Review: Panasonic DMP-BD80 Blu-ray player with 7.1 analog out

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Since the beginning of time I have been relying on Samsung Blu-ray players and the Sony Playstation 3. Alright, so my timeline may be an exaggeration, but the amount of frustrations I have had with the Samsung units makes the length of time seem far greater than it has been. I first paid a hefty sum for the Samsung BD-P1000 unit and was quite dissatisfied when the $1000 player lasted hardly more than a year and had innumerable difficulties playing various films regardless of firmware updates. The now defunct Circuit City was kind enough to honor my extended warranty and replace that unit with the far cheaper BD-P1400 player. This system proved to be a little more reliable, but once the Profile 1.1 and Profile 2.0 titles arrived it began to have issues with various films and especially seemed to hate Universal titles.

During the majority of time I have owned the BD-P1400 I had been using my Playstation 3 as my primary player because it could handle the various formats and although it wasn´t the best player in regards to sound and video, it was reliable. However, electronics do not live forever and it became time to replace the hard used PS3 and the newly released Panasonic DMP-BD80 provides support for both of the newer profiles. I can enjoy BonusView features that are part of the extended Profile 1.1 format and take advantage of interactive and online features with the Profile 2.0 support. The video game system is a more than capable player, but I´ve always preferred set top boxes over the power hungry and less feature friendly PS3. After over a week of time enjoying my new Panasonic DMP-BD80 I can say that I am nothing short than thrilled with this unit.

Unwrapping:
I´ve owned a number of video players over the years between LaserDisc, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray. I have always been accustomed to larger units and was excited with the small size of my Toshiba HD-A35 HD-DVD player, but I was less than thrilled with how big the BD-P1400 was. Opening the box to see the extremely small size of the DMP-BD80 warmed my heart and the unit feels both solidly constructed for its petite size, but looks quite sleek. Power consumption of the unit is a fairly low 23W and this is quite a savings over the hungry PS3 and the 29W Samsung. The packaging provides a basic audio/video cable, a remote control, a pair of batteries and the AC power cord. I was happy to see the power cord was not permanently attached to the unit as it was my Samsung.

The player was hooked up to my Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD screen via the HDMI cable and then into my venerable Denon AVR-5700 receiver through the analog audio cables. In the next couple of years I am looking to upgrade to a newer unit to allow for HDMI switching, but the DMP-BD80 provides internal decoding for all supported sound formats and my AVR-5700 is more than happy to take the full audio signal and send it to my Infinity Overture 3 speakers. I provided a CAT-5 network cable to the unit, as well as an optical cable to the receiver to provide digital sound to compare against the uncompressed analog signals. It did not take long at all to connect the unit and aside from some minor settings I needed to change in my Router, the player was a snap to get fully connected.

Video:
The DMP-BD80 allows for three types of video connections. The standard coaxial 480i RCA connector is the basic hookup, but does not allow for high definition imagery. The RGB three connector Component Video jacks allows for Blu-ray playback in 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i. The HDMI connector is the only output that allows for Blu-ray video to be shown in full 1080p resolution as well as the lower resolutions supported by the Component cable. DVD Video output may be pushed through Component in 480i or 280p. The DMP-BD80 provides for 24p progressive playback to televisions that support the 24 frames per second output. Video settings were easy and intuitive, however, I found my preference of 4:3 playback to use the "16x9" setting and not the 16x9 Full" setting that stretched the image to fill the entire widescreen television.

The playback of the DMP-BD80 is nothing short of spectacular. I found the image to be slightly more stable than the Samsung BD-P1400 and noticeably better than what was output through the Playstation 3 unit. The level of detail and colors rendered by the DMP-BD80 are as good as any other unit I have seen and using this player has me feeling I´m getting the best performance out of my Aquos. The first "The Fast and the Furious" film was my very first Blu-ray usage of the DMP-BD80 and I found the film to look nothing less than amazing. I then put in "Happy Feet" and was in awe at how impressive some of my favorite demonstration scenes looked through the new Panasonic unit. I´ve heard the complaints that the Playstation 3 is merely average in playback and after a few days with the Panasonic I am now in complete agreement.

Upscaling:
My Toshiba HD-DVD players have been the go-to units for DVD playback and I was never quite satisfied with using the Samsung Blu-ray player for DVD discs. The Playstation 3 is a fine upscaling DVD player, but it never seemed quite right to use such a power hungry monster to playback a simple DVD disc. Watching a few of my favorite DVDs through the DMP-BD80 satisfied me enough that I won´t feel quite as bad when it finally comes time to retire the HD-A35 HD-DVD player. Watching "A Bugs Life" had me absolutely loving how good a properly mastered DVD can look through and upconverting player and comparing "Phantom of the Opera" through a number of players showed that the DMP-BD80 was nearly identical to the performance of both my Toshiba HD-DVD players, which are touted as some of the better upscaling units. With the low power consumption and the solid DVD playback, there is no reason to not use the DMP-BD80 as your sole video disc unit unless you still have a large number of HD-DVDs lying around as I do.

Sound:
The DMP-BD80 provides internal decoding of all major sound formats. Digital audio can be output from either the singular coaxial RCA jack or the optical connector. Of course, this doesn´t allow the same quality of sound or the high definition support of the HDMI connector. Analog sound is provided in its simplest stereo sound with two coaxial RCA connectors, but watching Blu-ray with just two channel sound is blasphemous. The analog jacks on the rear of the DMP-BD80 allows for either 5.1 or 7.1 output and this is selectable from the setup menus and simply uses the two analog outputs for stereo sound to provide the sixth and seventh channels. Thankfully, my Denon receiver allows for six or eight channel inputs and I can enjoy the DMP-BD80 to its fullest sound and with the ability to customize the unit to match your own speaker setup through the player´s menus truly allows the DMP-BD80 to shine.

The decision to purchase the DMP-BD80 over the DMP-BD60 was based solely on the inclusion of the 7.1 channel analog output jacks on the unit. My Denon receiver is a fine audio / video receiver, but it was one of the early component video receivers and HDMI was just an idea when my receiver was purchased. However, connecting the eight audio cables from the DMP-BD-80 into the eight channel input of the AVR-5700 allows for nothing short of pure bliss. Unlike my other units, the DMP-BD80 provides for full decoding of DTS 5.1 Master Audio high definition sound and it only took a few brief moments of watching "The Fast and the Furious" before I became fully in love with the sound that is provided by the DMP-BD80. I could hear some amazing noises in the rear surrounds and this is one area where the DMP-BD80 simply demolishes the attractiveness of the PS3. This is one of the best sounding players on the market.

Remote Control:
The painful Toshiba HD-A1 polished metal remote control is still a harsh reminder that next generation remotes seem oddly last generation in quality. Perhaps I´m spoiled by the backlit Pioneer remotes from my LaserDisc days, but remote controls just don´t seem to be created in the best interests of those of us that actually would use them. The DMP-BD80 is set up pretty nicely, but my biggest complaint still applies to the remote. Does any engineer that works on remotes not realize that we like to have our home theater rooms dankly lit and that we prefer to watch our movies in the dark? There is no glow-in-the-dark paint or lighting to this remote and with Blu-ray discs not typically starting back up where you left off if you accidentally hit the stop button, I find this a continued nuisance. The remote is laid out nicely and I like how the menu buttons and display buttons wrap around the menu navigation buttons. The only buttons I wished would be a little different are the Skip and Slow/Search buttons which are beside each other. However, this is far better than some remotes.

Features:
The DMP-BD80 comes equipped with a good number of features. The most important of the added functionality of the unit is its ability to playback either Profile 1.1 BonusView or Profile 2.0 BD-Live discs. The Profile 1.1 bonus support allows for Picture-in-Picture features to be enabled and there are setup options on the unit to customize your preference of how the audio for the PiP windows is handled. The BD-Live capabilities require the unit to be connected to the Internet and the purchase of an SD Card. The network setup was quite easy and I did not need to tweak any settings on the machine itself. The unit allows for DHCP settings, Proxy server usage and many other options that are beyond the scope of this review, but detailed in the documentation and not difficult to figure out. SD Card support allows for 8MB to 2GB support and SDHC support allows for media sizes between 4GB and 32GB. USB thumb drives are also supported by the DMP-BD80.

My opinion of the Profile 1.1 and Profile 2.0 support of the DMP-BD80 is very positive. I had to wait two days to test out the BD-Live functionality as my digital camera and my Nintendo Wii laid claim to all the SD cards I had owned, but after purchasing a few more of these small storage media, I was quickly able to enjoy the interactive offerings from a couple Universal discs. The player is quite fast in loading these features and I found it less clunkier than what is provided through the HD-DVD players. The PS3 is a slight bit faster than the DMP-BD80, but that should be expected given the massive amounts more power possessed by the large gaming machine. The PiP functionality was very nice and I enjoyed the configuration options provided by the DMP-BD80. The remote control allows for moving around the PiP window.

Another new addition to the DMP-BD80 that falls into the ´Features´ category is the Viera Cast functionality. Hitting a button on the remote brings up the menu for the online-based Viera Cast. The DMP-BD80 allows for YouTube videos and Picasa web albums surfing. Weather is displayed and stock market information from Bloomberg news. I found the behavior of Viera Cast to be inconsistent. I tried to load various versions of the new Eminem video "We Made You" and many videos only displayed a static screen instead of the video. The search results proved different as well between using the DMP-BD80 and then trying the same search through Internet Explorer. Video quality on a large LCD is also not too befitting of YouTube sized videos. This is a pretty cool feature and I enjoy it, but it is limited in its usage.

Closing:
I may have finally found a standalone Blu-ray player that I can live with. For the past couple of years I have been preaching the praises of the Sony Playstation 3 because of its ability to be upgraded. The only problem with the PS3 is that it is a power hungry monster, but does allow for the bonus ability to play a few rather fine video games. Of course, considering I prefer my Xbox 360 for games, the PS3 served almost exclusively as a Blu-ray player. However, it became necessary to replace my PS3 and the Panasonic DMP-BD80 is definitely the absolute best choice with its ability to play both Profile 1.1 and Profile 2.0 discs. Having an older receiver without HDMI capability, the eight channel analog output with full internal decoding was another very attractive feature of the Panasonic unit and I absolutely love the audio created by this unit. Video and audio playback are stellar and configuration and the remote are solid as well. This unit and its smaller sibling the DMP-BD60 are very good devices and I now have a better recommendation than the well loved Playstation 3.

Images:


Buy it on Amazon.com:
Panasonic DMP-BD80 Blu-ray player (From $345)
Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray player (From $255)

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