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Before talking about Panasonic’s Blu-Ray, we thought it would be worth a bit of your time to answer what is Blu-Ray and why should we care?

What is Blu-Ray? In a nutshell, Blu-Ray discs can store up to 50 GB of data, many times more than a maxed out DVD disc. The Blu comes from the fact that the optical light reading the disc is blue. The DVD players are red. If you remember your physics classes back in school light colors have different wave lengths. The blue is shorter and is thus able to harness more data. Blue is a cleaner and hotter flame than red, right?

Why should we care? HD_DVDs will not be made by Toshiba - the leader in the HD-DVD area - and many other companies. Blu-Ray is the format that the entertainment folks have signed on for, and many others are lining up to sign on. There are now more than 500 titles in the US in Blu-Ray, and 250+ in Japan. So, industry it seems is telling us to move on over. There are many other signals out there asking the consumer to shift technologies - for another discussion.

Blu-Ray has been around for a few years so the pricing has reflected demand, fairly high. (Remember when video players came out? If you are old enough you can remember the high prcies paid for those. Now look at them, can you find one?)

That being said, the Panasonic DMP-BD30K 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player (under Electronics on page 5) is reasonably priced ($529) and delivers exceptional quality graphics and sound. It plays a large selection of audio and video.

Product Description

plays Blu-ray high-definition discs (selectable output resolution: 1080p signals available through HDMI output only; 720p/1080i signals available through HDMI or component video) * plays DVD-Video, DVD-R & DVD-RW, DVD+R & DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM * plays high-def AVCHD files on home-burned DVDs and SD memory cards * plays CD, audio CD-R & CD-RW, and MP3 CDs * plays digital photo CDs (JPEG) * selectable 720p/1080i/1080p video upconversion for DVD (upconverted video available through HDMI output only)

You’ll want quality to last for at least a few years, and it appears as if this is a good bet.

FUNQUE - 4

Great product, price may be a concern for some.

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