As I mention in this post, the best HT ( Home Theater ) need a good source. I am very sure u don’t want to use a VCD player or Astro as ur HT source as both have terrible picture quality ( 480i ) only suitable for crt TV set. Previously in ‘Hair Down There! Very Clear View!!! 50” Vs 32” I had blog about having a Full HD 50” Plasma TV & on ‘Ahem Ahem Sound in 7.1’ which is the sound system for my HT & so in this entry I shall blog on my HT source …………A Panasonic DMP-BD30 blu-ray player! Yes! I end up buying a blu-ray player as my Panasonic dealer ‘secure’ me to buy this player.
Pic show the Panasonic DMP-BD30 & beside it is the Panasonic TH-50PY700H. On top of it are the freebies. More on this later.
Pic show the Panasonic DMP-BD30 with it conceal tray & panel opened & closed. BTW the greenish blue LED can be switch off through the system manual. Behind the panel is a SD card reader. The Panasonic DMP-BD30 look very neat & simple. Only two button showing that is the eject button on the right ( Actually I will have prefer it on the left as that is where the disc drawer is located. ) & the power on button located on the left ( Actually I prefer it to be on the right. Have the Panasonic designer got bonkers on this design?) . Due to the awkward location of this two buttons, the case of using the wrong button will occur. That is using the power button to eject/open the disc instead of the right button on the right. Anyway I don’t have such problem as I normally use the remote instead. All the control is there including the eject button. More on this later.
This is the opening screen of the Panasonic DMP-BD30!!! Very simple & very blue blue! But I have discovered a 'problem'! The Panasonic 'screen saver' don't work! I have set it to on in the set-up manual but still after more then 10 minutes the picture is the same. I have seek 'advice' from Panasonic support but at this time no news yet! Screen saver is very important for those with Plasma TV so as to prevent 'image retention' or 'ghosting' ( Any advice on this is greatly appreciated. ).
This is the setup manual of the Panasonic DMP-BD30. Rather simple to operate. In my case all parameter is being set to max as the Panasonic TH-50PY700H plasma TV can supported almost all the setting except for 24p picture.
This is the picture setup manual. The background is actually a screen shot of AVP. Notice that there are lots of adjustments I can make. This is what I like. I can made adjustment to the picture quality & also sound quality.
I am very sure most of my readers will be watching DVD most of the time as Blu-ray title is limited at this moment of time & it is dam expensive. In my case I will be watching DVD 95% of the time. So I shall test out the performance of the Panasonic DMP-BD30 on DVD9 ( the more expensive type, Rm10 to Rm15 Blu-ray quality rip type ) & also on DVD5 ( the cheaper type, Rm5-00 per disc ). Immediately I notice the ‘slowness’ of the Panasonic DMP-BD30 when compare to my formal Pioneer DVD player. It is slow in all sense. Playback, eject is slow. I didn’t measure the time but I have time to scratch my ball!
Above show two screen shot of resident evil apocalypse! Picture quality is very very good on DVD9 up-scale to 1080p. I can say it is almost as good as blu-ray unless u really compare it side by side. In all case I can notice detail which is previously missing in my Pioneer HTiB/Samsung system. I am sure my reader can see something ‘extra’ on the above two picture! On DVD5 ( 4.5gb in most case data only up to 3.8gb), the picture is good but I will prefer DVD9 disc ( 8.5gb in most case picture data is more then 7.8gb ).
Picture detail is very clear & sharp even when u view it through a 32” LCD Panasonic 32LX75M with 1080i HDMI. But the best is to use a Full HD panel TV. In my case a Panasonic Full HD 50” Plasma TV mated to a Panasonic DMP-BD30 blu-ray player is perfect. As I have say………I can see ‘hair’ very very clear!!!
Picture show the remote control of my HT system. The small remote on the left is the remote control of Panasonic 32LX75M LCD TV, it is just for comparison sake as the LCD have since be returned to the Panasonic dealer. It seem that the more expensive product u have the bigger & longer the remote is ( He! He!Does it meant the richer u r the longer ur 'equipment' is???!!!).
Next to it is the remote control for the Panasonic DMP-BD30 blue-ray player. Notice that it is full of button! I can control all the function of the player. I can also use it to on/off the Panasonic TH-50PY700H plasma TV.I can also use it to mute & control the volume of the Pioneer VSX-917s av receiver ( It is a pity I cannot use it to on/off the receiver! ).
Next will be the Pioneer VSX 917s av receiver remote control. Look very complicated & got LCD screen some more. It is a ‘universal’ remote control. I can use it to on/off & control all play button of the Panasonic DMP-BD30 blu-ray player ( Pity I can’t use the navigation button! If I can use the navigation button then the Pioneer remote can control the whole HT system. Navigation button is use on DVD manual page. ). I can also use to to on/off, av input & also volume control on the Panasonic TH-50PY700H plasma TV ( Same case here, cannot use the navigation button. ). Beside this I can set it on other future equipment like cd player sat receiver & so on. I have being trying to set it to control the Astro decoder ( I think using Philip system ) but no such code is found.
The big remote on the right belong to the Panasonic TH-50PY700H. Big & very nice to hold & use. I can use it to control the Panasonic DMP-BD30 blu-ray player. Most buttons can be use including the navigation button but unfortunately cannot control my Pioneer VSX 917s av receiver.
So in one way or another I end up having to use at least two remotes control. Since I use both Panasonic TV & Panasonic player I can have Viera Link! But u must use HDMI connection. While watching Astro ( Av1 input ) if I press play on Panasonic DMP-BD30 ( U must have a disc in the player ) the Panasonic TH-50PY700H will automatically switch to HDMI input. If u have the TV on standby power just by pressing play on the Blu-ray player ( must have a disc inside ) the plasma TV will be on. If u off the blu-ray player the TV will remain on but if u off the TV the blu-ray player will be off as well. Do noted that all this Viera Linking do take some moment to operate but I must say having this Viera Link is a very convenience feature.
The Panasonic DMP-BD30 has the abilities to watch picture & video by pokeing into its SD card slot & it will be outputted in 1080p resolution! It can use it directed to watch movie in AVCHD format ( It can support other format like mp2, mp4 avc & vc-1 etc as I don’t have any SD card it is not being tested.), I am very sure if u have a Panasonic camcorder like Panasonic SD9 u can straight away watch your home made ‘ahem ahem’ movie on this Panasonic DMP-BD30 and it will be in Full HD!!!! Wah! I am very sure u can see all the ‘hair’ very very clearly ( He! He! Will Panasonic send me a camcorder to do a review???)!!!!
I set up my HT system by using one HDMI cable ( Panasonic DMP-BD30 to Panasonic TH-50PY700H ), one digital coaxial cable ( Panasonic DMP-BD30 digital out to Pioneer VSX 917s digital in ), one s-cable ( Astro decoder s-cable out to Panasonic AV1 s-cable in ) & a pair of audio RCA cable ( Astro audio out to Panasonic TH-50PY700H AV1 audio in ). Very simple & it is not messy.
So any regret buying this Panasonic DMP-BD30? Well apart from the knowledge that Panasonic DMP-BD50 will be lunching soon with the abilities to decode the new blu-ray sound format, I am quite happy with it performance. But I miss the momory function of my Pioneer player very very much! This Panasonic DMP-BD30 very very 'forgetful' wan! If I eject the disc I have to watch the whole movie against or force to use the skip button. If the disc is in the player u can on the player & then press play button, it will play from where u stopped. But if u use play button to on the player it started from the beginning! Wah! Really 'forgetful'!!!Compare to my Pioneer player with 5 disc memory it is a big 'No Can Do!!!' Apart from this it is OK!
Ok! Ok! I am rather ‘tulan’ when I discovered that it is now selling for Rm1,999!!! A different of Rm1,000!!! Actually I am buying the Panasonic 50” Plasma TV together with the Panasonic blu-ray player in one package for the total price of Rm16,388-00 with one free Panasonic HDMI cable ( Rm99 ), one s-cable ( Rm29 ) & five blu-ray disc ( Rm749 ). But this is what I got, Pay Rm16,188, get two Panasonic HDMI ( RP-CDHG15 ) cable worth Rm398, one s-cable worth Rm29, five blu-ray worth Rm749 ( I will get my blu-ray once I go to KL to be 'fark by my boss' )& one Usb fan. The pic below show the freebie I got. Oh! The black 3m HDMI is the freebie I got from buying the Pioneer HT sound system.
Well in total I have spend about Rm20k on my HT system. Four years of hard saving gone just like that! So it is very likely that for the next four years I will be having the following food all the time! Yes! Porridge with salted fish! Should be OK for me as I am not a 'rice pot'!!!
Now if my part time job as gigolo materializes than I will have the following food! Yes porridge with more variety.
Thank you to all my dear readers for spending your valuable time reading this very long post, my longest so far! I do hope u r not bored & I do hope I have not offended Panasonic ( He! He! I am very sure I am the first to use ‘all type of hair can see’ to bench mark their product! He! He! Can copyright kar???)! Please feel free to comments!
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