I had read up on the player over on AVS before mine arrived from Amazon, so I snagged an SD card from Staples for $10. Really, BD-Live is more of a curiosity for me at this point.

I agree, it's a pretty dumb way to meet the Profile 2.0 requirement. IMHO, there is no reason they couldn't have included this internally, and saved people the aggravation of having to get a card, etc. Also, an internal WiFi would have been nice, like the PS3 has.

This will all seem pretty antiquated one day when we look back and say, "Remember those old Panny's that required an SD card?!"

All BD players have some memory to store the firmware that runs the machine. In addition to the main memory, all players have 64 KB of persistent memory to remember settings, including bookmarks. Profile 1.1 ("Bonus View") requires an additional 250 MB of local storage capability. Profile 2.0 ("BD Live") requires an additional 1 GB of local storage capability.

Not including it in or with the lower-end player models is just the CE manufacturers trying to pad their margins by a couple of bucks. Players without 1 GB of memory included should be advertised and sold as "BD Live ready" or "BD Live capable".

Wow. I just got a b BD35K for Christmas (besides owning a HD-XA2) and I wasn't aware of this requirement. Amazing how HD DVD lost the war with all of these limitations. I need to actually buy a SD card to use BD Live? Tsss.

When I was looking for a player, I was looking between the Samsung 1500 and the Sony 350. I eventually started looking at the Panny 35 because everyone said it was already 2.0 and you had to have a flash drive for the 1500 and 350. I was glad I found the Panny for $200, because I didn't have to purchase any memory for it (not that it's much, but it's just the idea). I thought all 2.0 Blu-Ray players included the memory, and some 1.1 players were 2.0 ready by firmware update and a flash drive. Oh well, I still got a deal on the Panny and I like the idea of having the SD card slot for AVCHD and JPGs. But the idea of not having to buy memory for it or do anything to make it 2.0 was something that kept me from completely regretting missing out on the Samsung 8 movie deal on Amazon. But oh well, I still like the player, and paying $10 or so for a memory card is a lot better than paying another $100-$200 for a player with memory. I'll eventually get a memory card for it for AVCHD files (though I don't have any right now, but might later). Like I said before, I'm not using BD-Live, right now, anyway. I don't have a way of hooking it to the internet, currently, as I'm living on a college campus and only have one connection and they won't let me use a router. Hopefully that will change when I move in a few months (if I can afford to pay for the internet, being that my internet is currently free) and can get another router (it seems the router I had is shot as I let my mom borrow it and the firmware was corrupted, and I haven't had any luck in getting it fixed).

Now I just feel like I've been whining about things, but I'm not. Just saying I don't really miss BD-Live, currently, but look forward to seeing what may come of it.

By the way, if I have an SD card to use for AVCHD files, will that card work, or will I have to have an empty card to use just for memory?

You would want one card just to be the memory. Otherwise you'll have to keep watching the formatting and available space and whatnot. At current prices for 1-2GB cards, it's probably worth it to just have two or more.