Panasonic DMPBD55K Bluray Disc Player

One of the Few Divx certified Blueray Players
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this unit to replace my older Phillips DVD player in my media room, and the one reason was it’s ability to play Divx encoded discs, one of the few Bluray players that do. Since I now have a 42″ Vizio, I needed a Blueray player to play DVD ( upconverted ) and my starting collection of Blueray discs.

Upconverted DVDs look like you are watching in ciinema mode, they look good, kinda of a warm grainy look to them, but you never mistake it for Blueray. Still watchable, so at least your collection of DVDs will still look decent when played back.

I have mine hooked up HDMI direct to my Vizio, with RCA cables for the 5.1 going to my receiver ( my receiver does not have any HDMI inputs ).

In addition to playing Divx discs ( those look passable like watching a vhs tape ), DVD discs and Blueray discs, it also plays BD-5 and BD-9 Blueray encoded DVD single / dual layer discs, at both 720p and 1080p encoding ( 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080 ) respectively, it will not play BD discs formatted for the Playstation, it also has no native support for MKV files, so the file structure must be in Blueray format. I have yet to try AVCHD direct from a HD camcorder via the SDHC card slot at front.

I cannot figure out the Panasonic codes to get it working with my Vizio remote for simple turn off and turn on.

On power up it’s a bit slow for the main menu to pop up, the same for eject. Going thru all the menus seems a bit sluggish, it not the most fastest menu I have ever sorted through, but it works. But I bought the unit for playback and there I have been disappointed.

I performed the firmware update via the CD method and it worked fine, but you can have it connected via ethernet and have it automatically do the live update. The remote is programmable to control TV and receiver, but I use my Vizo remote for that aspect. The unit is nice and slim, so it fits in well in my AV set up stack. The back has a multitude of connection options, a good thing considering I am not 100% HDMI yet on the component input / outputs, this give my aging Denon receiver a few more years to live on.

Terrible Junk – long LOADING times – terrible
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Whoever writes these long reviews on this site must work for Panasonic.

This unit is terrible. Takes forever to load a DVD (average 2-3 min). Press Eject – it takes 30-40 sec. to eject a disk. Remote funcions responses are slow, no way to get to main menu quick, FWD buttons are slow responsive, it freezed and went crazy trying to load CRANK 2 blueray. I read a lot of good reviews before I bought this unit. Decided to go with Panasonic because I read the Sony units load forever. After 6 mts I come to the same conclusion as all those people talked about sony. Im putting it up on Ebay. JUNK! JUNK! JUNK! Only good this was that it played 7.1 – but if you look at it – there is hardly no bluerays out there with 7.1 decoding yet.

Very good, only a few complaints
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
In general I’m quite pleased with the quality of this unit and the video playback quality.

I don’t regret buying this player, but there are a few areas where things could be improved:

1) Does not play SACD disks and lacks the 6 channel analog out on players that read SACD disks. So I have to keep my old pioneer DVD player hooked into the system to play my half dozen SACD disks. Makes my setup a bit more cluttered than I’d like.

2) As far as I can tell, it doesn’t play any of my PAL encoded 50hz DVDs from other regions. Again, another reason I have to keep the old pioneer DVD player hooked up to play a small collection of foreign disks that my old pioneer played well.

3) The user manual isn’t horrible, but it suffers from the same myopic attitude as many assembly/operation manuals. It tells how to do some things without a clue for why you would do that or which setting will prove advantageous. For example, I have an older 5.1 Teac receiver that has no HDMI connection nor any decoding for the newer audio formats on blu ray. The set-up for the Panasonic BD player has many possibilities for setting up the digital out signal for the player, but the language is rather muddled and there is just very little information on what settings might provide the clearest sound for a 6 year old 5.1 receiver. Hence, a lot of trial and error experimentation to come up with settings that give natural sound.

4) the remote doesn’t have any mute button for the audio going to the TV in the HDMI cable from the player. So if you are using your receiver to play sound and want to add the sound from your TV speakers at the same time, turning off the sound for the TV part requires playing with the volume control.

5) there is some sort of time shift in the audio going to the TV through the hdmi cable and that going to the receiver through the digital out optical cable, so the sound is a bit out of phase or sync if played simultaneously, and no effective way to add delay to bring them into phase.

6) wish the ethernet connection was available to do more interesting things than just updating firmware. But I guess the newer 60 and 80 models address that a bit, with some sort of amazon movie connection (but not netflix). Not a big problem, but a missed opportunity.

7) wish the disk didn’t need to be STOPPED to enter the setup mode, so some changes could be be observed with audio and video signals going, for instant feedback on the effect of the changes (like changing the audio digital out settings)

menu start up times seem a little bit slow. Not terrible, just a bit pokey.

all that said, I’m pretty happy with the unit.

Very happy with this player
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
My first Blu-ray player was the Samsung BD-P1500. Almost every disc I played had problems. Audio would drop out, movies would freeze, etc. But this player has played every disc without problems. Highly recommended!

Top Shelf
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Excellent product. Loads disks very fast, well worth the money! Panny has done it again!!

Fantastic Blu-ray Disk Player
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I am very pleased with this purchase. Since my home theater receiver is four years old I had to connect the player directly to the television and the receiver. I set it up in mimutes and it connected to my home theater system via the fiber optic audio cable connection and to the television via the hdmi cable. Sounds and looks great. It would have been nice if the blu-ray player had a wireless connection similar to TIVO but I am working on the wireless bridge that has been described in other reviews.

Panasonic DMP-BD55K
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I understand this unit will be discontinued. The replacement is the same unit but with additional unneeded features. I love this BD-55. The picture and sound are suburb – it is small, yet looks good. The case doesn’t feel very strong, however, it really needn’t be. The only thing that prevents it from being awarded 5 stars for me, is that it is a bit slow in loading the DVD compared to my non-BluRay Denon I had before.