Panasonic DMP-BD80 High Clarity Audio Blu-ray Disc Player, Black

 (96 customer reviews)

With the BD80, Panasonic has taken its popular BD55, with its excellent picture and sound quality, and added the ability to access online content via the new VIERA Cast feature. Currently VIERA Cast is limited to YouTube, Picasa online photo sharing, stocks and weather via "widgets" but Amazon's on-demand movie service will be available on the BD80 in May. Other internet-based content can be added by Panasonic over time, based on user demand (without the need for a hardware upgrade).

Overall, the BD80 works well as a multi-media player - they added a USB jack on the front for viewing photos, Divx and Xvid videos and listening to MP3 files. This is in addition to the SD card slot (and BTW, an SD card is still required for BD-Live). It would have been nice if the player supported MKV videos, WMV, WMA and M4P files, but I...Read more

Updated 11/29/09
Many of these Panasonic players including mine suffer from random freezes that last between 5-6 seconds and then resume during blu-ray movie playback.
So far Pansonic has NOT be able to come up with a fix for this.
If you don't mind this possible problem the rest of my review still stands.
Unfortunately for me I found this random freezing to be annoying and unacceptable.

Panasonic has once again come up with a solid performance player!

I choose the Panasonic 80 after a very through and grueling side by side comparison with it's main competitor, the Sony S-550.

The Sony and Panasonic player's PQ where both overall very good on blu-ray playback.
The Panasonic had a very slight edge over the Sony, in producing a more COLORFUL picture with more 3-D POP EFFECT.

Sound quality reproduction between the two players using the 7.1 analog connections was much more dramatic.

Both Panasonic and Sony...Read more

Pros

GREAT PICTURE 1080p blu-ray nice display BD LIVE

Cons

LIKE ALL BLU-RAY PLAYERS THE FIRMWARE UPDATE CAN BE A PAIN

Review

I bought this player last week.I like the sd card reader for photos.
I have it hooked up to a philips "47TV.Hdmi cable. I am a repair tech for tvs and consumer electronics. A lot of peoples reviews complain about the long load time.
Think about it a standard dvd is 4.7 GB. compared to blu-ray 50gb.THats a lot of information for the player to load.I played over a dozen movies no problems with frozen video.plays all
the way through.If you stay with major brands like panasonic or sony you should have years of enjoyment.Also you need to update the software if you have a problem playing any disc.
Just go to panasonic's web site and download the update.
AUDIO
Sound effects has a surround-like effects. re-master1 remaster 2 remaster 3
NIGHT SURROUND
To enjoy a movie with...Read more