Official Panasonic DMP-BDT 220/320/500 Owners Thread - Page 39

Got it last night (i.e. ordered). It will be my one and only BD when I get my PJ and player (Panny 220) sometime next week.

I'm curious. Anyone who has this, is it interesting from the standpoint of seeing what blu-ray is about and capable of? I understand that it's phenomenal in terms of content, but as my only BD, I'm hoping it will show me the quality of my equipment. Thanks for responses.

And even if you bought a uk player, modified it, you would need a PAL capable display device for your PAL disks, as the player won't do PAL to NTSC conversion.

Try using the 709 HD setup disk first. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=948496 Because frankly, the player is great and your tv may be not be set correctly.

I don't have Band of Brothers, but disks like the Batman Returns on blueray which is around $5 in most stores is a excellent show to test blacks. The scenes on the roof of police headquarters is one that can easily show no details of the scene or a lot. LotR is another disk set, Return of the King scene 61(?) in front of the gates of Modor, the color and details of the gate. BD Cinderella is also good. One disk that truly stretches you equipment (including AVR) is the last edition in 2009 of Akira (over $100 right now), which is one of the few BD with a fully remastered film and remastered 192 kHz soundtrack with "Hypersonic" sound..

I searched this thread and paged through various posts. So far, I've only found one post for video settings.

To confirm, I want the BDT220 to do NOT do anything to the signal coming from the disk, both in DVD and BD mode. The panny replaces an Oppo 83 that was running in Source mode. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent on the panny though.

Here's the setup: BDT220 -> AVR5308+3Dupgrade -> Sharp Elite 70.

Preferably the AVR does all the video post processing for DVD/BD/VOD and gets the least altered signal to operate on. Question is: are the settings in the linked post the best ones for what I have in mind? Thanks!

Thanks for the info and link about the 709 setup disk. I didn't know about it, but will certainly download and burn to DVD. I don't have a blu-ray burner, hopefully burning to DVD is sufficient.

I have the complete extended LotR on DVD. Is that sufficient, or do I need the Blu-ray version to see these things?

I am still getting blown away how well this blurayplayer synergize with my Samsung plasma. I had no idea I could get this sense of depth in the pictures without any lost detail quite the opposite. Normally when I get a new player I feel the need to go and optimize the picture for the TV for best results but I fail to find things to improve and just about always there is no point in enabling super res or anything it just destroys the picture.

One question though the manual suggest 3D NR setting is for creating more depth in the sound. I suppose it´s supposed to add more depth perception in video rather or what is it doing in the video settings section? I have played with it and it may serve such a purpose but placebo you know. Read something and you try to verify it or not to.

As for sound it do quite a good job trying to keep up with my dedicated DACs. Again I find little use for the extra sound mods but it´s fun to play with at least.

Have you made any progress on your mkv format tests? What kind of network connection are you using? The stuttering on higher bitrate files sounds like a bandwidth issue.

You are correct. Panny does not have source direct like your oppo. No settings will bypass the processing completely.

The touchpad remote takes some getting used to, it's not that bad. I have a Harmony remote that I prefer but the 320's remote is growing on me.

I started putting my theater back together yesterday after a remodel. If anyone is concerned about noise from any of the Panasonic blu-ray players, subscribe to Dish Network and get one of their receivers. I'd forgotten how loud this thing is! It's guaranteed you won't hear anything else.

The touchpad is one reason I ordered the 220 instead of the 320. So far, I've managed to get along fine having my remotes in a drawer with the exception of my Home Theater Master MX-700 universal/programmable, with rare trips to the drawer. I figure I can probably have the 220's remote in the drawer once I program the MX-700. I'll be looking online to see if anyone's posted data for the 220 that I can import into my MX-700. Otherwise, I'll create it myself from scratch, including whatever cool macros I can imagine.

I've been having similar problems with the 220 for weeks. Unsure if it's an issue with the router, the panasonic wifi hardware, or viera connect gateway. It always acts up during prime watching hours at night, especially on weekends.

I use Amazon vod, which when tested on the iMac in the same room plays perfect HD quality... so it's unlikely amazon. Youtube and pandora are also useless at these times, so it's got to be one of the above. The unit will act as though it's not connected despite showing a 'connected' status with full bars. For example Saturday night was unusable again, but Sunday at 11am, everything is working fine.

I really hope this isn't some form of throughput issue with the panasonic service, since there'll be no way to remedy.. and as a Amazon user samsung is out of the question. Fyi.. my unit optical drive is very loud for nighttime bedroom watching. To compensate, have to raise the volume more than i'd like for that environment.

Will post again if i ever figure out a way to remedy the streaming issue.

I'm still getting out of sync audio with Netflix on the 220, is there a fix in the works for that? My Roku XS plays 1080p Netflix perfectly btw...

After reading this whole thread, I fall into the seemingly rare camp of users who have a problem with Netflix audio lag issue. I have done much experimentation and found that it happens consistently when certain BD's are played. For instance, like one of the former posters, Game of Thrones seems to trip it up every time for me. That is to say that Netflix works fine, then after playing an episode of GoT the Netflix stream will ALWAYS exhibit an 850ms audio lag behind the video. The odd thing here, on 9 other BDs I tried, I did not get the same error.

As suggested, power-cycling does fix the problem. So as long as you do not need quick start it will not be as annoying since you'll naturally have a power cycle every time you turn things off. Myself, I want the quick start. Disabling BD-Live and audio enhance does NOT fix the problem as some suggest.

My theory here--one that cannot be proved out--is that there is some java code that is present on some menu systems that throws it into the bug cycle. Not an expert here, so I'm just blowing smoke, but its the only thing that I can think of that would change on different BDs.

Anybody out there that owns Game of Thrones want to help experiment? At least one other poster had it and also has the audio problem.

After finally talking with somebody at Panny who was helpful, they did acknowledge this as a known firmware bug. They said that it will be fixed in a future firmware update if enough people report it. I asked when, or even if it would be the next update and they of course could not say, only that as more reports come in, it will be higher priority to fix.

So - I can still return the thing to Amazon and I am doing so. Like others on this thread, I'm going with the S390 because all things considered, the slow netflix menus are a pain in the butt, and not wife-friendly at all. I will miss the 24p option, but I'll live.

Panny will eventually fix this audio thing for the few of us that experience it, but for now, I'm out. For the rest of you that have no audio lag, and can put up with the slow NF menu system, enjoy the player, I think it is "mostly" a good one.

I thought every one was experiencing the Netflix audio issue???

Have you tried Religulous? I see an audio delay problem with it on every device I have which can play 5.1 sound (BDT220, Sony BDP-S390, Roku 2 XS, PS3 and Xbox); if you switch to stereo sound, the delay goes away. That set of encodings has the video and audio stream stored separately so that you can select them and I think that sometimes they don't get the sync correct.

Vreely, what do you mean when you say you'll miss the 24p option?

I assumed that he means the option to play VOD services (Netflix, Amazon, VUDU, etc) in 24p.

I'll try it tonight...

Yes, that is correct--sorry for the vague reference. The S390 I am switching to will not let me select 24p. As michaeltscott suggested some # of pages ago, I am also not so bothered by the pull down. Sure, it would be great if I could get it, but I am much more concerned with responsive menus and audio that matches my video.

This fix supposedly is to disable BD-Live, and audio enhance, then do a full power-cycle. The latter part of this fixes it for me, but only until I watch certain blu rays. As near as I can tell, the supposed fix of disabling BD-Live, etc. does nothing.

If people have continuing issues with connecting to network or streaming various services, they should return their player. I have a 320 and crappy DSL, and in 2 months have had no problems at all. Once I lost network connectivity and unplugging the player for a minute, it re-connected. That's it.

The only thing I can come up with is that the built in wireless has poor reception. My router is in the room just below my player, so my connection is strong.

There are a lot of issues being reported related to network functions. I recommend posting your connection information as well.

Thanks for the tip vreely, I'll try it. Regarding lip sync issues with religulous, I didn't have an issue via the Roku XS playing 5.1 audio. Wonder why???

The first time I tried it on the Xbox I didn't hear the delay. For some of the the titles where I hear a delay problem, if I use the left key to go back a little and start again, the delay goes away. The players don't always get audio sync right but sometimes do.

Just got a DMP-BDT220. Every time I turned it off and then back on it would not connect to my wireless network. I'd have to go back to the network settings and search for wireless network. My network would show up and then I'd go through the network connection process and then it would work. I just did a factory reset to see if that would solve the problem. Re-entered all my Netflix and Amazon account info. Watched a bit of a movie. Turned the unit off for 5 minutes. Turned it back on and get the "Cannot connect" message. It's probably going back at this point, to be replaced by another Roku. Never had a single problem with the Roku in the same exact location.

I moved my router closer and into the open, and I now get 5 green bars with wireless on the 220. The player has weak WiFi reception in my experience. What's the point of wireless if you need to put it next to the router? Anyway, it works fine now that I relocated the router.

My router is in another room with two walls in between no problem at all. I do have a 100 gb connection so maybe it´s okay to just have 10 % reception or something

I'm still getting this also. I have tried all the fixes mentioned here and the audio lag always comes back. I gave up and use another device for Netflix now.

My advice is anyone looking for a disc player that can be used as a Netflix player should take a pass on the 220. I have no complaints about disc playback though.

I had the same problem with my 220 and did all the same things you did. Panny customer service called it an anomoly and wanted me to send it in for service. Instead I exchanged it at Best Buy for another 220 which has worked fine from the get-go. No "cannont connect" message in a month of usage.

On another note, I read an article where the author feels that the pq for netflix is superior from a bd player than a standalone player (like a roku). Any thoughts on this?

I scanned the ~50 reviews at Amazon and no one mentioned this. Quite a few said they were very pleased with the Netflix streaming. Quite a few noted that the 210 has persistent issues with blackout flashes, which the 220 does not. No mention of synch issues. I think it must be peculiar to either your deck or your system, not everybody's. I'm very familiar with how annoying audio/video synch issues can be. I have it very frequently with my HDTV card. However, I do know that not everyone with my card suffers the problem.

I was one of the first to comment on the Netflix audio issue, and the one who came up with the BD Live fix.

Ultimately I found that shutting off BD Live didn't prevent the audio lag all the time. If certain discs were played even with BD Live off, the audio lag would return.

My solution was to exchange my 320 for a new one. I've had no problems at all with the replacement. One thing I did do differently with the replacement, however, was that I did the initial firmware upgrade using a CD-R instead of directly over the internet.