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

This unit does what its designed for quite well. The video/audio is excellent as commented by other reviewers. Even the loading time in my opinion is good (for a current-gen HD player). It powers on easily in around 30 seconds or less. Load time seems to depend on the disk, but is not objectional for the handfull of disks I've played. Maybe a minute or less. Of course any delay is ridiculous in the broader scheme of things, but we are forced to accept that now that DVD players are merging with computers where software is huge compared to simple firmware-only processing that less capable regular DVD players have used in the past ...

I have to say I have been enjoying the Viera-cast features. It gives you:
o Weather, including 5 days outlook and current radar etc (free)
o Stock market quotes (free -- if you care about that while in your home theater ;-)
o Access to YouTube (free)
o Access to Google's Picasa photo posting site (free)
o Access to video on demand (that I probably won't use)

Of these, I've used the YouTube the most - and far more than I thought I might. You can call up most-popular, etc, or you can search. Searching is quite easy, as the remote has a texting-type key entry system and works very well. Assuming you're connected to a high-speed internet connection, the video index loads very quick and when you select one, it loads in about 15 seconds or less typically. Of course the video quality is low, so its displayed in a box initially on the right half of the screen and often looks fine there. You can also blow up to full screen, but this shows the quality issues and typically results in horizontally-stretched videos as well (except for a few on YouTube are now "HD", so they show OK in this mode). Relative to what I see on my computer, I am guessing I can access either the full YouTube video set, or at least close to it.

The Picasa photo display system is great too - but has bugs. It locks up the unit occasionally, forcing me to have to unplug it to reboot. And yes, I do have the most recent firmware (2.0 as of this writing - and the update from 1.x didn't help :-(

All in all, I'm very happy with the unit. 5 years from now, I'll buy a newer one that will (hopefully) work better - but this one is great for current technology.Get more detail about Panasonic DMP-BD80 High Clarity Audio Blu-ray Disc Player, Black.