First of all, I really hate the saying 'WiFi Ready' Which says to me... it is ready for WiFi.. all you need is WiFi. Of course that isn't the case. It just means that it has a USB port and some on board drivers to help you part with $80 for the WiFi adapter. Save yourself some aggravation and check out the NETGEAR Home Theater Internet Connection Kit (Black). It is faster than WiFi and will work with your next Blu-Ray player too. Not to mention your xbox, networked TV, etc.
Anyway.... When I first hooked up the player the first thing that naturally occurs is the setup. Wow... it was grainy and horrible looking. I was worried. Of course this was hooked up to a brand new Panasonic VIERA TC-P42G25 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV, and I had not refined all of the Brightness, Contrast, Color, Tint, etc... settings yet. So I put in a BD and things looked good. Not great. But good. After a couple more days of tweaking the TV I came back to do some more hands on testing of the BD and Viera Cast functions. My kids watched the Cars BD, and it looked FABULOUS! Of course that disc always looks good, even on an old broken TV. Wasn't sold. Then that evening my wife and I had rented The American on DVD. This is when I got really impressed. The DVD up-conversion was truly amazing. If I had not known better, I would have thought this was a BD. Then I resumed looking at the Viera Cast apps. I haven't looked at Netflix since that is on the Panasonic TV, but I was truly impressed with VuDu. The full 1080p and Dolby Plus 5.1 signal was great. The picture was stunning, and it starts streaming QUICK. With no artifacts that I have seen. Rental prices were a little steep, but regardless I was impressed.
Other things important to potential buyers. It loads fast. There are options to reduce startup times too. This is great, because when I use my other BD player to play a movie for my children, they have lost interest by the time the player loads the film. Another nice feature is the VieraLink. This makes it work well with at least Panasonic sets. When I turn on the player, my TV switches to the correct input automatically. Very nice. When I turn off my TV, it will automatically power down the BD player. Also very nice.
I haven't tested any 3D content on the disc player yet. So I cannot comment on that. But I imagine it will be stunning since it handles other BD content well.
Cons: This is really a con I guess, but more of a CONcern. The front fascia, is a big plastic door. I just have a feeling that one day a child will rip it off. Won't be the end of the world, but it just seems a little unneeded. But I guess if it protects the buttons from peanut butter etc.. for a while it's really a plus. We'll see. Panasonic DMP-BDT110 Wi-Fi Ready 3D/2D Blu-ray Disc Player
------- Update 4/10/2011 ----------------
I am returning this unit to the seller (even if they make me pay return shipment) for the following reasons:
Panasonic just released V1.56 of the firmware for this player and nothing got fixed (DLNA and Netflix still don't work) so it is unclear why they released this update at all.
After I re-flashed the firmware and found that it did nothing for the problems I was having, I called Panasonic tech support and after about 40 min on the phone going through various humiliating questions that doubted my technical skills, I was told that level 3 support would call me within "72" business hours.
It's been a week and instead of waiting for their call for much longer, I am returning this unit and will be more careful about Panasonic blu rays in the future.
----Original review: --------------------
I have had this for about a week and this is a great unit by its intent. However two major flaws make me give it 2 stars.
First, with the latest firmware (Feb 24, 2011 V1.47) Netflix streaming does not work. My account gets connected, I get
get the user menu with search and all the title information but all the titles I tried for several days now end up with a message "We are having trouble playing this title right now. Select a different title or try again later".
The Netflix interface is pretty clunky compared to other streaming units that I have (Nintendo Wii and an LG BluRay player)
The second no less important, is that DLNA client that connects to my home network does not recognize the DLNA servers about 90% of the time. I have to reconnect to the network from the Network setup menu for the DLNA servers to get recognized by this unit. I think the firmware is seriously flawed on this.
My Amazon VOD account works flawlessly but the interface is clunky as well.
The other "Net" features are working OK (I tried Picasa and You Tube but not Pandora or Vudu).
So I am still deciding if I want to wait for Panasonic to get their firmware right or return this unit and forget about Amazon VOD streaming (the main reason for my buying this unit was that it combined Netflix and Amazon VOD. Great idea if it worked...) - Blu-ray Player - Blu-ray - Blu-ray 3d - Netflix'
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