Official Panasonic DMP-BD35/55 Owners Thread - Page 90

TrueHD tracks have an accompanying "unlisted" regular DD 5.1 track for just such an eventuality. It's part of Dolby's spec for TrueHD. My Toshiba XA-1 also used to provide high bitrate DTS over toslink/coax when a TrueHD track was selected, just like your BH200.

boylan13,

Any comment on Gary Murell's obseravtions?


Could this be just HD SDI output related?

Paul

I did a compare box side- by- side between the 35 and 55. Can anyone coment on this line.
HDCP Compliant 55 NO 35 YES
Thanks

mustang65 -- They are both HDCP compliant! No one can sell a BD player that isn't HDCP compliant - it wouldn't play most BD DVDs.

Larry,

Was that via HDMI or component? I have a BenQ PE8700+ which is also a 720p native projector. With so many 720 projectors installed in the field, I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about various players abilities to properly down-convert from the 1080p Blu-Ray resolution. My BD55 should be delivered tomorrow and I planned on HDMI hook-up but was curious which you were using to get the "stunning results"?

To those who own the Panny BD35 & the Sony S350, is there any noticeable difference between the 2 players as far as PQ goes, I really liked my BD30 but I sold it to get a 2.0 finalized player. Nothing against my S350 at all, as I have been very very happy with it. It's played everything in my library beautifully and loads are almost as good as the PS3. There's that voice in your head that says, maybe the Panny is %0.05 better, you know what I mean guys!

Set BD35 to 24P and let my PZ85U do the 3:2 or leave 24P off and allow the player to handle 3:2 ?

tkbryant -- I don't qualify as a product owner, but I wouldn't change horses this quick (unless you have problems). The BD35/55 does look tempting, but if your player does a good job, keep it and enjoy. The picture quality of all of the current crop of BD players are pretty much equal. The differences are in the features provided in addition to the basic job of playing of Blu-Ray discs (video) over HDMI connections. You can get a bigger improvement by calibrating your system, than you can by jumping from player to player.

There will be better BD players released within the next year, and likely at lower prices. Enjoy what you have, for now, and wait for the next set of improved models, at least. The BD format is still evolving and the "standards" are still being 'fleshed out".

cvearl -- Whichever looks better to you.

Yeah, I hear ya. After watching Hellboy 2, I've decided that the image was pretty near flawless and a new player isn't going to make that much of a difference as I was left mesmerized by the PQ. One of the things I do like about the Panny 35 is the ability to watch the PIP commentary without having to switch the audio settings as I do on my S350. Not a big annoyance but I have found myself watching alot of extras lately on the summer blockbusters that are coming out which is unusual for me but there are some good discs with great bonus features that I have enjoyed immensely lately.

I played Kung Fu Panda tonight in my 55 and no matter what I did all it would output was 2 channel stereo. I tried to change every setting I could but after a minute it would revert back to stereo. I am using 5.1 analog connections if that matters. Is it something that I am doing wrong?

boylan I really appreciate your sharing this information... trust me, most of us really don't know how to test these things.

Can you clarify something for me... if I turn secondary audio ON and am listening to PCM or Bitstream, and there are menu sounds for the movie does that mean the entire movie is "downconverted"? Or is it done on the fly ONLY when I bring up the pop-up menu and get the click sound?

I really wish the player would indicate what sound it is actually outputting... I find it distressing that there seems to be no way to reliably tell exactly what your getting short of bitstreaming and letting the receiver tell you.

EDIT:
As someone pointed out below, yes, I am using HDMI.

Also, after re-reading, I realized that what you are saying is that if using PCM output over HDMI with secondary audio ON, the only compromises are that it is "downrezed" to 48Khz (if it was one of the few titles with a sample rate better than that in the first place) and you lose two channels of surround (and I only have a 5.1 system anyway). I think this is probably "good enough" for me, as I doubt I will be able to detect the diff on the sample rate.

So I think my only concern is that there is absolutely no way to confirm this, as the player will happily tell me that it is playing DTS HD Master even if it downconverting it. I find that a bit disturbing...

In my opinion I had the 350 and got rid of it for the Panny 35. The reason being I thought the PQ on blu rays was too soft for me compared to the Panny BD35.

Set to 24p and avoid 3:2 altogether.

mine arrived yesterday...SDHC card arriving in the next day or two...BR movies from the deal sometime soon I hope. I didn't have much time last night, so I hooked it up, popped in a SD DVD and it looked good. sounded like it could be tweaked a little better.

I likely won't get to play with many settings until Sunday, but if anyone can recommend the best setup changes I should make for the player I would really appreciate it.

BD55, connected via HDMI to an Onkyo 806 7.1 receiver. only setup as a 5.1 system at the moment. HDMI from the receiver to an older Samsung DLP that's 720p/1080i.

I have to upgrade the firmware on the BD55, but after that, any advice on the settings to choose for audio and video?

Hi,

I have the BD55 connected to a DVI switch via an HDMI to DVI adapter cable, then a 9 meter run of DVI cable from the switch to the projector.

Larry

I got my BD55 yesterday and wanted to post some impressions.

I did the firmware upgrade first thing - the player got an IP address using DHCP and the upgrade went smoothly.

Connected to my Denon 3806 with HDMI and set the audio to PCM.

Played the Blu-ray 5th Element and the picture quality was great. One concern with playing the disk - when I hit "Play Movie" in the menu the display flashed off and on 5 or 6 times before it settled down and started playing. Is this "normal"? It's pretty annoying. Otherwise it was rock solid for playback, pause, FF, etc.

I'm very pleased with the picture and sound quality on BD and DVD. My biggest disappointment is with the build quality. For the higher end player, it seems pretty crappy. The little hinged door is so cheesy and crooked I'm tempted to just break it off.

I did the Amazon $100 off deal with the 4 movies. They shipped the player right away, even though the disks are not all in stock apparently. Can't wait to watch "300".

Hi,

I can't answer your question, but I wanted to clarify something you quoted from Chris. Here's his entire quote:


I wanted to emphasize that despite Chris' use of the term "Digital Audio Output", his remarks were really referring strictly to HDMI AV Out. In that context his remarks are correct.

However, Chris' use of the term "Digital Audio Output" can be confusing since. On page 8 of the manual, Panasonic specifically uses this term "Digital Audio Output" to refer (Coaxial [BD55]/Optical), not HDMI Outputs.

When referring to Coaxial/Optical outputs, I believe Chris' remarks are still correct, except the lossless codecs would be Down-mixed to 2 channel PCM.

Larry

Hi-

Any comments on the SD DVD performance between the two players?

Thanks,

I haven't tested the speed in a while now, but it's usually over 10Mbps for download. You must have a lot more patience than I do if your BD Live performanace is excellant.

Your disc has non-anamorphic widescreen content. You can zoom it, preserving aspect ratio, to make use of the full width of the screen. Press the Submenu button on the remote, choose Aspect Ratio, and then scroll to Zoom. The original aspect ratio is preserved, but picture quality may not look great.

With some discs, the player automatically detects this kind of content, and instead of adding size bars (for the windowbox effect) it automatically zooms it. That might sound like a good thing. Unfortunately, when that happens, you cannot use the SubMenu/AspectRatio feature to unzoom it. That sucks if your subtitles are clipped.

Known non anamorphic SD titles that auto-zoom:
- The Abyss
- Wargames

Known SD titles that do not automatically zoom:
- Westway to the World (the story of the Clash)
- Habana Blues
- Star Wars Original Trilogy Bonus Discs (Theatrical versions)
....and: 2 Days in the Valley

Here's a link:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post14964058

Edit: I realize my description might not be clear, so...
A non-anamorpihc widescreen DVD has black bars encoded at top and bottom of a 4:3 frame (letterbox).
The player adds the side-bars (pillarbox) when connected to a 16:9 TV
The net effect is bars all around (windowbox)

If I remember correctly, you can change network setting to Full Duplex, which may speed things along.

Thanks for that info caa.
Interestingly, I have a star wars trilogy set (in SD) that looks just great on my BD35. I'll have to check which version it is.

I was referring to the Bonus discs that came with the 2004 release. (Not the main discs.) The bonus discs have an old laserdisc transfer of the original theatrical version of the films, before George Lucas started fiddling with them. They are non-anamorphic. Nerds call them the OOT (Original Original Trilogy) and hardcore nerds call them GOUT (George's Original Unaltered Trilogy) because even these are not quite the original theatrical version....

The main discs have the "special edition" version (actually further tinkered with.) They are all nice and restored, and are anamorphic. (They also have Greedo shooting at the same time as Han Solo, and show a ghostly Hayden Christensen at the Endor celebration etc etc etc.)

On the 35/50, the non anamorphic discs do not auto-zoom. You can use the submenu button to cause them to fill the screen. However, in scenes with alien language subtitles (like Greedo and Han, or Jaba's lair) the subtitles are cut off. You can unzoom for these scenes. I prefer to watch them on my old JVC dvd player, which properly relocates the subtitle when the image is zoomed.

This does not apply to the main discs, which are anamorphic.

I still no clear on this part also. If someone can answer that will be awesome

Confused. Multichannel PCM versus Dolby TrueHD

I apologize if this has been asked before, but it would appear that the latest firmware revision for the DMP-BD55 is 1.5, correct? If so, why isn't it available from Panasonic's support site?

Here it is.

http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/bd/index.html

I think Paul is asking why DMP-BD55 Ver. 1.5 is not available from the Panasonic USA Support site. As of the moment, it's only available at the Panasonic "GLOBAL" site.

You do have to pick "North America" before you download the 1.5 Firmware, but for people who don't know about the "GLOBAL" site, they won't see it. They only have updates for the BD30/50 at the USA local site.

Paul

Hi Larry,

Thanks for the reply. I'm kind of surprised the DVI switch doesn't give you any HDCP handshake issues. I plan on using the Monoprice HDMI 1.3 certified switch and then a HDMI--> DVI adaptor cable to the projector.

Tekdredger

I returned the 350 for the 35 also for picture quality .
Also better remote, menus, front panel( didn't like Sony blue), SD card slot( viewing pictures).

Carl