Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal U.S. subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (NYSE:MC), announces the introduction of the anticipated DMP-BD50, Panasonic's third generation Blu-ray disc player - the ultimate playback source for high definition 1080p content. Blu-ray media offers a wide range of functions that foster the transition to HD - including 1080p image quality, lossless Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio™ and versatile Picture-in-Picture applications. The BD50 adds the new BD-Live function, which...

Read Bulletin

It remains to be seen if the video processor in this new model solves the poor handling of standard DVDs that was a major weakness of the previous model.

It seems to me that most buyers out there are still waiting for confirmed reliability. At this price point, there is no excuse for BluRay equipment to work anything but flawlessly. Just ask any owner of the first generation Xbox 360 who has experienced the dreaded red ring of death.

Now if we get the price point down to around the $250 mark, inhibitions will begin to disappear. Personally, I've had a few low end DVD players (sub-$75 range) fail on me over the years, but even if they are out of warranty, I generally shrug and replace them with little or no regrets.