Official Panasonic DMP-BDT 220/320/500 Owners Thread - Page 94

I'm probably going to pick a 220 up soon for its apparently outstanding 24p support. I can't stand the judder I get when I'm watching film and its not direct 24p.

How well does the 24p work for streaming services like Netflix? What about DVDs? And does it work for .mkv files over DLNA as well?

Using the "DNLA Client" method did not meet my needs. I'm using a SSD as my system drive so all data is stored on spinner drives. This method only lists the "actual media" in Windows' Homegroup shared folders on the C drive. It doesn't allow specifying folders on other partitions or drives as far as I could tell, after spending a couple of hours trying shortcuts and doing a lot of web research.

If you keep all of your media in Windows' shared folders on your C drive, then this method will work fine. If you want to access media in other folders or drives, use the Network Drive method.

Skylark

Does the 320 model have better IQ/AQ than the 220?

No. They are exactly the same.

S~

I just got myself a BDT220 last week and it was a free gift from my VT50 TV, also updated the firmware from 1.39 to 1.49 then only notice that this player is protected by Cinavia. Before I have been using Pioneer players and do not have this issue.

All the movies from Sony will have this Cinavia protection. Anyone know how to downgrade the firmware to older version without the Cinavia protection or any workaround?

Can the BDT220 play avi files or not?

I'm not able to play avi files via the network drive or by connecting an external hard drive to the USB port. In both cases I see the folders that contain avi files but opening the folders shows them as being empty. I just bought the BDT220 and updated the firmware to 1.49. I don't know if this has anything to do with it or not.

I did a lot of Googling and some say that the BDT220 can play avi files while others say it can't. Which is it?

Thanks,
Skylark

in BDT500 when at home screen you have to select first film/music/photo etc. If you select music and go to the folder you will not see film files. Your manual should tell you if you can play avi

Every device licensed use AACS (required to play commercial BDs) after February 2012 has to include Cinavia. The 220 shipped with it, so there is no previous Cinavia-free version of its firmware (or at least not one which was released)..

Can someone confirm if the BDT 220 will play large .mkv files with DTS-HD MA over SMB or DLNA without issues? My last bluray player was the Oppo BDP-93, which handled all of my large .mkv DTS-HD MA files with ease, but I don't want to buy another 500 dollar player to stream my higher quality .mkv files.

I just purchased the Panasonic DMP-BDT 220 Blu Ray player and I am unable to turn off the unit. I tried using the remote as well as from the player itself but the unit goes into the 'turning off' mode, I see 'Bye', hear the unit making some kind of sound but then it comes back on and displays 'Home' in the window.

Can this unit not be turned OFF at all and always remains in the 'Stand-By' mode?

Should shut off fine. Try unplugging for a few minutes and then plug back in. That will do a soft reset of the player.

S~

*bump*

Any ideas? Also, is there any resource that describes exactly what the different picture options do? The manuals are generally useless for that.

I did look in the "video" folders (in fact all folders) using the DNLA path, the Network Drive path, and connecting an external drive to the BDT220's USB port. None of the methods show any avi files. As a frame of reference, our Samsung TV sets will show and play the avi files from their USB ports using the same USB external drive.

The BDT220 manual doesn't list avi files but several reviews that I googled before buying the BDT220 said that it does play avi files. I hate it when reviews list false information. They probably didn't actually test it and just picked up info from one incorrect review.

Putting my question another way to avs forum members since they are more reliable than any review:
Has anyone here been able to play avi files using their BDT220?

Thanks,
Skylark

I still can't get my DMP-BDT220 to play the Prometheus 3D blu-ray. I've reset the player twice, inserted and formatted an SD card, tried with BD-Live both on and off, but all I ever see is a black screen. The player indicates that it's loading the disc, says "play" on the front, or sometimes "still", and the receiver even indicates that its receiving DTS-MA audio at one point, but nothing ever appears on the screen. Anything else I can try? Firmware is updated to 1.49 - the latest available.

My player is also getting hung up at the 56:40 marker of the Avatar (2D) blu-ray, despite the disc working flawlessly in two other players (a Sony and a Samsung). Anyone else experiencing that?

That's the thing. There is no "correct" answer. It's a matter of what you prefer.

Standard is the mode to use. When I tried Cinema, it introduced color clipping issues. And Chroma and all those other BS features should be set to OFF.

The 210 and 310 remote will work with the 320. I have a 310 and prefer the remote over the ridiculous touchpad. Try entering letter and numerical data. Impossible! However designed this thing should be fired. Ordered a replacement on Ebay (N2QAYB000574).

Incidentally, I have the same wifi connection issues with the 320 and many other users. No problem at all with the 310 I bought a year ago from Amazon. This unit is a disappointment.

Using ps3 media centre as my dnla server on my home pc, with the player connected via ethernet, I have been consistently been able to stream mkv and avi files up to 1080p and dts (not tried hd audio files). Some individual files have been problematic, in terms of audio delay and/or stutter, however 98% of what I've tried has worked.

No Idea WHY - Mine played out of the box and I have NO SD Card.

I bought a DMP-BDT220, and I am having some issue with the sound on occasion. It is hooked directly to a LCD tv with an HDMI cable. When using Netflix, it occasionally outputs no sound at all. Selecting a certain movie will make the sound start working, and from that point on there is no issue. This sounds like a firmware bug to me. I did upgrade to the newest firmware when I was setting it up. Has anyone seen this before?

When it is in this mode, I think I will try a blu-ray to see if it is also misbehaving.

Evening everyone.

I've searched through the thread, but can't find anything that matches my issue.

I've just bought a DMP-BDT220. Most of my media is hosted on a Windows Vista PC. I have setup WMP (11.0.6) to allow sharing of the specific folders.

I struggled to connect initially (lots of "cannot connect"), but this seemed to resolve itself. I *think* that WMP was still processing the add files / folders to library command. Perhaps.

However, my new challenge is...

I have lots of files which are definitely playable on the player (if I access the exact same file via a USB drive it plays beautifully) which cannot be played wirelessly.

I don't think it is to do with the CODEC or format (can play via USB), but do wonder if it is to do with the size of the file.

Anyone got any experience of this?

TIA.

S

Hey ausdavep,

Since you mentioned using "media center" as your DNLA server, I opened Windows Media Player (WMP) on my Win7 PC and looked around in it. I normally don't use WMP since I use VLC instead. After I looked around in WMP and didn't find anything pertaining to DNLA, I went back to the TV set and used the BDT220's remote to navigate to the DNLA feature again. AMAZINGLY, all of the files in the shared folders now displayed! This includes music, video and image files that were not listed up to now. I was able to play the avi files in the video path. *** Thanks for your response as it prompted me to open WMP which apparently opened the gateway. ***

So my advice to anyone who doesn't normally use Windows Media Player is to open it. Evidently opening WMP allowed it to find the folders that I had set to share (via explorer), thus allowing the files in those folder to be seen via the BDT220's DNLA path.

---

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Now that I'm able to play AVI files via the Home Network > DNLA path, I tried to see if the AVI files were visible using the Network Drive path. Unfortunately, the AVI files are still not visible via the Network Drive > Videos path. It appears that WMP via the DNLA path is what allows playing AVI videos. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I found that playing an AVI file that has an accompanying SRT subtitle file does not display the subtitles via the DNLA path. I can play the exact same AVI file using the VLC media player in the PC and it will display the SRT subtitles so I know it works.

And one other thing about AVI playback via the DNLA path. The particular AVI file I played was a 720p Korean drama file that was downloaded. It displayed as a smaller size on our HDTV set (black bars all around the picture). It also has a slightly noticeable jerkyness in movements. --- I then played the exact same AVI file using VLC and a HDMI cable from the PC to the HDTV set. I switched VLC playback to full screen and the video quality was terrific and the subtitles displayed.

So my conclusion is that I won't be using the BDT220 to play any videos from my PC. The DNLA method only displays 5 files per page so it takes a while to find the video file desired. In contrast, using Win7's explorer directly on the PC, it's much, much easier and faster to find and play a video. Then the quality of the video via the VLC media player through a HDMI cable is much better. Plus SRT subtitles will display. Plus it's easy to play any part of the video using the mouse.

We will use the BDT220 to display photos via the network drive path. That works really well and can display a lot of thumbnails to see which photo to display. And the slideshow option is really nice.

Thanks,
Skylark
Edited by Skylark - 12/29/12 at 4:42am

LPCM adds more jitter due to clock differences in the player and SSP. Also, you're more likely to have lip sync issues with LPCM.

Bitstreaming is the ideal.

Thanks, that worked.

I noticed one annoyance with this player ..... Netflix takes a while to load. Is that normal or are there any tricks to make Netflix load faster? Once it loads I have not seen any issues. I have an older version of Roku and Netflix loads very quickly on that one so I was just wondering.

I'm surprised that there is very little discussion here regarding the problems with using the Panasonic units with IR flashers. Surely I can't be the only one that puts his BD player in a cabinet.

I bought a BDT-220, which otherwise I like except that the Netflix browsing is laggy. The problem with the IR flasher is that there is no IR jack on the back of the unit and the front flip down door does not allow the flasher to be adhered to the front panel. Otherwise once the panel is opened the flasher won't work. That pretty much eliminates the use of a USB flash drive, and it means that if the door is opened for whatever reason it requires a visit to the cabinet to close the door just to get the IR flasher working.

For the time being, I have a flasher mounted to a small cardboard box taped to the cabinet a couple inches in front of the BD payer. But that is an ugly hack and I am regularly fiddling with the setup or replacing tape that has come unstuck, and etc.

I think this is the last time I buy a BD player with a flip down door... what were the designers thinking? I need a couple other players but they will likely be Sony S590's, assuming they will work better with IR flashers as I suspect they will.

Did anyone manage to 'run' an avchd structure either from USB stick or SD card?

I've bought a panasonic BDT-220 for it's AVCHD compatibility and the good reviews. Now i'm trying to get it working but i can't seem to use the AVCHD feature from USB stick or SD card (already read that it' won't work from network drive).

I found tools to convert them to MKV or other formats and that works fine except for the subtitles.

So any tricks i need to know?

Thanks Jim McC! That's good to know.

Hi Everyone,

One more question: In the video menu it seems to me like the "Super Resolution" option controls the amount of upscaling the player does. The manual describes it as "Pictures of normal quality are corrected to sharp and detailed images..."

It seems like you can choose the amount of upscaling for DVD Movies? Can anyone confirm this? Thanks

As an aside: The first two movies I watched on this player were The Lorax and The Dark Knight Rises. Image quality aside, it seemed to me that the audio quality was WAY better than my Sony BDP S-360, or am I imagining things? My Sony was connected to my receiver via Coax but my Panny is connected via optical. My receiver does not have HDMI.

I have a 220 and a 210. The 210 is a good player so when I needed an additional player, I bought the 220 when it came out. The 220 has always been a little iffy on BD playback - very intolerant of any blemishes on the disk. Lately, it's been more tempermental than usual, even though the troublesome disks play just fine on the 210. Yesterday neither Hunger Games nor Tower Heist would play freezing up - again both played fine on the 210. So I guess it's no surprise that on the 220 now I only get "BD Drive Error", and the tray is frozen in the out position. Time to call Panasonic and send it in for repair/replacement under warranty. I'll keep you posted.