PanasonicDMP-BD75 Ultra-Fast Booting Blu-ray Disc Player

I bought this blu ray player simply because it was the cheapest one on Amazon from a quality manufacturer. I wanted it only as a cheap box to use with my bedroom TV. It is a competent blu ray player. Not much to go into on that matter...video looks good, audio sounds clear, startup is very quick. If it only played blu rays, its worth the $60.I was pleasantly surprised with the included features on what is marketed as a barebones, cheap option. Netflix support comes out of the box. Video quality is great, even with high bitrate streams. HD video looks crisp and suffers from very few hiccups. The only drawback is that there is no wifi support. Thankfully, I have my router in my bedroom, so it isn't a big deal for me. Keep this in mind before you buy, however.What really surprised me was support for MKV and DivX videos via a front-facing USB port. If you download videos off of *ahem* various ethically questionable sources, you'll notice that more and more of them are in the open-source .MKV format. I put a couple of these files on a USB thumbdrive and 4 of 5 played seamlessly. And, remarkably, I got the 5th one to play after I figured out that Panasonic is actually keeping this value-segment product up to date with frequent firmware updates. I simply updated the firmware by going into the settings menu. Very simple to do. After the update, it played every .MKV file I threw at it. It's even in NTFS format (meaning you can play files larger than 4GB unlike, say, the PS3 or Xbox360). After the firmware update, I was able to play a video file that was in 1080p resolution and around 8GBs streaming at 6000kbps flawlessly. I'm very happy with how well this feature works. If you do chose this device, I'd recommend you hook an ethernet cable into the back of the device and update the firmware as soon as you unpack it.It's not the greatest device on the market by a long shot; the lack of wifi support is the glaring drawback. However, I'm still giving it a 5/5 based on what it is - a $60 blu ray player with a surprising amount of useful features - specifically the high quality MKV playback.

Funny to admit it, but I own only a couple of Blu Ray discs. I bought this Panasonic unit because the price wasn't much more than a decent upscaling DVD player. And so far I'm glad I did. It upscales certain DVDs beautifully onto my 32 inch Panasonic LCD TV. Other DVDs don't necessarily have what it takes to look great upscaled; but that has more to do with the disks than the machine. My several blu rays look great, too. Of course, I've only had the unit three months and it is not robustly built--a flimsy tin box, really. That's why 4 stars. It could conk out in a few months more. But I like it so far. There are caveats, though. It doesn't remember where you left off in an ejected DVD; no subtitle control on the remote; no component output, composite only. If you queue up a disk and let it play to get through the crap at the beginning (trailers, warnings that the FBI will confiscate your firstborn children and throw you into a dungeon should you pirate this disk, etc.), you better be there to start the movie. Cause this player will turn itself off in a few minutes & you'll have to start over again. If the machine locks up (a couple of times so far) IT LOCKS UP. On/off button, eject button have zero effort. Requires a hard reboot by unplugging power, replugging power. I haven't used the hardwired network capabilities; no interest there. Postscript 6-16-13 This Panny is still going, with only the occasional lockup. A good machine for $60 or so. I still love its DVD upscaling abilities.

Updates (30 Dec 2011): Guess I'll not be returning this player after all - Panasonic's customer support finally came through, and I have the 'official' Panasonic remote. Curiously enough, disc menu access during play can occur through the "sub-menu" button, which my universal remote cannot seem to figure out. The remote even has a dedicated "Netflix" button for directly accessing your playlists. Haven't tried out Vudu yet. No Youtube/Crackle etc, but that is very clearly mentioned in the product description. Bottom line: this is a fast booting, quick-to-play, intuitive menu driven player designed to play discs and access Netflix. Period.Uprating to 4-stars.-----Just spent some time setting up this player, which arrived in an intact box that contained just the player, a power cable, manual and ad for Netflix - NO REMOTE. Fortunately, my universal remote works seamlessly, and the graphical menu with large icons and text made set up easy. A firmware update took about 6 minutes, and the system was all ready to play. I know its a basic model, but no cables and no remote...??!Its great for those folks who use their ('smart')TVs, set-top boxes like the Logitech Revue or a media center PC as their primary means of accessing the internet, and just need a disc player. It boots fast, and both BR and regular DVDs look great. BD live content requires a blank FAT32 formatted USB drive, with atleast 1 Gb capacity. Curiously enough, though most play/select functions work with my universal remote, there is no way to access the DVD/BR menus. This is a problem when the disc has multiple episodes - like in a TV series.Even with the new firmware update (33), DLNA is very shaky. It refuses to recognize even jpeg files on a machine connected to the same network bridge. MKV files off a 16Gb FAT32 formatted flash drive or a Seagate Freeagent 500 2.5 inch portable drive were a little iffy - of five tested files two worked great, two did not work at all, and one had a text overlay containing technical info. I'll post the mkv tech details later. AVCHD video encoded on a Panasonic FZ series camera plays fine, though no mention of this (or the external hard drive) is made in the manual. DIVX4/AVI encoded files do not seem to play at all. However, I primarily got this player for disks - DVDs and BRs, and I must say it does that with aplomb.Now all I have to do is figure out a way to get DVD menus to show up either through my univ remote or the HDMI EZLink (VieraLink in Panasonic lingo, AnyNet+ in Samsung speak) to control it via the TV.More updates after I've played around with this some more. Btw, Amazon's customer service, ROCKS!