Panasonic DMP-BD77 user reviews

Pros The Panasonic DMP-BD77 Blu-Ray Disc Player is an excellent player here are some good features.
-Loads a disc in seconds!
-Bitstreams or internally decodes DTS-HD/TrueHD
-Plays MKV and FLAC off discs or USB drive
-Low price
-Slim profile
-HDMI CEC

Cons Some of the cons:
-The menu looks good but has a wince of cheap look to it
-The default settings are sort of set against optimal Blu-ray playback (for example it was set to Blu-ray secondary audio and 720p only by default)

Summary The Panasonic DMP-BD77 Blu-Ray Disc Player is quite impressive to me and as I have gotten it within the past few days I will go over my initial thoughts as I tested everything out.

-Disc Loading: 5/5
This thing loads a disc faster than any other player I have ever seen! Its absurdly fast and something that I think will keep the consumer from getting frustrated with the slow loading speeds of early Blu-ray players.

-Audio support: 2/5
The player supports bit-streaming of all major lossless codecs as well as internal decoding. To be honest always have it set to bitstream if your using an AV Receiver that can handle it...the player says it will down mix Dolby TrueHD to 2channels (same deal with Dolby Digital Plus) also as the player only has DTS-HD Master Audio | Essentials, if you run across DTS-ES 6.1 or DTS 96/24 titles it will only play those in 5.1. If you have an HDMI receiver with straight PCM only input with just Dolby and DTS support choices are more limited but if you have a high end receiver chances are it sports DTS-HD Master Audio/High Res, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-ES, DTS-96/24, Dolby Digital EX, ect. decoding in the Receiver which IMO is better and you get to see those pretty logo's light up :D Using bit streaming settings I test EVERY codec that Blu-ray supports to ensure I can indeed report that you can play back DTS-ES, DTS 96/24, Multichannel TrueHD/Dolby+, etc. You just need a proper AV receiver but I enjoyed listening to Pink Floyd in 96/24 last night make no mistake :D As one last awesome feature that it has to sort of make up for some atrocious features like down mixing internally decoded HD codecs to stereo it features a 192khz/32bit Digital to Analog converter. That is an excellent thing to have if you are going analog out to a analog stereo receiver...unfortunately this receiver doesn't feature multichannel analog output which would have been amazing with such a high resolution DAC...sadly I haven't gotten a chance to test the DAC's quality but I assume at that resolution it can't sound anything less than good.

-Video Support: 4/5
The video support is superb. It supports deep color, 24p playback (with a proper display), 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p support incase you TV can't handle the typical 1080p standard. Unfortunately the TV I reviewed this on was only 1080i but I did not, for the life of me, see ANY interlacing artifacts and the quality was amazing. I used Pulp Fiction to test the video and anyone who has watched this on Blu-ray knows the detail, Deep inky blacks, the sweet on John Travolta and Samuel Jacksons for head. When Samuel Jackson was giving his speech to one of his early victims in the movie I saw the spit fly out of his mouth with the finest detail ever...it was quite impressive...I can't complain here.

-Various Media format support: 4/5
This player supports MKV playback support which is just dandy considering I backup everything in MKV's. In addition it supports FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) play back either stand alone or inside an MKV at up to 192khz/24bit! How Impressive! Persons who buy blu-rays and back them up (legitimately) can enjoy playback either from a DVD R disc, USB flash drive or from the players ability to stream data over your home network!

-Other:
Some other stuff I liked was the remote controls ease of use (similar to my other Samsungs), AVCHD support, HDMI CEC for good integration with all your HDMI CEC compatible components, apps like Netflix and Hulu, extensive network streaming support, and more.