It's official. The Blu-ray player is now a commodity. For under $200, you can get yourself a Wi-Fi-enabled, upconverting 1080p Blu-ray player with a wealth of online streaming features. But somehow every year or two, the Blu-ray manufacturers come out with a new hook: a new more powerful video processor for upconverting your existing DVDs, a new audio codec that your player simply must have, a new Networking feature like Netflix streaming or VUDU. This year, the "hook" is 3D playback.
The Blu-ray 3D format is a new extension to the Blu-raystandard that supports full HD 1080p resolution in 3D. It's currently the highest quality 3D source you can hook up to a 3D TV, and Panasonic's DMP-BDT350 Blu-ray 3D Player was one of the first Blu-ray 3D players on the market. But even someone who has no interest in 3D playback may be interested in this player, due to its more powerful video processor and other unique features... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The Set-Up
As with most high-end Blu-ray players, the BDT350 works best with an HDMI connection to 1080p-compatible HDTV. For 3D playback, of course, you'll need a 3D TV, connected via HDMI. We tested the player with Panasonic's excellent 50-inch VT25 series (the TC-P50VT25). To take advantage of BD-Live and Panasonic's VIERA Cast network features, you'll also need a network connection, either via a standard Ethernet cable to your network router, or you can use the included "Wireless LAN Adaptor" -- a WiFi antenna and adapter that plugs into the unit's USB port. I like the fact that Panasonic includes a USB extension cable so you can bring the adapter out from the back of your A/V cabinet and into the open where it will get a stronger connection to your (or your neighbor's) wireless network. (Of course, we don't condone the hijacking of your neighbor's internet connection but hey, if they're going to leave it wide open like that...).
Other settings may or may not be necessary. If your home theater receiver supports all the latest audio/video codecs, then you can leave your player's digital audio output set to "bitstream" but if you're using a very early HDMI-equipped receiver, then you might need to switch this over to "PCM" output for highest quality. If your receiver or preamp/processor lacks HDMI outputs completely, then we'd suggest using the BDT350's multi-channel analog outputs or best results (and you can read more about how to do that in our multi-channel analog set-up tutorial). You could always use the coax or fiberoptic digital outputs but these can only carry lossy versions of the lossless Dolby and DTS soundtracks, and only stereo versions of any PCM soundtracks.
Just Passing Through...
One issue you will be faced with, assuming you want to take advantage of the 3D capabilities of the player, and you are using a home theater receiver or preamp/processor for your sound, is that you do need a 3D-compatible receiver. 3D passthrough capability is part of the HDMI 1.4 spec, which was only recently finalized, so most receivers with 3D passthrough were only released in 2010. With one of these new receivers, you can connect your player to the receiver, and the receiver to the TV, both via HDMI, and happily go about your business. But if you've got an older HDMI receiver, then don't fret. The Panasonic DMP-BDT350 is one of only a couple on the market that includes dual HDMI outputs -- one can be connected directly to your 3D display for 3D video, and the other can be connected to your receiver or preamp/processor for audio duties. If connected this way, you will need to disable the video output from the secondary HDMI output, which you can do from the player's set-up menu. We connected the player this way successfully, though our Integra DTC-9.8 preamp/processor did introduce some of its own challenges, but nothing caused by the player.
Another unique feature of the DMP-BDT350 is its multiple 3D output options: it offers the standard Blu-ray 3D frame-packed output, plus side-by-side and checkerboard 3D outputs. "Checkerboard" is the most interesting, because it allows this player to work directly with the 3D-ready DLP TVs offered from Mitsubishi and Samsung since 2007 as well as a handful of early 3D-ready plasma TVs offered by Samsung between 2008 and 2009. We tested the checkerboard output with Samsung's 2008 model PN42A450 and found that it was able to create a pleasing 3D image, albeit with some crosstalk and a lower resolution than today's full HD 1080p 3D TVs.
Ergonomics R Us
Panasonic seems to spend the bulk of their energy on improving the audio and video playback performance of their players, and for that we applaud them. However, they need to start concentrating more on the ergonomics and usability of their players. While competitors such as LG and Samsung offer nice graphically-driven user interfaces for navigating the various types of content and settings, Panasonic still relies heavily on basic text-driven menus. And with all the tweaks available for picture, sound, and networking, there are an imposing amount of settings and parameters available inside the set-up menus
Our favorite slow loading Blu-ray, Inglourious Basterds, gets to its first screen in about 67 seconds, complete with Java ticker advertising new and upcoming Blu-ray titles available from Universal. For 3D discs, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on Blu-ray 3D takes about 64 seconds to get to the Sony Pictures logo. Compared to the Samsung BD-C6900, the Panasonic player is about 8 seconds slower to load a DVD or Blu-ray, 15 seconds slower to load a BD-Java Blu-ray, 28 seconds slower to load Inglourious Basterds (though it did skip an annoying ad), and 21 seconds slower to load a 3D disc. Of course, these times are all faster than earlier players, but significantly slower than the competition.
Enter the Third Dimension
If you're considering buying this player, then chances are you're buying it for its Blu-ray 3D playback capabilities. And, although we only had five Blu-ray 3D titles to test (which is a pretty sizable chunk of what's currently available in stores and online), the unit played all of them as expected. We did have one glitch on Coraline (promotional title available to buyers of Panasonic 3D TVs), whereby the disc's playback menu would not come on but a simple inspection of the disc found some crud on it, and a gentle wipe of the disc with a cotton cloth did the trick.
On our review sample of Panasonic's 50-inch VT25 plasma, the five animated titles we have on hand, as well as the clips of real live people (and pets!) on Panasonic's 3D test disc all presented a believable 3D image with great depth and only minimal crosstalk (ghosting or doubled lines). And the mild crosstalk issues that were there were from the display, not the player. Of course, through the 3D glasses, the image was significantly darker than it is when watching standard 2D TV, so we'd recommend maintaining a dark room if you really want to enjoy the 3D effect.
Flatten it out
With such a dearth of true 3D content available, one would hope that the BDT350 makes the most of existing 2D content, both on Blu-ray and DVD. So, removing the glasses, we put the player through its paces on our standard repertoire of DVD upconversion and 1080i deinterlacing tests as well as some additional more specialized high definition tests, not to mention real content. First up was the standard def DVD of HQV's Benchmark disc. The player was able to resolve all the details of a standard DVD and performed extremely well on the jaggies tests (which test the player's diagonal filtering). The player did an adequate job reducing noise, though the "Motion Adaptive Noise Reduction" test (a rollercoaster moving at fairly high speed) did still show significant mosquito noise and aliasing.
Moving onto the cadence tests, the player locked pretty quickly to a 2:3 cadence (24 frame/second film content) in the "Film Detail Test," which meant that the moiré distortion in the grandstands was only visible for a split second before the player locked on the signal and cleaned things up. The player performed similarly on 2:2 cadence material, presenting the newspaper headlines and coffee cups with smooth edges, even during the slow pan and zoom. The player even held its own on most of the more obscure cadence tests, which appear in real world content pretty infrequently. The mixed cadence test, which presents a video title floating on a film-based background, took a split second to lock on the player, showing some visible combing of the text but this was quickly banished, both in its horizontal scrolling and vertical scrolling versions, leaving a nice clean image free of major artifacts.
Switching over to HD tests, we started with the HQV Blu-ray benchmark disc and saw much the same high performance as we saw on the SD version. Jaggies were non-existent, the player locked nearly instantly to both a 2:2 (video) and 2:3 (film) cadence, on the 1080i disc, presenting single pixel wide black and white lines in the film and video resolution tests with no problems. On the Spears and Munsil test disc (also Blu-ray), we pulled up the Chroma Zone Plate pattern and saw the cleanest representation of this difficult test pattern that we've ever seen -- no real surprise since Panasonic's enhancements to its on-board chroma (color) processor continue to roll out with each successive generation, and this year's models (from the DMP-BD85 and up) offer the latest version of this color upconversion processing. In fact, the BDT350 should perform even better than the BD85 on standard definition upconversion as it has a more powerful processor which Panasonic refers to as "Super Resolution" processing for handling standard def material. Viewing challenging content such as the Blu-ray of "Baraka" confirmed that the player is able to produce extremely fine color detail as thin streams of magma are illuminated cleanly against a dark stone backdrop.
In terms of a description of the audio features and performance of the DMP-BDT350, we'd refer you to our DMP-BD85 review as the audio features and performance were practically identical. The BDT350 offers multi-channel analog outputs for those with older home theater gear, as well as an on-board Jitter Purifier that will help improve the audio of even the most modern rigs, via a more accurate audio clock when using the HDMI connection. The BDT350 also offers the 96 KHz re-master and tube sound effects of the BD85 (which are fun to experiment with) as well as a High Clarity Audio feature which disables the analog video processing so that it cannot interfere with the audio circuitry. Like the BD85, the BDT350 was built with not just videophiles, but audiophiles in mind, and its feature set and construction are evidence of that.
I Stream, You Stream...
Beyond standard disc playback, the DMP-BDT350 features VIERA Cast, Panasonic's online content streaming platform. This gives us access to a number of different audio and video streaming services, including YouTube, Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix, Picasa and Pandora. Behavior of these services was essentially the same as on the BD85, though it did seem that I was able to get a High Definition connection for Amazon VOD content a bit easier on the BDT350 when compared to the BD85.
Like the DMP-BDT100, we did notice a CUE problem (Chroma Upsampling Error) when streaming standard def content from Netflix on the DMP-BDT350. This introduces color bands or smeared edges around contrasting colored borders. Panasonic is aware of this problem but has not yet committed to being able to deliver a fix to current hardware. If you stream a lot of standard def content from Netflix, particularly on a very large screen, this might not be the best player for you. We tested Netflix streaming of SD content side by side with Panasonic's TC-P50VT25 TV, and the TV provided a superior SD streaming experience. HD streaming is unaffected by this glitch as is Blu-ray and DVD playback. Also, the Netflix interface on the DMP-BDT350 is the old-style "1.0" interface. You can view items from your instant queue, but you cannot add new items to your queue, nor can you search or browse from available titles. To add to your Netflix instant queue, you need to log into your Netflix account from a web browser.
In addition to the streaming content choices, the DMP-BDT350 also supports playback of select media files such as AVIs (Divx), MP3, JPEG and AVCHD videos. Although some content can be viewed from an inserted SD card, most content, particularly videos, require either that the file be on a physical disc or on an attached USB drive. The BDT350 is also Panasonic's first player to support DLNA so it can access and stream select media types from other DLNA-compliant source devices within your home network. Although it's nice to see Panasonic begin to offer home networking and multimedia playback support, their overall multimedia and in-network streaming offering still lags behind competitors such as Samsung and LG.
Bring on the Shiny Silver Discs
All of that cool multi-media stuff aside, the DMP-BDT350 is, after all, a disc player, and as such, its performance is most relevant. Although most of the discs we threw at the player played fine, including the new "Alien Anthology" Blu-ray set from Fox, which has been problematic for some other players, we did see one small glitch with some recent Fox Blu-ray titles. A message occurs at load time on "Date Night" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and even on the standard Blu-ray Disc of "Avatar" saying that the "BD-Live Update was Not Successful: Continue/Retry." Any attempt to retry produces the same message. We notified Panasonic of the issue and they say they are looking into it.
Moving over to standard definition DVD playback, we saw a good amount of detail in well-mastered DVDs such as Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones and The Fifth Element (Superbit DVD). The DVD version of Avatar, also presented decent detail in the forest scenes and in close-ups of the mining machinery and Na-vi faces, though there was also some visible aliasing around the edges of troop transports as well as a more muted color palette than the Blu-ray version of the film. Switching over to the Blu-ray version of that film brought an explosion of color and detail, as well as excellent black levels, most noticeable in the starfields in the background while Jake Sully made his voyage to Pandora.
Of course, one reason the player's results were so outstanding with Blu-ray was that it was paired with Panasonic's TC-P50VT25 1080p plasma HDTV. This revealing reference-quality display showed that the BDT350 is capable of some breathtaking high definition imagery.
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Final Thoughts
As a first generation Blu-ray 3D player, the DMP-BDT350 offers anything but first generation performance. As one of the inventors of the MVC codec that makes Blu-ray 3D playback possible, Panasonic clearly wanted to satisfy the most demanding audiophiles and videophiles with their first 3D-capable player. It offers strong DVD upconversion, outstanding Blu-ray playback and glitch-free support of Blu-ray 3D. It also offers the most comprehensive set of outputs of any player currently on the market, assuring compatibility with the most modern, and the most dated, audio/video gear. While the Netflix standard def streaming performance could be better, and the user interface is clunky and text-heavy, the DMP-BDT350's audio and video performance on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs is hard to fault and earns the player a recommendation.
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