Panasonic DMP-BD65 - Page 6

Winston please don't throw the towel in. keep pressing panasonic until you get answers/solution.

Just got my 65 today and I had a couple of questions I hoped you guys might be able to help me with:

1) What's the best setting for the HDMI Connection, "auto" or the resolution of your t.v.? I tried both "auto" and "1080p" and my wife thought the "1080p" setting might have looked a tad better. Any thoughts as to which is better?

2) I played a disc I recorded myself of a football game originally broadcast in 4:3. When I played it, the 65 stretched the image to widescreen. I tried changing the t.v. aspect to 4:3 but it cut out portions of the image on both the right and left. I also tried the various aspect options on the 65 but none of them got it right either. Anything else I might try?

In your 65 setup for TV screen, set it to 16x9 instead of 16x9 Full. 16x9 will maintain SD DVD aspect ratio. 16x9 Full will stretch it.

I am looking at the BD85K for Netflix streaming. My internet speed is 1.5 . (BELL SOUTH). Is this speed enough to support the stream, without buffering alot and willt have good quality video? Thanks.

1.5 is kind of low. Netflix needs 2 to 3 mbps for SD streaming and 5 mbps for HD streaming. It will still work for you but Netflix will auto adjust the bandwidth for you and you ended up with low quality video.

I had Bellsouth 3.0 and ending up going with Cable to get 10Mb/s. The 3.0 did OK with with SD, but would never do HD.

I would think you would have problems with 1.5 Mb/s. Quality would be low and/or you would a lot of buffering. They have a two week trial, so I would just give it a try.

Thanks folks. Guess I will have to wait. I live in the country and I am lucky to get 1.5.

Check your plan. Last time I checked, Bellsouth's next highest speed tier was only a few dollars more-I'm assuming you're on Fast Access DSL Ultra ($32.95) vs DSL Extreme which is around $37.95.
DSL Lite clocks in around $19.95, with the fastest, 'Xtreme 6.0' @ $42.95. DSL Xtreme goes up to 3.0mbps which may work well with SD streams, depending on the size of your hdtv. I used the 1.5 tier initially, and had no problems streaming Netflix on the pc, but I don't know how networked blu ray players or Roku boxes would perform.
Bundling your services can drop the total costs, so if your budget allows, you could look into it.

I can tell you from my experience that 1.5 is not enough to get full quality on NetFlix SD streaming (all the "bars"). What will happen is that NetFlix will drop the resolution in steps until it finds a resolution it can stream to you without buffer pauses. Depending on your screen size and sharpness it can vary from watchable to low-end YouTube quality. On a 50" plasma it looks pretty crappy and I would only watch it if I had no choice.

On a "normal" day I get 2.8Mbps on my DSL line. At that rate, I can stream NetFlix to my plasma in full SD quality over a Wireless-G connection.

1.5 is the highest available at my residence. I would gladly pay more for a higher rate. Thanks for all replys.

Thanks! That did it.

Anyone have any suggestions about whether to use "auto" for the hdmi connection?

'Auto' means the player will pick the best resolution that your TV recommends via HDMI handshake. If your TV is already 1080p native, it should make no difference. If your TV is not 1080p, it may recommend 720p or 1080i as its best pick although it can accept 1080p signal. In this case, you have compare the 1080p vs 720p/1080i yourself to see which gives you best result on your specific TV.

Thanks. That's what I suspected but I was just curious if there were any sort of generic recommendations. I'll have to play around with it and see if I notice any difference. As I mentioned in my first post, my wife thought she saw a slight improvement with selecting 1080p (for my 720p t.v.), but I was hard pressed to say I saw any difference at all.

By the way, picking up on the discussion about internet speeds to use with Netflix, I gather that you need about a 6 mbps speed to get all the bars lit up and be able to enjoy HD over Netflix. But am I also right in thinking that you would need a wireless N network to really make that work as well? Reason I ask is it would be pretty easy to upgrade my DSL to 6 mbps, but somewhat costly to upgrade my wireless network from G to N.

G should have enough real world bandwidth for Netflix streaming (it is probably good to about 15mbps)

Thanks. But I just checked and found out I was wrong about AT&T having a 6mbps dsl in my neighborhood. I could have sworn one of their reps tried to get me to upgrade about a year ago. Oh well. I get all but three bars right now and the SD looks quite acceptable. I'll enjoy that until AT&T upgrades my neighborhood.

When streaming from YouTube, I get a pretty good picture in the frame on the right-side, filling about half the Vizio VL470 47" lcd. When I click on that frame, it zooms that right-side frame to fill the entire wide screen and REALLY distorts the image. I don't need it to fill the entire screen. Is there a way to zoom the frame without getting all the distortion?

It's been suggested on the Pioneer 819 receiver thread that combining a Pan BD60 with the Pio 819 may degrade the PQ. I have the Pan BD65 and want to be able to REAL WORLD test this, not using a calibration tool.

So I found a blu ray nature disk. In one scene, the bug pictured has BARELY visible back legs sitting 5 feet away, more visible 3 feet away. So I'm thinking, watch it through the Pio receiver, and can I see still see the back legs or not ?

OK way to measure picture quality?

In another scene, there are BARELY visible distant car headlights moving across the screen. Again, watch the scene direct from the Pan65, then through the Pio receiver to measure any difference in detail???

Your suggestions?? Beside the obvious, Do I like how it looks? This is so much better than my old gear, that every thing looks great.

Current owner of a BD35 and love the player (minus the fact that it is dog slow). After reading through this thread, I am going to have to drop the BD65 of my next player list (plan on buying in the next 7-10 days) due to the DVD upconversion issues surrounding light fluctuation. I don't watch a ton of DVD's, but my kids do and I am afraid this issue would drive me nuts and I would be constantly looking for it.

I posted earlier about whether I should set the HDMI output to auto or 1080p for my 720p tv. I said I was having a hard time telling which one was better. Just found out why I was having such a hard time. Checked the tv info and saw that on auto the 65 was sending a 1080p signal to the tv. No wonder I was having a hard time distinguishing them!

I am sure they did try to get you to upgrade. I can't tell you how many times AT&T/BellSouth called me trying to get me to upgrade. I finally starting playing a game and would see how long it would take them to figure out they didn't offer it in my neighborhood. It was always interesting when they finally realized they indeed did not offer it at my house!

I've heard some conflicting feedback on what playback options are available on USB port of the bd65. Can this model play divx, mp4, mkv?

I have a DMP-BD85. Does anyone know if the wifi dongle that comes with the 85 will work with the 65?

Thanks for any replies.

Can anyone confirm if this player has the built in storage for BDlive?

Only MP3 and JPEG, the SD port only supports JPEG and AVCHD.

phatty wrote:

You have to use a SD card(not included).

http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-e...702#tabsection

Thanks for the reply, I tried to locate a manual and was unable to, I guess I just needed to dig down a bit further in the specs.


How often do people run into the need for BDlive storage? My only other bluray experience is with a PS3 so I am not accustom to needing an extra storage card.. Seems so cheap to just not include some storage but then again thats just another thing that HDDVD did right...

A lot of extra content offered generally needs to be downloaded (cached) so if you use the BD Live extras then you'll want an SD card in the slot. In fact BD Live will fail without a 1GB or more card in the slot. It is a prerequisite of the spec to check for the storage before enabling BD Live.



Yep and Yep

I'm still really interested in this player over the equivalent Sony because of the Sony's rather poor Netflix quality and piss poor video deinterlacing abilites. However I'm still quite concerned about the DVD light fluctuation annomalies.

Can we get a count of owners who have experienced the light fluctuations, how many titles they've seen it on, and if returning the BD65 for another one fixed it?

yeah more on this issue would be great, or did only the winston reviews notice it yet. i swore i saw someone else say something about it. Is it that bad? or do you really have to look for it? and do you think it could be fixed with a firmware update

I've got a pretty critical eye, but not overly so. I'm not what the photogs call a pixel peeper, but I do expect a sharp, smooth, stable picture. After reading about the issue I tried the Saving Private Ryan DVD and it looked exactly how it should have...no problems whatsoever. Based on other reports of the light fluctuations, this movie has tons of scenes where I should have seen it.

FYI, I ditched the Sony 370 because no amount of troubleshooting solved the problem of choppy Netflix streaming. With the Panny Netflix and Amazon are smooth as silk, and while not BD quality, the HD streams are nice, with Amazon a little better than Netflix.