Official Panasonic DMP-BDT 220/320/500 Owners Thread - Page 2

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

My 220 just arrived. I'll post some impressions later. The ID seems identical to the BDTx10s and the remote looks the same (of course the 3 more expensive models come with that touchpad remote).

Originally Posted by Torqdog

One thing I did notice right off the bat was the Pandora icon is not printed on the box. This player does stream Pandora, right?!!!

Originally Posted by apw2607

A new version of the Remote app for Android/iPhone is suppose to get released ... to support text input via virtual keyboard ... I've not seen it on the iTunes store yet though. Still shows 2011 version.

Originally Posted by apw2607

The 1080 netflix streams (unfortunately only a few available) that you can view with the Ps3, are a big jump up in picture quality especially on my projector 110" screen :-)

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

The pop-up demo unit sign (which comes stuck to the top of the enclosure, folded down) says, "Use our exclusive remote control application with an iPhone or Android smartphone". Nothing has appeared in the Android Marketplace yet. The only place in the manual that I see this mentioned is as pertains to playback of content streamed via DLNA.

First, the bad news: still no 5.1 sound in the Amazon player. The VOD UIs don't seem particularly more responsive than on the BDT110. The Netflix player has changed to the less powerful UI now featured on the PS3 (from ]this to this, with the slight difference that you scroll up to a search button rather than press the green button to get into the search dialog). The good thing about this is that as you scroll through titles you can see at a glance which ones are HD and/or have 5.1 soundtracks. It also features hierarchical episode selection for TV series, in which you select a season and then the episode within that season instead of from a huge list of all episodes marked "S4:E11" etc.

The good news: the "Let the Right One In quick test" indicates that the Netflix player can now play the 1080p video encodings. (That film is in Swedish with burned in English subs; in the 1080p encoding, subtitles at the top above the letterbox are clipped, rendering the film virtually unwatchable by non Swedish speaking people. A bit strange that they haven't fixed this yet, but it does come in handy ). I'll be confirming this by bandwidth consumption test. There's not much else to prefer in this interface over the one in the BDTx10's player, which is superior for browsing the library. I saw no "black flashes" and the ramp up to higher quality encodings seemed more subtle; it got sharper but I didn't notice the jumps.

Here are few differences gleaned by cursory comparison of some of the manual:

• AVCHD 3D added to DVDs and SD cards
• MP4 added to SD cards and USB drives
• FLAC added to DVDs, CDs and USB devices
• Support for NTFS formatted HDDs

The ID of the 220 is almost precisely identical to the 110; the jacks on the back are all the same and line up almost exactly. At a glance the remotes are identical, though their model numbers differ in the last three digits. The codes programmed into my Harmony One for the 110 work perfectly. (The other models come with that touchpad remote, which doesn't appeal to me since any control method that I can't program into my Harmony is useless). They prettied up the main menu--BFD. It has a multi-user saved settings feature that doesn't interest me.

I'll fart around with it some more and report anything that I find. My primary focus is streaming (BTW, the Viera Connect Marketplace doesn't look any different than on the 110. So much for getting the fancier apps available on the televisions). I've got some MKV and MP4 clips on a flash drive that I'll try playing.

Originally Posted by Jim McC

I'm very interesed in the 220. How do you know which Netflix movies will stream in 1080p and/or have subtitles? Is it shown on Netflix' website? Does it show on screen after you load them? Thanks.

Originally Posted by Jacob305

thanks for the quick review? do you have the t2:skynet blu ray?

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

I have the regular T2 BD but not the Skynet edition.

Originally Posted by Jacob305

does it have vudu? does the vudu list 3d?
since it has the ps3 menu. it also does the DD+ 5.1?
I remember the panasonic 210 model could do DD+, but not the netflix on the ps3.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

Yes, it does have a VUDU player--the BDTx10s also had one. Yes the VUDU player as DD+ sound for some titles, also true of the BDTx10s' VUDU player. The VUDU player does list some 3D titles (34 it looks like) which the BDTx10s' VUDU player did not. (I tried to play a 2 minute preview of one and it informed me that I didn't appear to be connected to a 3D capable television, which was true . When I just checked that out they gave me another $6 credit for registering a new player--sweet .

Both the BDTx10s and the PS3 play DD+ 5.1 sound in their Netflix players (the PS3 since their installed player came out--5.1 sound and 1080p video were announced then and for about a year only the PS3 could play 1080p). The list of titles with 5.1 sound is only about 7% of the Netflix streaming catalog at this point (HD has grown to about a third of all titles now). You can see a list of Netflix streaming titles with 5.1 sound here. As I said in the post above, one of the few advantages of that GUI is that as you flip through the thumbs it displays the full description on the right side of the screen and that description includes logos for HD and 5.1 next to the title.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

For subtitles, you can see a list at Netflix's site here. You can see a list of HD streams here; as I stated above I believe that the normal case is that an HD stream will include a 1080p encoding with very few exceptions. (The link at Netflix's site for HD is in the genres pulldown; "Subtitles & Captions" is a link at the bottom of the page).

You might want to use a site like TVandMoviesNow.com which will let you filter on an arbitrary set of multiple attributes, like Netflix movies with captions and surround sound (very nearly all 5.1 titles are also HD--only 2 or 3 aren't).

Originally Posted by JMGNYC

Can you all report on whether Netflix, Amazon, and Vudu are putting out at 24fps or is the refresh rate still 60? My TV seems especially prone to judder when playing back 24fps material at higher refresh rates.

Originally Posted by Jim McC

Thanks michael. So if I stream an HD Netflix movie, if it's available in 1080p it will play it in 1080p automatically?

And if I stream a Netflix movie that has subtitles, does it show that it has subtitles when I view my queue on my display? Do I activate the subtitles with the remote(like a disc)?

Originally Posted by Jacob305

I own the ps3 slim and I only get DD on titles and not DD+. I only got it on the 210 model. I am talking about netflix and not vudu.

Jacob

Originally Posted by apw2607

I did a comparison between "The Fighter" that I know is in 1080p on my PS3 (X-High) and the 220. The PS3 was definitely better picture quality. In my opinion the 220 is still using the same 720p streams as it did before.

Vudu is the same as it was before...

You need to manual select that every time as the setting is not remembered.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

As I said, the Let the Right One In quick test is pretty definitive all by itself (try it) and I performed my usual bandwidth consumption test using the bandwidth graphing feature of my router's firmware. I measure bandwidth consumed during playback of minutes 5 thru 14 of Ong Bak 2 (a very encoder challenging sequence of martial arts battle in the rain). On the BDT220, this consumed 440.8 MB (including unplayed content in its buffer) for an overall average of 6162.6 Kpbs (in line with what I see from the PS3); on the BDT110, this consumed 306.8 MB for an overall average of 4289.2 Kbps. It's playing the 1080p encodings, on my box at least.
Except that it now lists and can play the small collection of 3D VUDU titles.
In Setup->Player Settings->Video->HDMI Output, there's a "24p Output" on/off setting--if you set that to ON do you get persistent 24p? Not having a television capable of accepting 24p, I can't test.

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

In Setup->Player Settings->Video->HDMI Output, there's a "24p Output" on/off setting--if you set that to ON do you get persistent 24p? Not having a television capable of accepting 24p, I can't test.

Originally Posted by apw2607

Right. Thats for Bluray only.

For all other media and streaming, it manually has to be set by selecting options > video > 24p on/off once the media starts.

How do I like the player ?

Yea, its fine. So far and with the current firmware I see very little difference between the 210.

Originally Posted by Jacob305

xcept that it now lists and can play the small collection of 3D VUDU titles.
that is very interesting. you would think that the panasonic 2011 models could do that.

how do you like the player over all?

Originally Posted by apw2607

No. I don't have that bluray. I did try Jurassic park but it seemed to get hung up on some initial bdlive content. Player locked up so I restarted it and it played through fine second time.

Both bd and DVD upscale pictures are great ... No surprise there.

Originally Posted by audio/videoman

Def. looking forward to BD and DVD PQ reviews!