and/or brand they prefer.
I am just voicing my opinion on what makes most sense. Yeah, you could probably make the argument that some particular person might value an AIWA Boombox more than a pair of B&W 802s. That doesn't mean the former is not obviously inferior to the latter, however. If Panasonic is able to implement higher quality deineterlcing and scaling algorithms given the greater power SoC they have available to them, they will have quite the coup on their hands - 3-D + streaming + dual HDMI + high quality scaling all for less than a BDP-83. Note that the last item on that list is the only one that is in question at this point, and the first item I will be putting to the test when I receive the unit.
As been stated before, these forums truly are great when you need a little outside help, such as instances as this. 
