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WARNING. THIS UNIT STOPPED PLAYING BLUE RAY DISCS AFTER ONLY 18 MONTHS!
If you Google this problem, you'll see that I'm not the only one. Unit plays regular DVDs fine. Won't play Blue Ray discs anymore after only 18 months. Called Panasonic - they said the warrantee was expired. So now I have a 7.65 DVD player. Thanks for nothing Panasonic - I WILL NEVER BUY ELECTRONICS FROM PANASONIC EVER AGAIN. If you only want a Blue Ray player for 18-24 months, buy this unit. If you want something that will last for your money find another brand.

great picture
Slow load, but once loaded it is a great unit and all the loading seams to happens only when you first load the disc.

Refurbished Panasonic DMP-BD 30 works fine!
I formerly owned a Sony BDP s300 for over a year but after reading the many excellent reviews on this unit from CNET and Home Theater, I decided to sell my Sony and cop this fine unit. So far there's been no problem playing discs, BD or Standard, and in fact it does boot up a little faster than the Sony but where it stands out in is the sound quality and picture. I was amazed at the rich sound of this unit when I played "Amadeus-the Director's Cut" in BD on this machine. So far I have not regretted my decision on this purchase. And at just under 0--it's a steal!! One more thing to add that the Sony didn't have, this machine has a memory if you stop it and shut it off---when you turn it back on, it'll go back to where you left off---no bookmarks needed here!!

A point of contention
I think its fair to offer my experience with the 30K. I bought my 30K in Nov 07 when it first was released directly from Panasonic Direct. The player started having serious problems playing BR disks by the second disk. I called Pan's support and they tried to get me upgrade the firmware. Well I did that and it didn't help at all so they had me send it an authorized repair shop half way across the country.

(I was already a little annoyed since effectively they send me a defective unit, they should have ship me a new one and had me ship mine back to them and taken the repair on their shoulders.)

Then I had to jump through hoops to prove that this was all authorized within the first 30 days of owning it as they didn't want to repair it on their own dime. I had called support to log the issue in the first 5 days! I had the RMA within 15 days and the rest was shipping related delays due to the holidays. Eventually they owned up and fixed the unit.

The repair slip said that the transport was bad and was replaced. Fine, but again I was annoyed that I had to spend nearly 3 months without a player when it was clear defective from the get go.

Now, I have had the unit a year and a half, less with it actually working. Its kaput! It won't recognize any disk, be it blu-ray or DVD. Just before this it had given us grief for about a month talking directly to a Pan plasma bought at the same time, both are HDMI-CEC. It would occasionally show only a red picture and after shutting down and restarting a few times it would finally work. The cable was ruled out, as I tested a few and also tested on another player.

Panasonic support hasn't even replied to my email send over a week ago.

Caveat Emptor! I am going to get an Oppo Blu-ray when it is released. Their support is good and their DVD player I own is excellent.

Great standalone!
I have owned this for two months and have nothing but good thigns to say about it. Load/start-up time is MUCH quicker than my other blu-ray player (Samsung BDP1400) and from what I have read, much quicker than most blu-ray players. i would say that it takes about 15 seconds to get going, which is not bad at all. The upconversion from SD dvd's is amazing and the Blu-rays look out of this world.

The only complaint I have is that the remote is not backlit and when you are watching TV in the dark it can become annoying.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this player to anyone looking to buy a stand-alone.

Reliable, fully featured, top-notch BD performance, but painfully slow disc loading and command processing.

As BD is still a relatively new format, and considering it's flexibility and vast potential, I prefer to stick with players that you can count on. For BD, that usually means Panasonic and Sony (PS3 anyway, as some Sony stand alones have actually been made by Pioneer, which have had more problems than I'm willing to put up with) as they are the two principle developers of the format. I've tried and researched other machines and also owned a Samsung, but would be very reluctant to buy from them again until the format has fully matured (stopped coming up with new uses for java and BDLive that require player updates to work right in older players). Firmware updates are almost crucial for BD and Samsung has been spotty in supporting their products at best, usually issuing fixes months after problem discs (or players) surface at best. Panasonic on the other hand was very quick to resolve problems early on, usually having firmware patches for new discs before the discs even hit shelves, as most BDs were being tested on Panasonic players prior to release.

Playing movies, this player is as good as it gets, supporting full 1080p/24 with optional decoded or bitstreaming support for all of the new audio codecs. Since 3D spec hadn't been finalized when this player was designed, it likely won't be upgradable; but I'm not in the market to upgrade my display anyway and won't be until I'm sure it won't be just a passing fad or novelty preferred with select films shot specifically for 3D. Of course I'm one of those that think 3D still has a long way to go. It's still a bit too much like a pop-up picture book to me, somewhat gimmicky layers of 2D more than a real 3 dimensional effect. But I'm still open-minded, if not hopefull it'll someday live up to all the studio hype. OK, back on topic...

Outside of it's BD movie perforance, reliability, and cost, this player loses some appeal. It's standard definition DVD performance is average at best. Whether to cut costs or because the company is utterly clueless as to how inferior their own proprietary deinterlacing is, but just about every DVD I've watched using this unit has been plagued by combing to one degree or another. TV shows like Jack of All Trades, that were shot on video, comb badly unless you switch to video mode. But that shouldn't be necessary with good deinterlacing and doesn't help with improperly flagged film-based dvds, which are far from uncommon. If you still watch a lot of standard DVD, which I admittedly don't, making this downside, mostly a non-issue for me, you'd be better off with a BD player that features either VRS, HQV, or Faroudja deinterlacing. I think you can also turn off the progressive output and let your display or AVR do the heavy lifting for DVD sources, if they feature something better. Poor dienterlacing isn't unique to Panasonic players by any means. Sadly, few manufacturers give deinterlacing performance the attention it deserves. But as a company who was once highly praised for incorporating some of the best deinterlacing available, I expect a lot better from Panasonic.

We also own a PS3, and while basic BD movie playback is pretty uniform in comparison, the Panasonic and PS3 are a world apart in terms of processing BD discs. The Panasonic is slow to the point that it hardly seems the high tech, sophisticated piece of electronics that it is. The player can do everything with a BD disc that the PS3 can, it just does it much slower - painfully slow with some discs even with a DSL connection, like Universals brilliant idea to exploit the format by streaming advertising into their BD menus. All that junk has to be loaded, before you can access your movie. For me, that means loading the disc 5 minutes before I plan to watch the movie, for my parents who are in their 60s, it means getting frustrated, giving up on watching the movie and calling me to asky why it isn't working and why I gave them such a piece of junk. The Panasonic is a little faster if you don't have the player hooked up online, so that it doesn't actually load all the extra junk, but it still seems to try and is still much slower than the PS3 even compared to when the PS3 is connected. Menu navigation is also much slower. Button response with the PS3 is pretty much instantaneous, but takes a few seconds to register with the Panasonic. The Panasonic also doesn't feature any internal memory, so you'll have to plop down 15 bucks on a memory card for BD-Live functionality.

If you're looking for a quality inexpensive BD player that can do anything BD is capable of (short of 3D), has top notch 1080p BD performance, and is reliable enough that you won't have to worry about the occasional disc not working right or locking up the machine (I haven't had a single movie that wouldn't play since I bought the player 1 to 2 yrs ago, despite watching a new BD almost every night - knock on wood), which is still a fairly common issue from most other BD manufacturers it would seem from all the complaints I've read in online forums, I would chose a player like this one from Panasonic over just about any other on the market (sans maybe the top of the line Oppo, which retails for 0, but has had nothing but rave reviews and also features about the best DVD playback currently possible). If you want the same great BD performance and reliablity as the Panasonic, but also require faster loading and command processing, get a PS3.

"A great player for the price!"
Picture and sound quality are very good. Very easy to use and I couldn't beat the price.

For a little extra get a PS3 and it will work better than this
I've had this player for about a year now I guess. It has worked about 80% of the time. This system definitely has some issues though. It cannot bitstream the audio for several of my BD's. I have to force it into PCM mode to get it to work right (PS3 has no problem playing it). Loading up the disc is s.l.o.w. Navigating around it just painful and sluggish. My PS3 can get a movie playing 3X faster than this unit.

Go and buy a PS3 unless you can find another unit that's much cheaper and has good reviews. PS3 blows the pants off this box.

Chokes on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs
Bought this in 2008 after reading many glowing reviews. I have had this player for a year now and am very frustrated at its inability to play discs. It either won't read them when inserted or will freeze in mid-movie. This happens with all discs-DVDs from Netflix (not surprising), my lightly used DVDs (should definitely not happen) and even new Blu-Rays of Madagascar and Up will freeze about 75% of the time. This renders the player nearly useless. My wife hates this player and I have had times where I wanted to trash it a la Office Space.

Very Pleased
The unit powers up in a reasonable time and the remote control device is easy to navigate. The single HDMI uplink eliminates cable clutter. The RJ-45 network port makes it easy to connect the device to the internet and download firmware upgrades and new features. I'm completely pleased with the quality and performance of this Blu-Ray player.

Died 2 months after warranty period.
The picture and sound quality were great....while they lasted. At 14 months, the unit developed a problem of freezing up after just a few minutes play. This unit has only seen moderate use and has always been plugged into a good surge protector. The only solution offered by Sony was to exchange the unit for a refurbished one at a cost of 2.99, which is more than the cost of several new players on the market today, and only a few dollars cheaper than buying a refurb unit of the same model at retail. I can understand an occasional product failure, but when you pay well over 0 for a piece of electronics, I would expect the manufacturer to stand behind the product better by offering a good discount on repair or replacement exchange when a unit dies so soon after the warranty period--especially when a little internet research shows that my experience with the unit is not an isolated incident. This is an inferior quality product, backed with inferior service and an attitude of 'we don't care about the customer's satisfaction'. I will never buy another Sony product.

stopped playing blurays 1 month out of warranty
when it worked was a fantastic blu ray player picture is amazing sound was quite good also. however 1 month after warranty expired unit stopped playing blu rays and sony customer service was useless one day website stated i could exchange for 1 dollar fee plus shipping. called the next day and was told 0 to even have it looked at and the website now says 152.99 for exchange. i will be purchasing a new player rather than have this one fixed and it most certainly will not be a sony product. never again a sony!

Not Happy
I purchased this Sony BDP-S550 over a year ago because of the reviews and because Sony had won the Blu-ray contest with other formats. I'm a big fan of Sony products but I've had my share of problems. This player has played my Blu-ray DVDs very well but then again, I'd say I've only watched less than ten actual Blu-ray movies during the time that I've had this player. A week ago, I'm watching a Blu-ray movie and all of sudden near the end of the movie, it stops and freezes. I went through trying to start the movie again and decided that the disc must be bad so I took the disc back to the store and got the same title. This time, the movie won't load at all. I tried other Blu-ray discs that I had along with other standard DVD titles and nothing works. I then purchased a lens cleaner. The cleaner did ok but still, no discs will play. I contacted Sony for assistance. To fix it, I have to ship it to a Sony authorized dealer for 2.00. I don't know if I am going to ship it or get another Sony player. But I'm leaning towards getting another player like the Panasonic. I've seen other situations where just after the warranty runs out, the device goes bad. Mine is one month over a year old and now no player and no warranty. Lastly, I've read online that this is a common problem with this player. What the problem is remains elusive. Still a good player...when it works...and mine doesn't...and I'm not happy.

It plays
When I bought this, it was the most recent one available.

So it does what it's supposed to, it plays Blu Ray discs and DVDs and upscales them. It also lets you change the output video quality to 720p or 1080i or 1080p etcetera. This is very helpful as the TV I use can technically support 1080p, but its native resolution is 720p. As a result, playing Blu Rays on 1080p tends to have the picture suffer some scratching or tearing things which are very unremarkable and the average viewer would never be able to notice.

So that's it, really. What drags this down a star is its problems and little "quirks".


The load speed. Maybe its how all Blu Ray players are these days, but the speed is atrociously slow. I wouldn't have any frame of reference though, as this is my first Blu Ray player. I would not be surprised if older players were even slower than this. Or maybe it just has to do with the size of the disc being inserted---example, inserting a disc of Star Trek the Original Series tends to take up to 30 seconds to load, but never any longer. To distract us, though, it shows us a tiny little wireframe Enterprise shooting phasers!


One of the biggest gripes I have, though, is its autoload. I have some ideas as to how this work, but here is the summary: It works sometimes. When I open up the Blu Ray after first turning it on, load in a new disc, close it, it will load... if the TV is not on, or if it's turned on to normal TV.

If I unload a disc and load in a new one while on the Blu Ray menu, it will NOT auto-load, and instead I need to select BD-ROM and press Ok in orderfor it to load. This gets troublesome.


One odd quirk which I don't think is very serious, nor that many people would take note of, is a tendency, during a Blu Ray movie, out of literally nowhere, for the movie to pause. Not freeze, not stop, but pause, as in, the movie pauses and there's the II symbol for pause on-screen. This is easily corrected by pressing the "Play" button. This has happened to me quite frequently, but not nearly enough to be of significant nuisance.


Another big huge problem which is easily resolved is the volume. For some odd reason, every Blu Ray played on this player is inherently low on volume. For reference, on my HTS, during normal TV, a volume of 10 would be very low, a volume of 16-18 is averagely loud. A volume of 25 is very loud. With my DVD player on, 16-18 is loud, and 25 is extremely loud.

By contrast, 16-18 is virtually inaudible on the Blu Ray player. A volume of 25 is of decent sound, and 21 is soft. 30 is around the reasonable volume for a cinematic experience with loud sounds. I will personally beat over the head anyone who watches a movie with me at this volume, then after its done, changes back to the television without lowering the volume.




The menu is quite good, not only easy but almost fun to navigate, as I feel like I might find some as of yet unexplored options to make for a different or more unique movie experience. Downloads happen fast and quick and efficient.


It plays. That's pretty much what it should do and it does it. I have no regrets and I would buy it again if it broke.

Stopped working after 11 months
System worked fine for 10 months. Then it stopped recognizing blu-ray discs, even discs from our collection that it had played on numerous occasions before. SONY support says it isn't an uncommon problem and it needs to be sent to Texas for repair. Even though it is still under warranty, the cost of shipping makes it hardly worth it. I expect more than 10 months of use from a 0 product.