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178 of 188 found the following review helpful:
 Fantastic picture and unbelievable sound!May 23, 2011
By T. Black
I have had a weekend to play with the 310, and was very impressed with picture and sound quality. For the record, this is my first Blu-ray player, and I think it was worth the wait. With this player, BD's load as quickly as DVD's do on my Denon DVD-1920.
It is nearly identical to the 210, except it has a second HDMI output so you can bring HD audio into your non-3D-ready receiver. If your receiver has HDMI spec 1.4 (or if you don't care about 3D), then go with the 210.
The setup process was simple with the exception of the trial and error process of getting the right audio signal to my receiver. First, make sure that you send the 'main' HDMI to the TV and the 'sub' HDMI to your receiver. In order to get full resolution, surround sound audio out of the second HDMI output you will need to disable the second video signal. Which means no video going to your receiver. This is less than ideal since I will rarely be watching 3D content and would have preferred to route video through the AVR most of the time for simplicity. I guess they set it up this way to save a few pennies per unit but it stinks.
I have watched a couple of movies so far, and was truly blown away by the sound. I don't want to neglect the picture quality here, but honestly while the picture was quite clear and detailed, it didn't impact me quite as hard as the jump in sound quality did. I probably fall into the audiophile category, and have invested a lot in my surround sound system. The clarity of the dialog, and the raw impact of the effects and soundtrack are truly outstanding.
Some Blu-ray discs (including the two I have watched) include DTS-HD Master audio tracks. To compare, the audio on DVD's tops out at 448kbps* (data transfer rate) and standard Dolby Digital on Blu-rays is about 40% better at 640kbps. But DTS-HD Master streams at 25Mbps (25,000kbps). That is 50 times as much detail in the audio signal! Check for the DTS-HD Master logo on the back when you buy or rent BD's.
To enjoy the DTS-HD Master audio stream, you will need a receiver that can decode the digital stream. Since the new panasonic blu-ray players don't have 5.1 analog outputs, you will have to use the HDMI cable to send the digital signal to your receiver for processing.
I will probably do a bit more tweaking with the settings, and as I learn more I will update my review. I will play around with 3D soon, as my glasses should arrive tomorrow. I also do not have Netflix at this point but plan to add it in the future.
All and all, I couldn't be happier that I chose this player as my first dive into Blu-ray. It isn't as big a jump as VHS to DVD was, but if you want to take full advantage of your flat screen HDTV or surround sound setup then I highly recommend taking the plunge.
*Source: wikipedia "Comparison of high definition optical disc formats"
*Here is a tidbit from the Netflix blog "Currently, our top HD streams are about 4800 kilobits per second" (kbps). If you are picky about your picture or sound, keep in mind that this is about half the fidelity as a standard DVD. I'm not a netflix hater, and I'll join for the unmatched convenience but this is one reason I haven't joined yet. Low-fi is fine for sitcoms and cartoons but for movies and shows like Lost and Heroes, quality trumps convenience in my living room.
***UPDATE***
Still loving this player. It is quick to start up, and resumes playback on discs that don't have blu-ray live content (such as Advertisements on the menu screens......yuck!)
I have also joined Netflix and tried out a couple of streams. One was a Thomas the Train movie for the kiddo. The SD picture was okay, but motion was very jumpy (really bad with moving trains!). We are currently watching Heroes S4 in Blu-ray. The other night we finished a disc and wanted to watch another episode so I streamed it in Netflix HD with 5.1 Dolby Digital. The picture was quite good, though obviously not as crisp as the 1080p from the Blu-ray. Same was true with the audio...The dialog wasn't quite as clear and we had to turn it up a bit louder to catch everything that was said. Missed out on some of the "thereness" experience of Blu-Ray discs, but still quite good. Keep in mind this is coming from a certified audiophile, my wife didn't notice the difference (but asked me to turn it up and rewind so she could hear the dialog).
This player continues to impress me with its features. On my son's 'movie night' we pulled up youtube, watched some trailers of 4 or 5 kids movies, and let him choose which one he wanted to watch. Jumped straight over to netflix (dedicated button on remote, but you have to be on the home screen (?) for it to work) and had the movie running by the time the popcorn was finished popping! Very nice!! Still highly recommended
***UPDATE***
Update on the 'resume' feature of Blu-Rays. Since discs with online content won't automatically resume, Some studio (ABC?) has come up with a nice feature (I forget what it's called!). The only disc I have seen this on is Lost season 5. It allows you to set up a viewer profile (takes 5 seconds), and when you get to the main menu there is an option to continue where you left off. I haven't tried it with multiple profiles, but that is a nice feature for if the wife and I were watching it separately. Another nice feature is when you finish a disc and put the next one in right away, it will skip all the legal stuff/menus and jump straight into the next episode! Nice!! Too bad this isn't standard!?!
61 of 65 found the following review helpful:
Great player, even for us in 2D!Jun 05, 2011
By Michael Dixon
"Composer"
Using this blu-ray player with a non-3D HDTV and a Sony receiver that doesn't handle 3D signal passthrough but does playback HD sound, I was a bit concerned about the 2nd HDMI connection for legacy receivers like mine. No worries, I just used the HDMI main out to the receiver's HDMI input, then the receiver's HDMI output to the HDTV. Worked fine, but to get HD audio, I had to switch the audio to PCM, not bitstream. The reason I bring this up is because the instructions ignore those who don't have a 3D HDTV. But this works fine without 3D.
"Easy Setup" involved location of my wireless network and a few other minor settings. Easy setup was truly easy. I went directly to the setting to upgrade the firmware. Updating the firmware (highly recommended) which took about 10 minutes total, is essential for proper function. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Pressed the red Netflix button on the remote, and it took me to the main VieraCast screen. It does this only the first time, since you have to agree to some terms and log into your Netflix account. Easy to do, no issues (firmware 1.6.3 needed for smooth operation). On my 802.11n wireless network, HD Netflix movies played back okay, except for a few black flashes. Can't imagine that being my network. Also tried Pandora and it worked flawlessly. Weather was quite nice, as was several other apps. Nice collection, and VieraCast menu is easy to customize. Didn't try Skype. Gotta buy Panasonic's cam? Forget it.
Blu-ray 2D was gorgeous and disc boot up was faster than Playstation 3. Believe it. That is, if you enable the quick start feature, which makes the player use a bit more electricity. HD audio was supreme, but had to adjust the audio setting to PCM output from the Panasonic. My first test disc was Billy Joel Live in Shea (2011 release). Haven't tried a DVD yet, but I anticipate the usual.
I don't have 3D anything, but wanted a new blu-ray player to reduce use of my Playstation 3 and its noisy fan. This Panasonic is quiet, quick, tiny, and works with old and new. If this 3D thing does become mainstream, at least I am future proofed with this player. Highly recommended.
24 of 24 found the following review helpful:
A great player, but some adviceNov 01, 2011
By Russell I. Stone
After reading all the reviews, and the warnings that some of the reviews post, I went ahead and bought this unit anyway. It is rated as the top dog in blu-ray players. It is, but first the warning/advice:
Out of the box, this machine will not access Netflix, just as some of the other buyers warned. Performed the update with the latest firmware, and still had problems (make sure that the minute you connect it up, do a firmware update). What I did was to contact Panasonic customer service and then was routed through to technical service department. This took some doing, but finally I was in contact with a wonderful and very knowledgable technician. She walked me through reprogramming the network settings, which has to be done to get this player to talk with your wi-fi network. She walked me through the re-programming codes and entering into the player's software, and bingo; Netflix!!!
Once the player's network was reprogrammed to conform with my wi-fi, there was no problem. ATTENTION!!! Make sure that you write down the codes and store them somewhere safe, most likely with your owner's manual.
Now to the machine. It is a wonderful hi-grade player, and I recommend it highly. It produces and incredible crisp and clean picture, on any television. But what it does to a high end Plasma (most specifically a Panasonic 50" Viera) is beyond words. Just like being there, in the theatre. Other than the re-program, easy to set up. Actually, once you know how to re-program, it too is an easy set-up.
Definitely worth the money (I got a great price here at Amazon). As good, if not better picture than anything else I have seen, even in the showrooms. FIVE STARS!!!
167 of 194 found the following review helpful:
 Good player but there are some things you need to knowJun 13, 2011
By dvdeo
I was expecting to replace my media player (ASUS) using this one. I believed that it will be faster, easier to use and would support everything I need. So to cut the cr** here are pros and cons.
PROS:
- Fast. Boot, MKV rewind, Network Access.
- HDMI CEC together with Viera TV works perfectly! There is much more than it is required according to CEC standard. Navigation, options works using TV remote.
- Works fine with Windows 7 shared folders and DLNA.
- I thought touchless sensor is not relevant, but my kids like it a lot and they do not touch the equipment :)
- MKV and DTS combinations are supported.
- SETUP IS EASY. If you have normal TV (HDMI CEC and HDMI ARC) then setup of TV/AV Receiver/Player can be done using wizard. No additional settings need to be changed.
- Option to turn off TV while playing music. Works correctly and does not turn off AV receiver.
- BD-RE with movies works fine.
- Completely silent. That is awesome.
CONS:
- "Play to" aka Media Renderer function is buggy or maybe it is router. Don't know. Stops playing after couple of minutes
- No MPEG2 support in MKV.
- USB supports only divx and mkv videos. That is nonsense, cause to backup your DVD collection you will need pay additional $ to divx. This is hidden and you will discover the fact only when you buy the player.
- It is nonsense that there are different formats supported on BD-RE and BD-R disks. MKV is not supported on BD-RE. Even VOB files are not recognized on BD-RE, though they claim that "Video" is supported on DVD/BD-R/BD-RE discs.
- USB sticks with exFAT are not supported. So if you have larger file you will have to buy expensive SDHC cards or use hard drive. It is stupid, but USB HDD with exFAT are supported, but USB sticks are not.
- No MKV chapter navigation, so you have to rewind the video.
- Changing subtitles or audio channels is incovenient. Really inconvenient.
Overall: Good quality and almost easy to operate, but inconsistent/incomplete format/external device support.
UPDATE AFTER ~2011-09 firmware:
+ Now it has normal support for MPEG 2 in MKV with multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitles. There is still no support for PGS subtitles and chapter navigation, however player now seem to ignore unsupported things instead of throwing error messages.
+ It seems that "Play to" bugs are gone, but it is hard to say for sure.
- MKV with VC-1 streams still not supported
- HDMV PGS subtitles in MKV are not supported.
- "Play to" works with LAN cable only. This just doesn't make sense. Why would you pay extra money for integrated wifi if you still need cable.
55 of 61 found the following review helpful:
Beauty Meets BrainsAug 12, 2011
By Chris Boylan
"MrBoylan"
This is Panasonic's top of the line player for 2011 and it offers excellent audio and video performance, super-fast boot-up and disc loading and a nice selection of internet streaming features such as VUDU, Netflix, Pandora and even Skype. But bizarrely enough, Panasonic dropped support for the popular Divx audio/video codec this year, even while adding support for MKV files, so if you want to use this as a home media playback hub, you may be disappointed.
Faster, Pussycat!
To address user complaints of slow disc loading times and an ugly menu, Panasonic has made some big improvements this year in both areas. With Quick Start enabled, the unit boots up in about a second, or 16 seconds with Quick Start turned off. Once it's powered up, a standard DVD ("Gladiator") loads to the Paramount logo in about 17 seconds. A Blu-ray ("Resident Evil: Apocalypse") loads to the Sony logo in about 15 seconds and a BD-Java disc ("Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl") gets past the spinning coins to the Disney logo in an impressive 28 seconds. These are all noticeably improved over the 2010 players and are up there among the fastest players we've tested.
In terms of the menu navigation, the 2011 players have a new graphically oriented splash screens with icons that represent various media or activities: network, video, photos, etc. It's a big plus over the previous models' splash screen because, well... there wasn't one. If you click on the set-up icon, you get taken into the familiar-looking text based menu from earlier players, where you can set virtually every aspect of the player from audio to video to 3D settings to network options. Speaking of which, the BDT310 includes built-in WiFi as well as a network port so you can connect to your home network (and from there to the internet) with or without a wire. This worked fine for us in the "auto" mode, connecting to a Cisco/Linksys 802.11n dual band router. The speed was ample via WiFi to stream HD content from Netflix and even HDX 1080p movies from VUDU. It also works well with Skype to receive or send video calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world. The video voice mail is a nice feature as it allows callers to leave a video message if you're unavailable to take a call. This feature requires an SD, SDHX or SDXC card of at least 1 GB be inserted into the player - we'd recommend at least 4GB so you have enough storage for messages.
We did notice a couple of anomalies in streaming though - on Netflix, when the player adjusts the video rate to accommodate changes in your network's connection speed, you may see occasional black frames in the image. This didn't happen often enough to be irritating, but it is worth mentioning. Also, though the player supports Blu-ray 3D Discs, and includes 2D to 3D conversion as an option, it does not support 3D movies on the VUDU service. If you look in VUDU's "Collections" and select the 3D collection, it will say "No results found" instead of listing the 2 dozen or so 3D movies available on VUDU. At present time, Samsung is one of the few vendors to support VUDU 3D playback in their Blu-ray players and TVs. We have contacted Panasonic about this and they are unsure whether this can be added in a firmware upgrade but they are looking into it.
Cross the Streams!
If you do enjoy watching 2D content (movies or TV shows) via streaming sources such as Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and VUDU, the BDT310 is a a great choice. Panasonic made some enhancements to its Uniphier video processor in 2011 so that the full suite of video scaling and chroma upconversion processing is applied to streaming sources, in addition to disc playback. Earlier Panasonic Blu-ray players only applied a limited amount of video processing to streaming sources. This means streaming sources look better than ever, and better than they do on most other vendors' Blu-ray players or streaming set-top boxes. Panasonic also enhanced the chroma conversion processor for DVD upconversion so your collection of existing DVDs will be played back with good detail and nicely saturated colors, and with the option of 24p playback (24 frames/second) which is great for movie purists. Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D playback are excellent, as they are on most modern Blu-ray 3D players. Not much to report here but we noticed no audio or video glitches on Blu-ray playback. "Avatar" in particular looks sweet in 3D with the Blu-ray 3D disc you'll get free via the mail-in rebate on this player.
We ran the player through the standard set of video test patterns and clips on the HQV Benchmark and Spears and Munsil discs and found that it passed all of the tests for diagonal filtering, de-interlacing, chroma upconversion and cadence detection, with the only noticeable artifacts occurring in the less common film/video cadences which aren't that wideley used on Blu-ray or DVD. All in all, the DVD upconversion quality is excellent and comparable to much more expensive players.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Although Panasonic has not enhanced their rather lackluster DLNA home networking support from last year's models, they did add MKV file format support to this year's players (yay!). These can be played back from a USB-attached flash drive or HDD. But they took away support for the Divx and Xvid codecs (boo!). So if you have a big collection of videos in Divx format, or subscribe to one of the online services that delivers Divx-encoded content (Like Warner Brothers' WBShop), then this player is probably not for you. Panasonic says they eliminated Divx support in order to cut costs associated with the licensing fees. I hope they reconsider this for next year's players as it was nice to be able to play back Divx videos from the earlier players.
Finishing Touches
In terms of usability and connectivity, the DMP-BDT310 lacks component video outputs but it offers dual HDMI outputs. This is nice if you have a 1 or 2-year old HDMI-switching home theater receiver that lacks 3D passthrough support. You can plug the main HDMI out directly into a 3D-ready TV and use the other to connect to your receiver so you can take full advantage of the lossless high definition audio codecs on Blu-ray (DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD). Panasonic also offers a free iPad/iPhone app to control the player. In addition to supporting full playback controls and navigation, Panasonic includes an exact visual duplicate of the factory remote as an image in the app, so if you lose your remote, you won't lose any of the functionality. Unfortunately they missed an opportunity here to include any kind of keyboard so setting up your streaming accounts (Pandora, Netflix, VUDU, etc.) is still a painstaking process of clicking and tapping away on the numeric keypad or moving the cursor around on a virtual keyboard with the left and right arrow buttons. The player also offers a motion-activated eject function which opens the disc tray with a wave of the hand. This may be fun at parties but I found it mostly useless so I disabled it early in the testing.
Turn Ons:
* Nicely improved GUI
* Loads discs quickly
* Excellent audio and video performance on discs and streaming sources
* Good selection of streaming providers and apps
* Built-in WiFi
* iPod control
Turn Offs:
* Lacks Divx/XVid support
* No built-in storage for BD-Live and Skype video voice mail (requires SD card)
* iPhone app lacks a keyboard
* VUDU implementation does not support 3D (yet)
* Skype usage requires specific models of Panasonic or Freetalk camera (more expensive than most webcams)
The Bottom Line: if you're looking for a fast, high performance Blu-ray player with great DVD upconversion and a nice selection of streaming features, the DMP-BDT310 makes an excellent choice. But if Divx video file playback is important to you, you'll need to look elsewhere. Oh, and if you don't need that second HDMI output, then check out the nearly identical Panasonic DMP-BDT210 which is a bit cheaper and offers identical performance.
A more comprehensive and detailed review of the player is available on our web site (Big Picture Big Sound).
See all 146 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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based on 146 reviews
