IN THE Blu-ray movie X-Men: Final Stand, you can clearly see Wolverine's whiskers or trace the woollen textures on Magneto's robe.
That's how good Panasonic's DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player is.
It's a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) number that will complete your high-definition home theatre set-up for just $799.
Even when connected to a lower-resolution HD-ready (1,280 x 768 pixels) 27-inch LCD TV via a HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) cable, the BD-30 offers visuals with vivid colours and fine detail.
Another plus point is a handy SD Card slot for viewing digital photos and even HD video clips.
For sure, the BD30 has strong rivals. Especially the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) console cum Blu-ray player that downloads firmware over the Net.
The BD30 is a case of 'what you get is what you see'. You cannot upgrade the machine's software to cater to possible future Blu-ray upgrades.
The fault lies not with Panasonic but with the entire industry: It rushed Blu-ray to the market to compete with the now sidelined HD-DVD format.
Rest assured that this Blu-ray profile 1.1 player, which supports the BonusView (Final Standard Profile) feature, is up-to-date where features are concerned - be it HDMI 1.3, cinematic 1080/24p (1,080 lines of resolution, 24 frames per second) progressive scan playback or Deep Colour.
Thus, picture-in-picture playback - playing the main movie in one window while showing the director's video commentary in another and audio mixing between two video streams - is par for the course for the BD30. You can try it out on the movie Resident Evil Extinction.
When it comes to future Blu-ray profile 2.0 (BD-Live) discs, which may link to bonus video clips or content downloads on the Web, the BD30 is a non-starter as it does not have Internet connectivity.
The beauty of a device like the BD-30 is that it works just like your current DVD player: It can handle all the killer features of Blu-ray movies released to-date and you don't need to worry about network configurations or faulty firmware updates.
Final say
An excellent plug-and-play Blu-ray player but forget about supplementary online content.
