Panasonic DMP-BD10A Blu-ray and SD DVD player
Solid Blu-ray and SD DVD performance for legacy displays! The purchase of this product adds a Blu-ray 5 cd starter pack of the consequent titles: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Transporter, Fantastic Four and Crash. Community quantities of players were shipped with the starter pack and promotional blurbs on the outside of box.
If not included, this promotion runs until 09 30 07 to be claimed via US mail. Please check the Panasonic site for details.
Common Features
- Super-high-speed P4HD processing with 296KHz/14-bit Video D/A Converter for analog video
- User adjustable video controls: Sharpness, Contrast, Brightness, Color Saturation, Gamma, 3D-NR, and Integrated DNR
- HDMI supporting 1080p60
- Analog Component Video Output supporting 1080i for Blu-ray and 480p for SD DVD
- Composite and s-video output
- 7.1 multichannel analog audio output with calibration settings
- High-resolution digital audio HDMI 1.3 output supporting all sound track codecs via bitstream only
The front panel sports a door across the full face and must be opened and closed for access to lay your disc in the tray. While the door creates nice clean lines for the front panel I institute it more of an inconvenience than enhancement. The black remote was quite amiable and ergonomic in the hand.
Main buttons you would access are gladly available and when you manage the top half underneath is a numerical keypad along with rarely accessed features related to setup and video settings. Out of Box Performance Hooking up the player to a BenQ W10000 I found it preset for 16:9 1080p and ran the DVE check material.
Looking over at the receiver it showed the incoming codec so I entered the setup food to make adjustments finding to my surprise characteristic settings for each codec the player supports. I set the SD codecs for bitstream and the HD codecs for PCM. After a quick peep at a few Blu-ray titles I noticed a subtle artifact that appeared as a grainy, dithering or contouring of elements in particular scenes. Let's straightaway move on to objective testing.
On the Test Bench At this age there is no commercially available Blu-ray calibration or proof disc, so that abundance of testing is subjective only. What follows is objective testing for SD DVD content via HDMI at 720p, 1080i and 1080p along with component analog video at 480p only.
The very ability to inspect and view an HDMI video source goes directly against the copyright capability of the connection and copy safeguard by reason of the means to see it would infer a means to steal it. At this time the recently reviewed Panasonic PTAE-1000U has been kept in the steady just for this drift using the Wave Configuration Monitor feature.
While the Wave Form Monitor does suffer when looking at high closeness response video such as bursts it is again the perfect tool for check IRE levels and color decoding. This does come with the limitation of only duration able to check YPbPr output making me unable to verify the switching to RGB output that would be required for a DVI input.
Some of the results are based on visual calibration checks as well as signal and is noted. All tests were performed using Digital Video Essentials as the source material. Video Levels Whether by visual calibration or waveform monitoring, the Panasonic outputs 0IRE and 100IRE at the correctly 16 235 levels for HDMI.
Analog component video also passed at 480p. Color Decoding If by visual calibration or waveform monitoring, the Panasonic outputs correct colour decoding at 720p and 1080i p. Via HDMI the Panasonic had a higher level of scaling artifacts then normally observed for color bar patterns where two colors would meet.
While having artifacts in this area of response is common the Panasonic, with an 18 pixel mistake in the horizontal, was clearly worse than a Sony PS3 with a 12 pixel misconception and the Oppo DV981HD while not flawless was clearly better than the Sony for the same 12 pixels by generating the first-rate scaling gradation between colors. Vertically the main area of error was approximately 4 pixels but there were visible artifacts in the same 18 pixel range.
From the viewing position the Panasonic showed obvious scaling artifacts for this test with the Sony doing better and the Oppo providing the perceptive "Gotcha" for its scaling made the horizontal transition appear about the same size as the vertical at the viewing position of 3 screen heights. Analog element vide connections passed at 480p. Horizontal Frequency Response Luminance As noted, waveform monitoring response was disadvantageous for this test.
Visually the Panasonic passed the continuous frequency burst criterion quite well for luminance. For the low frequency pattern there is some banding for the highest frequency burst. Moving on to the high frequency pattern, recall that I have yet to gaze any player or scaler player combo pass this pattern fair and the Panasonic is no exception.
This pattern always has banding so the culminating I can management on this is high, medium or a low contrast response with gigantic life the best and low activity the worst. Analog component video had a similar response at 480p. Vertical Frequency Response Luminance Vertical frequency response was excellent in 1080p.
With 720p the player could not figure away which dark and white stripes it should favour with white being predominant in the top burst and dusky predominant in the backside burst. Analog component video had a colossal response at 480p.
Frequency Response Color It was in this earth that the Panasonic was quite poor via HDMI and HD survey rates. As you reached the higher frequencies the alternating bands would be muted in output or in some places disappear.
The contrast levels remained fairly identical from low to high-reaching for those bands that would drop in but someday this was one of the poorest responses I obtain ever seen for this pattern. Oddly enough changing the output to 480p revealed an excellent response. Analog component video responded quite well at 480p.
CUE, Chroma Upsampling Inaccuracy This causes a vertical breakup of color detail in the vertical plane typically expressed in reds nevertheless can show up for other colors and is related to the player using sole one MPEG decoding resources rather than both interlace and progressive and applying the correct version to the native source on the disc.
The Panasonic passed this test via both HDMI and analog component video. Attribute Ratio Control The Panasonic provides an auto 16:9 4:3 switching method so the player maintains correct angle with appropriate features or 4:3 movies by adding black side bars. For the DVD collector looking for considerable performance with all DVD mastering, time did not allow for testing of the Panasonic with 4:3 packages boxed sources.
SD DVD Scaling Analog Component Video The Panasonic was tested at 480p HDMI feeding a 1080p DLP front projector with pixel mapped centred output, along with an adjusted viewing distance to compensate, using the DVE chapter 17 A V Demonstration material. The Panasonic passed with flying colours providing the same casual level of performance I would expect from most any 480p analog component video output.
SD DVD Scaling HDMI The Panasonic was tested at 1080p HDMI feeding a 1080p DLP front projector using the DVE chapter 17 A V Demonstration material. Famous during testing was a besides damaging response for color resolution as well as scaling errors between colors with color bar patterns.
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