Rave review of the new Panasonic DMP-BD35 ($299). Panasonic, imo, has been the most consistent company for standalone units. My BD30, which I've had for almost a full year, has been a terrific unit and has never had playback problems. This one decodes and bitstreams all HD audio formats and is a BD Live unit.

http://reviews.cnet.com/video-player...-33248632.html

I'm only going with the BD55 because I need the analog outs.

It internally decodes DTS MA?

Edit: The review says it does...but I find it hard to believe. I'll have to check out AVS for more info.

Why do you find it hard to believe? Panasonic's own press release (still available on their site) says it does:

I could have swore it was the BD55 that was doing all the internal decodes (similar to Sony S350/550 situation). So the only difference between the Panasonic 35/55 is that the 55 has analog outs then, right?

$299 for something that decodes everything is a damn good price...crap.

Well this is a little off topic, but does anyone have a copy of the sony promotion for the free discovery channel blu ray. I bought my player last week and went to their site to print out the form and it is no where to be found. I just need a copy of the form that someone may have saved.
Thanks in advance.

Also I just picked up the sony 550. What a great machine. I connect mine via the analog outs and it is tremendous sound quality. PQ looks fabulous as well and I hook up via component. Great purchase.

Yeah, I'm totally loving my S550.

The BD-55 also has a coaxial out jack, DIVX playback capability and sound dampening feet. I had read about internal component quality diffrences, but I don't think anyone confirmed that.

I tried a DVD-R and it worked fine. I had a couple of DVD-DL's but haven't found them to test yet.

Not sure if this is a good price but the Sony BDP-S550 dropped from $399.99 to $329.99 on Amazon.com.

You can still find the rebate form on Amazon.com site.

Wow, that is an awesome price. If I could have waited a week, I would've saved $70

Holy hell! That's cheap!

I bit this time for the S550 at $329.99. I've been wanting to watch The Godfather collection, Dawn Of The Dead and now Texas Chainsaw Massacre blu rays. Also going to pick up The Hulk tomorrow and Iron Man soon.

Some members on AVS have said the Sony 550 has a new NEC chipset vs an older one in the 350. I am so close to ordering this unit. Not sure if I'll pull the trigger, but $329 for what seems to be a fantastic player is hard to pass up...

I'm tempted myself. I have the 300 which I'm disappointed in. It's a 1.0 profile player. I really think my HD DVD's have a nicer picture and they decode all the sound formats. But once again I have a piece of equipment that I paid $400 for and it's a POS.

If you use Bill Me Later to pay for it (code BMLSAVES), you can take $10 off, making it $319.

Arrrgh! My resolve to wait for the Black Friday sales is slipping.... Must. Be. Strong!

I know it's a little early, but is the 550 rumored to be a Black Friday hot deal somewhere?

Not that I'm aware of. I just figure that the best prices of the year for most players will be after Thanksgiving.

There should be more aggressive pricing on players the closer we get to the holiday season. Based on reviews, the S550 is a great player. I should have mine this week.

Currently, I don't own an HDTV, so I am considering getting a Blu-ray drive for my computer. Does anyone have experience with the BD-ROM drives? Are there any sites which have reviews of them?

(First post, by the way. I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, as per netiquette. Hi guys. :P)

Welcome to the site.

I have one of LG's HD DVD/BD combo drives. I decided to go the HTPC route and have thus far been completely satisfied with the drive's performance. There are a lot of variables to consider beyond just getting the drive, though. For example, with my own setup I first installed the drive on a PC which also needed a new video card. It still didn't have quite enough processing power to respond as well as I wanted, so I wound up buying a new PC (a relatively barebones model which resembles an A/V component). This then led to another video card, and then there's software to consider. My drive came bundled with an OEM version of PowerDVD 7, which has both HD DVD and BD playback, but the audio is crippled and will only output the advanced audio codecs in 2 channel stereo. So I upgraded to PowerDVD 8. Except with version 8, you can no longer play HD DVDs. So I've got WinDVD9. This will play both HD DVDs and Blu-ray, but both it and PowerDVD seem to have certain BDs which they don't like to play. For example: "Nightmare Before Christmas" plays fine on WinDVD; hates PowerDVD. Same with "Iron Man". My UK steelbook version of "Sweeney Todd", however, is just the opposite. And every so often PowerDVD will release a new patch which seems to fix some things and break others. Like how the latest patch seems to break BD playback altogether.*sigh*. None of that is the drive's fault, though.

Anyhow, I'm not sure about reviews, but I know you can find discussion threads over at AVS about the drives. And the applications, for that matter.

I'm a gamer, so I'm not too worried about the video card--I've got a Radeon HD 4850. The software, though... hmm. I was under the impression that PowerDVD usually played everything pretty well.

I wish VLC worked for Blu-Ray.

I'm a bit shocked by PowerDVD, myself. To its credit, though, over the past couple of months I've gotten, like 25 or so rental discs and it played all of them just fine. The only discs it doesn't seem to like are the ones I've purchased!

Are there any freebies now for buying Blu-ray players? I got 2 S350's a couple weeks back, and kind of forgot that there were sometimes free movies by mail or something else. So, anything? Thanks.