Panasonic DMP-BD60

According to Panasonic, the DMP-BD60 can play DVD and Blu-ray discs, DivX and AVCHD files, decode any audio formats you care to throw at it and access online content. But will it keep all its promises?

Features and design

This player has just about all the connectors you could want for everyday use, including HDMI and optical ports. When it comes to playing media files that aren't on a disc, including DivX, JPEG, MPEG-2, MP3 and AVCHD content, you can use the BD-60's SD card slot or USB port.

There are a couple of exceptions you should know about, though.  Firstly, DivX files can only be read via the USB port and will play in Standard Definition only, not in HD. Subtitles are supported, but it's not possible to re-synch them. Also, MPEG-2 and AVCHD files can only be read from an SD card. The AVCHD reading capability is mostly for movies shot with camcorders. Our movies ripped from Blu-ray discs wouldn't play, whereas they will play on a multimedia HD.

There's an Ethernet port for connecting the DMP-BD60 to the Internet. This has several advantages, starting with the fact that it makes it easy to update the firmware. We did that as soon as we connected the player, and after the update we were able to use the Viera Cast function that lets you access online content like weather reports, stock info, and YouTube videos.

The menus are extensive and give you control over everything, including the backlighting on the front display, the type of video output, and even complete video adjustments, including contrast, brightness, sharpness, colour, gamma, noise reduction, and 3D noise reduction.

Startup is a little slow, and it took 45 seconds for the player to start up, open the tray, initialise our test disc and start to play it. That's a long time, but unfortunately it's about average for this kind of player. The startup time does vary from one disc to another, though, and you can shorten it if you switch it on with the disc already in the player, or by using Quick Start mode, which you can enable in the menu. You should know, however, that using Quick Start increases power consumption in standby from under 1 W to 4 W. Power consumption in operation is less than 14 W.

Image Quality

Not surprisingly, HD movies were perfect, and the wide range of available adjustments lets you tweak every detail of the image. Only the upscaling of SD, and in particular DVDs, seems not to have been given an extraordinary amount of care. Of course it's still as good as the very high standard of other Panasonic player: DVDs look great, and the BD60's performance in this domain puts it a long way ahead of the competition. 

Some of you may be asking the usual question: 'how does it stand up to the PS3?'--which, of course, is well-known for being excellent at upscaling DVDs.  Well, the difference is infinitesimal, if not imperceptible. So the PS3 argument won't hold up when you're talking about the BD-60, even if it might for other players where the differences are a lot more obvious. A dedicated player is more affordable, quieter, and generates less heat. Those are the things you need to keep in mind when making the choice.

Audio Formats

The DMP-BD60 is fairly well equipped, handling all current audio formats (Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS HD, DTS HD-MA), and it can even output them in bitstream (non-decoded stream) and PCM (decoded stream). Only the lack of 7.1 analogue outputs might be a problem if you have an audio amp with no HDMI connector.