Panasonic Smart Network 4K Upscaling 3D Blu-Ray Disc & Streaming Player DMP-BDT270 (Silver), WiFi, Miracast

This Panasonic DMP-BD110 is the fourth BD player that I have purchased in since 2007 (my first being the Panasonic DMP-BD10A, second a Sharp HP20, third a Panasonic DMP-BD60). As you can imagine, the last thing I really needed was another BD player, however, I just got a great deal on a 3D tv and, well, you know how it goes. :)I am giving this product a qualified 5 stars, with this caveat: for most people, it would be well worth it to spend the extra money to purchase the the next model up (the Panasonic DMP-BDT210), which includes the wireless-n wifi dongle. These two players are essentially the same with the exception of the dongle, some cosmetic differences and the motion sensor that opens the BD tray (not something I care for to be honest). For those purchasing the BDT110, if you do not have access to an ethernet connection for internet, you will be stuck buying a dongle for Panasonic's exorbitant price (since no other dongles work). This is a big knock against this player that has been pointed out by other reviewers. For my purposes, however, the BDT110 is just splendid since my router sits right behind my tv and I have it hooked up using an ethernet cable.BD Playback Quality: To be fair, with the current line of players from all the major brands have excellent BD playback and they all upscale dvd's well. The technology has improved and there is no bad one in the bunch in terms of video playback. Some players are faster at loading BD discs than others, with the Panasonic being on the fast side of this equation. 3D performance is also excellent, although I can't say whether that is attributable to the TV (Panasonic L37DT30) or the player or some combination of both. I can say that the player is very responsive and I have had no issues in two weeks that I have owned it. Whatever problems the player had last spring have been fully resolved by firmware updates (which come regularly).Viera Cast: The Viera Cast suite is terrific. My tv is equipped with viera cast as well and you would think they would be the same. Surprisingly, they are not. The version used on the BD players is MUCH better. This is particularly true for the Netflix application. The Netflix application on the BDT110 provides a search feature that allows you to search the entire Netflix database. You essentially have the same access and control over content as you would on your computer. The Playback is smooth. Movies and shows, including HD content, load quickly and require little if any time for buffering. You can skip scenes and the interface works similarly to the one on the Roku XD box--excellent. It doesn't look as sexy as the interface on the Apple TV, but it is more functional. Also available is Amazon Instant, including free streaming for Amazon Prime members (like me). Excellent quality as well and you have access to the latest movies and shows. The YouTube app is also outstanding, giving you access to your subscriptions, videos is essentially a more complete than most apps you'll find on mobile devices. I haven't really used the Fox Sports App or played games on the player, but the Viera Cast system has a lot of potentially and it's quite impressive.The Remote: The remote is well thought out, with a dedicated netflix button (NICE!). The buttons could be a bit bigger though and less crowded. This is pretty typical for BD players these days, which have definitely cheapened the quality of the remotes.Playback of pictures and videos from an SDHC Card or USB drive: Again, a big improvement over the version on panasonic tv. The files are layed out in an easy to search manner, line by line. The player is able to crunch through all the usual formats, including: .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .avi, .xvid, mpeg-2 etc. This player does stumble a bit on high bitrate .mkv files in 1080p, but many media players have some issues with these files (some can't play them at all). Most of us will use 720p .mkv files anyway, and those are no problem at all. Photo playback in .jpg are no problem, photos are easy to search for, load quickly and look great!Word of Caution: Please be aware that if you are buying this player to play 3d Movies and content and you do not have receiver (AVR) that is HDMI 1.4 compliant (in other words, 3D ready), you will have to run the HDMI cable directly to the tv and then run a toslink (optical cable) to the receiver for sound. This means that if you do not have a 3d ready receiver and are using this player for 3d content, you will not be able to play 3d content through the receiver. Moreover, being limited to the optical cable for the audio feed means that you will not be able to use the lossless audio formats on the disks (i.e., no Dolby TrueHd, DTS-MA etc.). This is not a big deal for my set up, but some people will surely be disappointed. Panasonic does have a solution. The BDT310, which costs around $200 on Amazon, has two HDMI outputs, one for video to the TV and one for audio to the receiver. If you have a non-3d receiver and must have 3d and hi-def audio, this is probably your best choice (or you can buy a new receiver--which will cost a lot more than the BDT310). Just some food for thought. Please also note that this is an issue with 3d playback through HDMI 1.3 receivers and is not unique to Panasonic. It effects ALL 3D BD players--so no stars are going to be deducted. If you do not care about the 3d playback and just intend to use the player as a regular BD non-3d player it will function like any other BD player and you can run the hdmi straight to the AVR as usual and get lossless sound formats--so for you people who have not yet adopted 3d technology, you can ignore this paragraph.In short, this is an excellent choice in BD player, particularly if you don't need wifi included. If you do need wifi access, the BDT210 is the better value. With that caveat, I give the BDT110 five stars.EDIT 6/22/11: I have been using the BDT110 for a couple of months now and I continue to enjoy the player immensely. I have only watched 15 or so BD disks and a handful of DVDS. I have had no issue at all with playback and the image and sound quality have been more than satisfactory. I am continuing to enjoy streaming apps from Netflix and Amazon, probably for more than an hour or two a day. Both apps have worked flawlessly. I have also been using the player to view home videos of my 11 week old that I shoot with Sony HX9V cameras in fully 1080p at 60fps in AVCHD format (28mbps). This profile is beyond bluray, which limited to 1080i at 60fps at 24mbps (or 1080p at 30fps or 24fps). Again, I have had no issue at all with playback. I am extremely impressed with the image processing power of this player. If I could give this line of players from Panasonic a sixth star, I would.

I purchased this player soon after buying a new 3D television. Even though I own a PS3, I want the quality of a standalone 3D player that can display 1080p in full 3D. This player does not disappoint.I also purchased this player largely for the "2D to 3D" conversion feature. I have a large library of 2D DVDs and blurays, and the ability to take advantage of my new TV with my existing movies was appealing.The box arrived packaged nicely, and I immediately set up the player on my 3D tv. I purchased a high speed HDMI 1.4 cable along with the player to make sure I was getting the full capabilities of the player. My TV is internet ready WIFI, so I have not used the "WIFI" ready portion of this bluray player.The quality of the playback is amazing, the best I've ever seen. Panasonic has done a great job with this player. It boots up fast, and quiet. There are multiple settings so you can customize virtually everything about the playback and display. You can choose to startup quick with a slightly more power consuming standby mode, or choose to turn the player completely off. The player is also very small, and fits under a very low tolerance space to make it easy to place inside an entertainment center.2D to 3D conversion - This ability was one of the main features I was interested in. After some fiddling with the settings (HINT - set the display mode MANUALLY to side by side rather than "REAL 3D".....real3d don't work with upscaling, at least on my tv). Once the settings were manually set to SBS, the conversion worked great. For the inaugural try, I loaded up my Bluray of "300" and put on the glasses. I was highly impressed with the quality of the 3d conversion. Objects in the forefront look much closer than the background, spears and arrows thrown at the screen seem to leap out at you, and the overall quality of the image truly shown through. You can manually adjust the depth of the 3d image (it basically seperates the two images more or less depending on the manual settings), but I found the default at -3 to be satisfactory. Another great movie to test the 3d mode was "Troy" on bluray, which looked even more spectacular due to the brighter colors and more sweeping scenes.The downside - the 2D to 3D conversion is nowhere near as nice as watching a true 3D movie. Movies like "Shrek 3D" and "Despicable Me" that are released as true 3D steams are far more noticeable. But, for the option of display your current library in pseudo 3D, along with an absolutely brilliant display that this machine is capable of, it is a very nice feature.Overall, I am very impressed with this player and highly recommend it to anyone entering the 3D tv market. Downloadable firmware ensures the player should be somewhat future-proof, and the ability to display current favorites in 3D is simply icing on the cake.Edit - 8/22 - I recieved the free "Avatar 3D Bluray" in the mail after sending in the rebate from this player purchase. Looks fantastic, perfect display and the Real3D display of this player is just amazing. The movie takes this beyond a 5/5 deal.