Panasonic DMP-BD35 BD-Live Blu-ray Player for $299 (DMP-BD35K)

[MrBoylan]

Panasonic becomes the first manufacturer to offer a BD-Live-capable Blu-ray player for under $300 and Amazon is the place to order it.

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[kriters]

I am about to install a home theater system and want to include a Panasonic DMP-BD55 or DMP-BD35 Blue-ray Player. Plan to use home theater primarily for TV and Blue-ray Disc movies and may tie into Intenet for movie downloads. Have read Internet descriptions of DivX but it is not clear to me as to importance of DivX. Should I spend the extra $100 to buy this feature with the DMP-BD55 model?
Karl

[MrBoylan]

I am about to install a home theater system and want to include a Panasonic DMP-BD55 or DMP-BD35 Blue-ray Player. Plan to use home theater primarily for TV and Blue-ray Disc movies and may tie into Intenet for movie downloads. Have read Internet descriptions of DivX but it is not clear to me as to importance of DivX. Should I spend the extra $100 to buy this feature with the DMP-BD55 model?
Karl

Hi, Karl,

If you're buying a new receiver or HTiB system which has support for multi-channel sound over HDMI (PCM and/or Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD), then you'll probably be fine with the BD35 instead of the BD55. The main feature that the BD55 has which the BD35 lacks is the multi-channel analog outputs. But again, if the receiver you buy supports HDMI audio, then you won't need the multi-channel analog output.

If you're not clear what DivX is, then you probably don't need it. It's a codec which is used by some people to compress DVD quality video and even HD quality video into smaller AVI files so they're more convenient to download or to transport. But there are not too many commercial download services that utilize this codec currently.

The DivX support on the BD55 is only for playback of DivX-encoded video files which are then stored on a DVD-R or CD-R. If you're going to be doing your internet movie downloads via AppleTV or vudu, or via an HTPC (home theater PC) then you really won't need the DivX support in your Blu-ray player.

Hope that helps.

-Chris

[kriters]

Hi, Karl,

If you're buying a new receiver or HTiB system which has support for multi-channel sound over HDMI (PCM and/or Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD), then you'll probably be fine with the BD35 instead of the BD55. The main feature that the BD55 has which the BD35 lacks is the multi-channel analog outputs. But again, if the receiver you buy supports HDMI audio, then you won't need the multi-channel analog output.

If you're not clear what DivX is, then you probably don't need it. It's a codec which is used by some people to compress DVD quality video and even HD quality video into smaller AVI files so they're more convenient to download or to transport. But there are not too many commercial download services that utilize this codec currently.

The DivX support on the BD55 is only for playback of DivX-encoded video files which are then stored on a DVD-R or CD-R. If you're going to be doing your internet movie downloads via AppleTV or vudu, or via an HTPC (home theater PC) then you really won't need the DivX support in your Blu-ray player.

Hope that helps.

-Chris

Thank you very much for your very helpful and prompt reply.
Karl

[MrBoylan]

No problem. Feel free to post often and invite all your friends!

Regards,

-Chris

[Awkwardflail]

I'm about to purchase my BD35k this weekend as well as a Belkin ethernet adapter and 25' of ethernet cable so I can check out this BDLive thing out of the box.

My question is about the best/cheapest memory card. You mention in your 55k review that SDHC cards make BDLive perform noticeably faster than SD ones. What about the class of SDHC card? Is it worth it to shell out the extra bucks for a class 6 card? Does the 35k even recognize them?

I've got my eye on a panasonic 4gb class 4 SDHC card for around $13.00 but if the 35k is just going to react to it as if it were a class 2 card, I'm gonna feel gypped.

[MrBoylan]

I'm about to purchase my BD35k this weekend as well as a Belkin ethernet adapter and 25' of ethernet cable so I can check out this BDLive thing out of the box.

My question is about the best/cheapest memory card. You mention in your 55k review that SDHC cards make BDLive perform noticeably faster than SD ones. What about the class of SDHC card? Is it worth it to shell out the extra bucks for a class 6 card? Does the 35k even recognize them?

I've got my eye on a panasonic 4gb class 4 SDHC card for around $13.00 but if the 35k is just going to react to it as if it were a class 2 card, I'm gonna feel gypped.

Actually the BD50 showed more drastic differences in response between SD and SDHC cards but I haven't noticed as much of a difference on the BD55 (and I assume the BD35 is the same). Panasonic doesn't publish the transfer rate and which class is the best match but they did send us a 2GB Class 6 card for the purposes of the review.

But honestly, $13 for a 4GB card seems like such a good price that it would be tough to feel gypped!

BTW, don't miss the Amazon deal that's going on right now. The DMP-BD55 is actually *cheaper* than the BD35! If you buy a BD55, plus 4 Warner movies on Blu-ray you get $100 off. This gets you the BD55 player for around $234 (plus the cost of the movies, of course). They just added the BD55 this morning as an eligible player (but not the BD35, at least not yet).

Here's the link for more info:

Save $100 on select Blu-ray Players with purchase of 4 movies

-CB