Final Standards, not Lower Prices, Panasonic Blu-ray

 

Or in the scene where the stuntman falls off the horse and inadvertently breaks his arm in two places, the director's window could explain how the horse was not injured in the fall.

A firmware upgrade obviously won't increase the amount of memory in the player.

It won't be the cheapest, but it'll have the most new features--including the Final Standard Profile--says Panasonic, introducing the $500 DMP-30 Blu-Ray player.

In summary for the Panasonic DMP-30: cool new features (supported if the discs have them), initially higher prices, no higher resolution than non FSP Blu-ray players.

To get the sucker out the door in mid-2006, Blu-ray players emerged with the promise of features being added as time goes by, some retro-fittable to early players, some not.

Some of these can be flash-upgrades to existed Blu-ray players.

On Thursday Sony said it would drive Sony Blu-Ray prices below $400, while competing entry-level HD-DVD players will be priced as low as $200.

nothing new and (this is new) playback of high-def content recorded in the Advanced Video Codec High Definition (AVCHD) format, which means a movie you shoot on an AVCHD camcorder and store on an 8cm (3-inch) DVD disc or SD can be played directly on this player.

Regardless, this player supports resolutions and frame rates as high as 1080p (progressive scan), not just 1080i (interlaced scan), which is a feature apart from Final Standard Profile.

Blu-ray Final Standard Profile, also called BD 1.1, adds the ability for a player to output picture-in-picture to your TV and audio mixing, meaning you can switch between the main picture and the PIP window audio.

That might allow a lead actor to pop up and explain a scene, for those who care;

or the lead actor could pop up and hawk T-shirts.

You also get HDMI 1.3B, Deep Color Compatibility with 12-bit color gradation, 1080/24p playback without the need for 3.2 pulldown, and lots of other possibly cool stuff that requires a post-grad year at Caltech to understand.

FSP also calls for at least 256MB of onboard memory and an Internet connection.

This requires second video and audio decoders onboard.

Much of the rest of the high-def video crowd is headed downmarket.

It will ship this month, Panasonic says, apparently beating to market the Samsung BD-UP5000, anther FSP player.

The Panasonic DMP-BD30 includes an SD card slot for viewing digital camera images;

WalMart today is selling the Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD for $99 (which tops out at 1080i resolution).

Whoops, did we say $200?