Panasonic DMP-BD80

Panasonic's big new entry in the 2009 Blu-ray lineup is its cutting-edge DMP-BD80. If you're familiar with the BD60, the BD80 has all of its features and then some. It adds things that viewers were clamoring for, such as DivX playback and better, more high-end audio connections.

The DMP-BD80 is a Profile 2.0 player supporting BonusView / picture-in-picture playback. It also offers BD-Live Web capabilities as well as bitstream output and onboard decoding of Dolby TrueHd. Best of all, it offers the Panasonic Viera Cast Web Platform. This incredible system lets you stream video-on-demand from Amaon as well as access YouTube and Picasa Web albums.

The DMP-BD80 boasts a disc drive that supports DVD, BD, AVChd, CD audio, MP3, DivX and JPEG files. On its back panel you'll find an Ethernet port for Viera Cast Web features, BD-Live and fast firmware updates. There's no internal memory, so if you want to download BD-Live features, you'll need to add an external storage device; there's an SD card slot for this purpose, though an SD card itself is not provided.

Speaking of the SD card slot, it can also be used for playing JPEGS and MPEG-2 video. Finally, you'll find a USB port on the DMP-BD80, allowing for playing JPEG, MP3 and DivX files.