What ever happened to the Panasonic RP61
 

I remember seeing this player not-so-long-ago. And I was going to get it when I had a buying for my current Panny player. But I see that the just dropped off of the face of the earth. Anyone know why? It was released around may of this year and then production stopped in August and the price of the players jumped up $50 to $100. I know it added DVD-Audio to the RP56 and that's all. I am ready to buy and I am leaning to the RP56. Anyone know what happened to the RP-61?

DuBob

Don't know what a good price is, but here is one for sale:

http://pixardigital.com/product.asp?key=DVDRP61K

Yeah, I can find them for sale......but the fact that they spend only 4 months on the market kinda makes me think that something was wrong with the player. I didn't know if anyone in here heard anything.

Can't answer your question but remember that the RP-56 is on sale at Amazon for $229, PLUS free shipping, PLUS use a $10 off $75 = $219 delivered. They sell for more than this on ebay.

It was canceled, it was suppose to be out late August. Then it got pushed back to September and it was totally canceled. I am not sure on the real reason, but it was annonced a while back and I am pretty disapointed, but I got my Pioneer DV-37 and not sure if I want to go with SACD or DVD-A now.

The RP91 is a better player anyways, otherwise, minus the DVD-A feature the RV56 should do. Also Toshiba and Denon have some models with DVD-A if you are looking for that, but I still think the RP91 is still your best option.

My guess is, since the Denon DVM-4800 was pretty much the Panasonic RP-71 with a 4MB buffer, the upcoming Denon 1600 DVD player sounds somewhat like the Panasonic RP-61 with a 3MB buffer.

RP56 is a great unit. The lack of x-y scaling really nixes this as a player for me. Scaling is a MUST IMHO for widescreen sets. You have to jump up to the RP91 to get this (though the Sage chipset used in the 56 is actually a better deinterlacer then the hacked-Genesis used in the 91).