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By Matthew Moskovciak, CNET.com
Apr 16, 2008

All Blu-ray players certified to bear the official format logo after October 31, 2007, must meet the stringent hardware requirements of Blu-ray Profile 1.1, which should allow them to take advantage of special features, such as picture-in-picture commentary. While some manufacturers have rushed to get their players out before the deadline, Panasonic has taken a different approach by releasing the first Blu-ray Profile 1.1 player, the DMP-BD30. While the price of the player is still high overall--US$500 list--that's pretty reasonable for a full-featured standalone Blu-ray kit these days. The DMP-BD30 certainly doesn't beat the value proposition of the PlayStation 3, but if you insist on getting a dedicated Blu-ray player as opposed to Sony's console, it's one of the top contenders.

Design

We were happy to note that DMP-BD30 lacks the extremely annoying flip-down panel of its predecessor, the DMP-BD10A. While a large panel still conceals most of the BD30's front-panel controls, the disc tray hides behind a separate, smaller panel that automatically flips down when you hit the Open/Close button. We definitely prefer this arrangement to having to manually lower the BD10A's panel everytime we wanted to change a disc. On the right half of the DMP-BD30's face player is the LED display, which was sized to be easily legible from a seating distance of about 2m.

We absolutely hated the remote on the DMP-BD10A, but luckily Panasonic wised up and included a more reasonable clicker on the newer model. Toward the bottom half of the remote is the circular directional pad, which is surrounded by three large buttons (Top Menu, Pop-up Menu, and Display) and four smaller buttons in the corners (Sub Menu, Status, Functions, and Return). Directly in the center of the remote are the Stop, Play, and Pause buttons, and we appreciate their large size and blue color which make them easy to find.

Because the DMP-BD30 lacks the annoying flip-down door, the clicker is able to include the handy Open/Close button--so the tray will be waiting for you by the time you get off the couch. Our biggest complaint with the remote is that the setup menu button is buried at the bottom, but overall it's one of the better disc player remotes we've used recently.

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