Official Panasonic DMP-BD60/80 Owners Thread - Page 169

Hey guys,

When I click the amazon link on my viera cast on my BD60 it does not work. The screen just gets blurry so I am not able to acess amazon movie rentals. What is going wrong.

If he doesn't like the load times on the Samsung, he'll throw the Pioneers out the window. Not an option. For under $200, particularly if you don't care about Netflix, I'd say the Panasonic BD60 or BD80 are the ones to beat, but good luck finding a BD80 now, so go with the BD60.

The Sony BDP-N460 and LG BD370 are the fastest under $200, and of those two, the Sony is actually a little better at upconversion and HD de-interlacing. The LG BD390 is a very nice player but rings up around $260.

-CB

I started trying to update my BD80 to 2.2 on Monday morning. I kept getting the message "cannot check for firmware updates at this time try again later" I ran a network test and it passed. I usually assume that I must have done something wrong so I contacted Panasonic support who stated they were having problems on their end and to try again in three or four days. I just checked again and it's the same. I cannot get viera cast either. I can't verify how reliable this information is. I have updated through the network before without any problems.

Well my BD60 automatically asked me to update to 2.2 So I am running that now. I have acess to viera cast but whn I clikc the amazon button my tv gets all blury and nothing comes up. Is that what yours does?

So can I ask why the BD60 is considered a good unit at this price range?

Dear BD60 users, I need your opinion on this:

I am currently playing SD DVD on my Pansonic HT840 (a very old system) via component cables to a Samsung 40" LCD tv. I'm somewhat not happy wth the results as some DVD playback can have quite poor resolution, especially those long movies like The Dark Knight.

I recently bought the Xbox 360 hooked up to the same tv via HDMI. I was quite blown away by the sharpness of DVD playback on the 360. however, the colors were very washed (unacceptable to me) and the 360 is region locked

So i'm shopping around for a DVD upscaler or Blu ray player. SInce the price differenceis not great, i've my eyes on the Panasonic BD60.

Questions:
1. how is the upscaling capability of the BD60 compared to SD DVD playback using regular player?
2. If I hook up the BD60 via analogue (2xRCA) to my hifi, does it produce 5.1 sounds?

EXACT same thing happened to me this evening, so you're not alone. Glad to hear they're aware of it.

1- The BD60 will produce a good DVD upscaling, better than your old player.

2-The 2XRCA will only output 2 channel stereo. You need a receiver with a toslink or coax input to get the DD/DTS 5.1 or a HDMI to get the HD audio (DTS-HD,TrueHD).

I am not sure what you call "hifi" but if it is a receiver chances are it has at least some digital input.

Excellent picture and sound - well received in all reviews, and is generally considered the player to beat at it's price point considering the picture and sound quality.

The freeze issue was the biggest bugaboo that affected some users. Some, like myself, have NEVER had a freeze, some had multiple instances of it. It appears that the latest firmware update has taken care of that problem, so I, for one, wholeheartedly recommend this unit for anyone looking for an awesome player for a budget price. All IMHO, of course.

Thanks! He went with the BD60 and loves it. Says the PQ is better on this one too. Also, what are the main difference between the 60 and 80?? I've looked a couple places and seem to get different/inconclusive answers. Thank ya

Can this player convert YCbCr video to RGB to output with an HDMI-DVI cable? My projector has a DVI input that only accepts RGB color. I saw a setting in the BD60 manual about RGB full/limited range, but I can't tell if it only affects RGB-encoded videos.

Glad it's not just me. My first reaction is always what did I mess up now. Then after talking with techinical support I was worried if he knew what he was talking about. Hope they are back up soon.

ok good to know. Glad I ended up picking the right unit. Now, do you know if the BD60 will stream MKV files over a LAN?

I believe that is a no; you'll need the BD80 for that.

Greetings Learned Forum:

I am trying to find the best settings for my new BD60. Unfortunately, my receiver is limited in that I need to let the BD60 do the decoding and sent it out via PCM. I have a 7.1 set up. All connections are HDMI. My question is in regards to 5.1 soundtracks. Is there any way to configure the BD60 to process 5.1 and send it out as 7.1? For example, can the BD60 decode 5.1 with Dolby EX or DTS ES and send it out as 7.1 PCM? Right now, all 5.1 material only comes out as 5.1 PCM. I would like to be able to get my rear surrounds into the action with 5.1 material. I guess I would like to be able to have my cake and eat it too. Can this be done? As usual, your replies are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Nick

Are you sure about that? I don't want others to go buying the more expensive 80 when the description is the same as the 60 on the Panasonic website.

I won't and neither will the BD80. Be careful with some advices here.

The short answer is no, you can't. I think it is a documented fact that even on 7.1 discs, which are downmixed for 5.1 systems, the differences between listening between 5.1 and 7.1 are very slight.

No, the players don't have the necessary hardware to do the proper matrix (that's why a receiver costs couple times more than the player). Are you sure your HDMI receiver doesn't have something like Dolby ProLogic II or similar for matrixing? It's hard to believe any 7.1 HDMI receiver doesn't offer that capability.

However, for DTS-HD tracks, BD60/80 will always output 7.1 PCM.

That's simply not true. None of the Panasoinc players ever supported streaming from LAN, let alone streaming mkv files. The only thing BD80 has over BD60 is playing Divx file on USB storage.

That's only true if your receiver can re-matrix 5.1 into 7.1. In a typical setup of 7.1 system, the two rear speakers used for 5.1 playback are actually on the sides rather than on the rear as a typical 5.1 speakers setup. So you will have a pretty big gap for rear surrounds if you can't matrix 5.1 into 7.1.

Thanks for your reply, Ben. I know it's slight. But many of my improvements, on their own, have been slight. The cumulative effect of my new equipment and various tweaks and settings I have done has grown to significant. Most of my material is 5.1. Those nice rear surrounds are just hanging there like modern art.

It just seems like the decoding is there, but can't be accessed in PCM. It's frustrating.

Nick

You can get a worse/distorted audio when you matrix 5.1 in 7.1. To give you an example, when you watch a movie with a gunfire and a guy is shooting on your left side , you can feel the bullets coming from behind. I always try to keep the original audio "as is" with surround encoded material. I do like the DD Prologic II for stereo material, though. What would be nice is more movies with 7.1...

Amen, brother. There would be no issue at all.

Rather than answer it again, here's a link to a definitive list of differences between the BD60 and BD80 and explanation of them:

Difference between DMP-BD60 and DMP-BD80 Panasonic Blu-ray Players

-CB

Excellent DVD upconversion with 1080p/24 output, superior Blu-ray playback with 4:4:4 color upconversion, reasonably quick load times (though not the fastest), excellent disc compatibility (with quick firmware fixes when new Blu-ray titles come out that break things), BD-Live support (though it needs an SD card), on-board decoding of DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD to PCM, as well as full bitstreaming. The internet streaming features (YouTube, Amazon Video-on-Demand) are a nice bonus.

Basically it's a full featured player with an entry-level price. While I have played around with a couple of samples of the BD60, including doing some measurements, we did not formally review the BD60. But we did review the BD80 which has identical video performance.

-CB

Thanks for the reply, Foxbat. Here is the situation. My receiver is a Marantz 6003. It has the ability to decode everything currently in existence. However (and it's a big HOWEVER), if I let the receiver do the decoding, I cannot use the Audyssey settings it configured. I have to make a choice. Decode with the receiver and no room correction, or room correction with a pcm signal that has been decoded by the player. So there is the rub.

Any further thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Nick

Isn't this all the way around ? If you use the receiver to decode (bitstream from the player) you should have the room correction.

DTS-HD soundtracks that are 5.0, 5.1 and 6.1 are all automatically "amplified" to PCM 7.1 if you set your player to PCM output for DTS. Make sure you have BD-Secondary Audio OFF if you want this to happen.

PCM 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtracks are all output as 5.1 PCM if you set Dolby output to PCM on the player, and there's no way to change this. For 7.1, some receivers can matrix in rear channels using PLIIx on a 5.1 PCM source, but not all.

-CB

I think this was a design limitation in that specific receiver. The newer Marantz receivers do apply Audyssey calibration to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD soundtracks but the 6003 does not.

This review confirms that limitation

-CB