Product Review
 

Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-ray Player

Part III

April, 2007

Kris Deering

 

Video Performance Tests

The BD10 is an interesting player from a video standpoint, as it uses two different decoders and one of the newer video processing chips.

For standard DVD playback, the BD10 uses an MEI MPEG decoder. We've always been pleased with MEI's MPEG decoders in the past, and Panasonic DVD players have always done well in our DVD benchmark tests.

For Blu-ray decoding, the BD10 uses the new Sigma Designs decoder. This is the first time I've seen this chip used, and I was quite pleased with its performance. I was disappointed that this player did not pass a native 1080p24 video stream though, as this chip is capable of outputting it.

I put the BD10 through a batch of tests using a Blu-ray formatted HD test disc. This allows me to test their video processing chipsets for de-interlacing performance and verify things like Y/C delay, pixel cropping, luma, and chroma resolution, as well as CUE.

For video processing, Panasonic used the new National Semiconductor solution. This is only the second player I know of using this chip, the other being the flagship Classé CDP-300 DVD player. Like the Samsung player before it, the BD10 does not channel a native 1080p stream from the decoder to the HDMI output. 1080i is fed into the National chip and then de-interlaced to 1080p. While the National chip does a great job with standard 3-2 cadences, it cannot do 2-2. Support for a 2-2 cadence is important, as more video based content, such as music concerts, is released. If you have a video processor that supports true inverse telecine and motion adaptive de-interlacing of 1080i material and can handle a 2-2 cadence properly, we recommend using it with a 1080i output from this player. The DVDO VP50 and any processor that utilizes the Gennum VXP or Silicon Optix Realta or Reon chipset offer this level of performance.

Y/C delay is not an issue, nor is there any cropping of pixels from the intended HD image. The luma output of the BD10 contains the full resolution of 1080p, but the chroma information is being filtered at some point. The upper video frequency response for vertical resolution is smeared and appears almost gray. Vertical resolution for chroma is fully retained. I don't know if this is due to a chroma filter, but we hope Panasonic looks into it at some point. It could very well be a limitation of the National chip as well.

The DVD Benchmark

Since a lot of people don't like using multiple DVD players for playback, I went ahead and put the BD10 through all of our DVD benchmark tests (Full Results). The player did quite well, and its performance is far better than the Samsung BD player we tested a few months ago.

DMP-BD10 (Component) - Default

Passed

Borderline

Failed

Not Tested

Chroma, 3-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 3-2 Alt. Flags
Chroma, 2-2 Film Flags
Blacker-than-Black
YC Delay
Image Cropping
Sync Subtitle to Frames
3-2 Cadence, Film Flags
3-2 Cadence, Alt. Flags
3-2 Cadence, Video Flags
3-2 Cadence, Mixed Flags
Film Mode High Detail
Video to Film Transition
Recovery Time
Incorrect Progressive Flags
Motion Adaptive
 

Layer Change
Responsiveness
 

Chroma, 4:2:0 ICP
Video Levels
2-2 Cadence, Film Flags
Bad Edit
 

 


 

DMP-BD10 (HDMI) - Default

Passed

Borderline

Failed

Not Tested

Chroma, 3-2 Film Flags
Chroma, 3-2 Alt. Flags
Chroma, 2-2 Film Flags
YC Delay
Image Cropping
Sync Subtitle to Frames
3-2 Cadence, Film Flags
3-2 Cadence, Alt. Flags
3-2 Cadence, Video Flags
3-2 Cadence, Mixed Flags
Film Mode High Detail
Video to Film Transition
Recovery Time
Incorrect Progressive Flags
Motion Adaptive
 

Layer Change
Responsiveness
 

Chroma, 4:2:0 ICP
Video Levels
Blacker-than-Black
2-2 Cadence, Film Flags
Bad Edit
 

The main drawbacks of this player are more on the core performance side, as the National chip does pretty well with most material as a video processor. The BD10 is sluggish with layer changes though, and its navigation speed could use some work.

When I first got this player, it had the original 1.0 firmware on it. When I conducted my tests, the HD side was devoid of any CUE issues. This represented the first player to not have CUE issues with HD. After I loaded the 1.2 firmware, that changed. The player now suffers from CUE with both 3-2 and 2-2 based material. Evidently something changed in the Sigma Designs chip as a result of this firmware. Our only hope is that this issue is resolved with a future firmware release. The firmware did not affect the MPEG decoder for standard DVDs, so this player has no CUE issues with standard DVD playback.

Another complaint I have is video clipping. The BD10 is outputting 4:4:4 YCbCr as its color space via HDMI, and head and toe room are being clipped. Not only does this make it hard to properly calibrate for (knowing the clip points of video is extremely important as it give you a reference as to where you are clipping when setting contrast and brightness on a display), you are not retaining the full dynamic range of the image coming from the disc. This isn't a problem with the component output, but I would rather use the HDMI output to take advantage of the full potential of the format. This was also a problem with the Toshiba HD DVD players when they were released, but thankfully they provided a firmware update that fixed the issue. Hopefully we will see the same from Panasonic later down the line.

Subjective Evaluation

Without a doubt, the Panasonic is a superb next-generation player. Unlike the previous players I've tested, it handles like a standard DVD player and doesn't have any of the quirks associated with a PC based solution.

For playback, I connected the BD10 to my Anthem Statement D2 A/V processor. I set the HDMI output to 1080i to allow the D2's Gennum video processing chip do the de-interlacing and I fed my Marantz VP11S1 1080p projector a full 1080P signal. This allows me to take full advantage of the full video resolution of Blu-ray. The D2 is also HDMI v1.1 compliant, so I could hear the full potential of all of the audio formats with the exception of the DTS-HD Master Audio tracks on some Fox titles.

The output doesn't have any issues with me switching sources on my A/V processor. Since HDMI-based products communicate back and forth with each other, some are pickier than others when you are using a switcher, and at times you will get errors that result from this. This was a big issue with the Toshiba HD DVD player when it first came out.

Since all audio streams are left intact, there are no annoying visits to the player's setup menu all the time. This was a drawback of the Samsung player, since it only had one setup option for audio (PCM or bitstream).

I played a wide assortment of Blu-ray software when evaluating the BD-10. This included titles from Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Magnolia Pictures, Buena Vista (Disney), and Twentieth Century Fox.

The first thing I wanted to do was revisit some of the older Blu-ray titles that exhibited less than stellar video quality. These are mainly Sony's earlier titles but there were quite a few of them.

The top two on my list were The Fifth Element and House of Flying Daggers. If there were two titles at launch that should have looked just breathtaking in high definition, these were them. Unfortunately switching from the Samsung Blu-ray player to the Panasonic didn't seem to help. The same issues were there and included overt softness, compression artifacts, and noise. This further disproves that the Samsung was responsible for the poor showing of the format early on. The Samsung player did help with a little bit of the noise in the image though since they felt the need to keep the Faroudja noise reduction setting to ON.

Luckily, things have improved a lot since then. Sony has managed to put out some very nice transfers lately (though their consistency is still poor) with titles like S.W.A.T., Tears of the Sun, and Black Hawk Down. Even with the video clipping inherent in the BD10, Black Hawk Down exhibited amazing contrast and depth. Fine detail in some of the close-ups is as good as I've seen from any format.

Fox and Buena Vista have also released some solid titles in Blu-ray and look to be the ones who will truly set the bar for the format. Their use of AVC for some of their high line titles and lossless audio for all of their releases has resulted in some of the best A/V presentations from the format yet.

I was particularly impressed with the Fox release of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. The HD image quality was astounding, with rich detail throughout the entire image, great contrast, and a complete absence of compression artifacts. Even though the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack has to be converted to standard DTS (at 1.5 Mbps), it is still a rich and dynamic example of sound design. X-Men: The Last Stand was also a testament to how good the Panasonic can sound even if it can't take full advantage of the lossless encode. I can't wait to see what we have in store when lossless soundtracks can be decoded properly.

Since the BD10 also supports DVD Audio (the only Blu-ray player that currently does), I thought I would give it a whirl. I went through a variety of recent releases, including Porcupine Tree's Deadwing and The Flaming Lips' At War with the Mystics. Since the BD10 is HDMI v1.1 compliant, all of the PCM audio was fed to my Anthem Statement D2 processor untouched, and the Anthem handled not only bass management and time alignment, but also level control and upsampling to 192/24 (a feature exclusive to the Anthem Statement line).

I was extremely impressed with the clarity and imaging of both releases. Having a transport that will send high-resolution sound via HDMI eliminates a lot of the need of high-end transports such as flagship DVD players. Now if only we could start seeing HDMI players that support native SACD output over HDMI!!

The only real complaint I had in day to day use was the sluggish response of the player when a disc was playing. Chapter skips with Blu-ray titles were really slow, and it got a bit annoying at times. Menu navigation could be faster too. Layer change times with standard DVDs were also really slow and made for a noticeable stutter or pause when I was watching movies.

Conclusions

The Panasonic DMP-BD10 is the most expensive Blu-ray player on the market right now, but honestly it seems to be a very sound investment in the format (as a standalone player). The video performance has a few quirks, but overall I thought the picture it delivered was top notch. The fact that Panasonic has also announced future support of the new advanced audio codecs makes this a bit more future proof than the Samsung option, as well as perhaps the Pioneer and Sony players, although they may offer firmware upgrades down the line as well.
 

- Kris Deering -

© Copyright 2007 Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity

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