LG BD 370 Network Blu-ray Disc Player Review

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(More customer reviews)Of the new model year '2009' Blu Ray players, we own the LG BD370, Samsung BD-P1600, and a PS3. By far, the BD370 is the nicest for Blu Ray content. Loading is FAST and the drive is completely silent (this is not the case on the BD-P1600 by Samsung). Piano Black finish on the face is plastic, and looks good. We have found that it does not scratch easily too! The rest of the case is black-ish metal and sturdy.
One of the great things about the LG BD370 is you can customize the look of the interface on your TV. There are 4 themes and all are in high-definition. The remote on the BD370 changed from the BD300, and I feel it was a step down. It's got a faux-leather finish on it - why? No idea. The one improvement is buttons that don't get used much are hidden behind a panel on the remote.
Netflix 'Watch Instantly' is very cool and the setup is literally 30-40 seconds if you already have an account. Just after we got ours, it alerted us that a firmware update was available! It added CinemaNow - we hadn't used CinemaNow before, but a quick registration on their site and connecting was just as easy as Netflix. Rented a couple movies to try it out - VERY cool. YouTube is also available on the player and it's AWESOME. I'd easily compare it with an AppleTV, though believe it or not, the BD370 is a bit faster at searching and playing YouTube videos - it also does them in Full Screen, no problem.
One odd thing we've noticed... with Netflix and CinemaNow and YouTube we have only watched 3 or 4 movies on Blu Ray. So much other content available that this player is really a STEAL - it's a fantastic Blu Ray player (audio and video as good as you imagine it would be), but WOW is it awesome to have a player that does so much other stuff.
No wireless on this player, nor does it have built-in memory for using BD-Live. Neither of these items should be cause for concern - I haven't seen a BD-Live feature YET that has been worth while... all the good stuff is usually already on the Blu Ray disk itself.
The thing that makes it just a bit better than our Samsung BD-P1600 is the front display. The circular button assembly on the front glows a soft blue when playing Blu Ray, soft red when playing DVD, and purple on certain Netflix, YouTube, and CinemaNow video. The main display is also helpful, showing 'NETFLX', etc and most importantly, you can SEE the display (the Samsung player's display is so dim you wouldn't believe it).
For the price and feature set, I don't think there's another player I'd even consider after having used them all!

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Blu-ray Disc Player w/ BD-P, Netflix HD, YouTube, CinemaNow Full HD 1080P Output via HDMI, DVD 1080p Up-conversion.

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

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(More 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 guess we can't have everything. Viewing YouTube is pretty straightforward - you can even log in to view your favorites - and it's nice to be able to do that without a PC connected to your TV.
For Blu-ray and DVD playback, the unit performs extremely well. It isn't the absolute best upconverting DVD player available, but it does a good job wringing detail out of standard def content. And it really shines as a Blu-ray Disc player with top-notch video and audio performance. The player decodes all of the latest surround sound codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, etc.) to multi-channel PCM and to multi-channel analog outputs (5.1 or 7.1-channel) for compatibility with older receivers and surround processors that lack the latest HDMI audio support. If you do have a newer receiver with HDMI audio support, then you can set the player to bitstream these soundtracks to your receiver for decoding. The player also offers standard coax and fiber optic digital outputs though these do not support the new codecs.
In addition to VIERA Cast and the USB port, Panasonic adds a new "High Clarity Audio" feature which allows you to turn off analog video processing if you're using HDMI for your video output (improving sound quality) as well as a new "3D NR" noise reduction feature for cleaning up noisy Blu-ray and DVD transfers.
It's too bad Panasonic could not improve the load times for Blu-ray and DVDs. As it is, they're pretty much identical to the BD35 and BD55. But at least they did provide a "Quick Start" mode which allows the player to power on/boot up quicker than its predecessors. Even still, the player is a bit slower to load discs than the latest offerings from LG and Samsung.
For those who don't need the multi-channel analog outputs or Divx support, the less expensive DMP-BD60 may be a better choice as it offers the same audio and video processing as well as the same VIERA Cast feature.
Overall, the BD80 is a solid performer. I would have liked Panasonic to include an SD card in the box for BD-Live access (as well as an HDMI cable, instead of those silly composite video/analog audio cables), and it would have been nice to have a Wi-Fi option, instead of requiring a hard-wired Ethernet cable for internet access, but Panasonic is not the only vendor who omits these things. While the online content offerings are currently a bit light and the operational speeds are only average, the excellent audio and video performance and flexible media playback options make this a strong contender in the 2009 Blu-ray model line up.
You can view our more detailed review on Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).

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Panasonic, Blu-ray Player,7.1 Audio out,1080P HDMI output

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Verbatim 96769 25 GB 4x Blu-ray Single-Layer Recordable Disc BD-R , 10-Disc Spindle Review

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(More customer reviews)The only reason why I gave this item lower rating is due to the fact that it does NOT work at all with LITE-ON IHBS212. I can't give a more accurate rating since I am unable to use any of them with my blu-ray burner. These disks turned out to be some pretty expensive coasters. Lite-on claims their product works with pretty much all manufacturers, but obviously not Verbatim....

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