What's the use of providing the largest and most advanced plasma displays in the world if you don't offer your customers a video signal source to match? Well, looks like Panasonic is keen to provide a complete and comprehensive home-entertainment solution, since, besides the huge widescreen PDPs it has been introducing lately, the company formerly known as Matsushita has also come up at CEDIA with two new 4th generation Blu-ray players, packed with the all-important BD-Live feature.

 

Both players feature PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus video processing technology, as well as a built-in HD Audio Decoder (Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus and DTSTM-HD Master Audio Essential), which supports the 7.1-channel surround sound. However, even if their systems don't provide support for HD audio, users will still be able to output 7.1 sound, as long as their machines come equipped with an HDMI interface.

 

Another interesting innovation introduced with the DMP-BD35 and DMP-BD55 is the UniPhier system. Thus, both the high-quality image and sound technologies found in these players are incorporated in the UniPhier chip, a Panasonic-created system LSI developed by applying 45-nanometer processing to a consumer product (one of the reasons why the BD35 is the world's slimmest BD player, at a height of just 49mm).

 

Aside from the aforementioned HDMI interface, both the BD35 and BD55 feature BD-Live compatibility (via a built-in Ethernet port), which allows users to connect to the Internet to download images, subtitles and other data, and take part in interactive activities and multi-player games linked to bonus cinema content found on Blu-ray Discs.

 

Moreover, the players also come packed with an SD memory card slot, whose main purpose is to accommodate the memory cards used with HD camcorders. For this reason, the BD35 / BD55 can do a lot more than simply display the JPEG stills in full 1920 x 1080 resolution; they can actually play AVCHD-format videos.

 

Unfortunately, Panasonic's statement says nothing about the pricing and availability of the BD35 / BD55, but we'll keep you posted whenever the respective information is made public.


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