Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray player

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Performance

Blu-ray movies like The Dark Knight looked very good indeed. Details were exceptional and, at times, jaw-dropping. Sound, too, via our Onkyo decoder, was a real treat, although the DMP-BD60 didn't really have much to do with that. We'd like to see analog 7.1 outputs on these machines, but that seems to be something of a pipe dream.

The DMP-BD60's DVD upscaling also impressed us. Despite the usual MPEG noise commonly found on DVDs, Jurassic Park looked bright and detailed. Of course, the picture quality doesn't bear comparison to Blu-ray, but if you're a DVD fan, you'd appreciate the enhanced quality.

The DMP-BD60 won't win any speed awards, sadly. It took the player 1 minute and 17 seconds to load and play our test movie, Vantage Point. This is a great shame. Seeing the Samsung BD-P4600 complete the test in 43.5 seconds has proven that fast load times are possible with the right hardware. We'd like to see Panasonic step up to the challenge and speed up its players.

Once it's loaded a disc, the player does a good job of handling interactivity on Blu-ray. We didn't suffer any crashes or other compatibility problems. Navigating through the menus was quick, especially when compared to our clunky old Sony BDP-S500.

The Internet functionality is the usual fare. If you have a decent Internet connection of 2Mbps or more, you'll be able to use the YouTube streaming feature. Picasa is slightly less bandwidth-hungry. Both seemed responsive enough to us. We were slightly annoyed with having to enter searches on the remote control, though. It's a tedious way of inputting letters, but it does work and we can see it improving a great deal as time goes by.

Conclusion

Like every Panasonic Blu-ray player we've tested, the DMP-BD60's a corker. You'll get a well-specified player with access to some additional material via the Internet connectivity. While we don't think the online functionality is much cop yet, we have faith that Panasonic is going to do some brilliant things in the future.

The DMP-BD60 isn't the fastest player on the market. In fact, it was pretty sluggish when loading our test disc. If speed is what you need, get the responsive LG BD370. If a sturdy build, excellent features and awesome picture and sound quality are what you want, this Panasonic is a better bet.

Tags: DivXNetworks, camcorder, video, SD card, HDMI

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