Panasonic's 2012 offerings
I think my old Sony might be dying (constant skipping at the end of scenes), and I've been looking around at Panasonic's 2012 range, which seems to include three main contenders-the 120, 220 and 320 at around £140, £160 and £200 ish, respectively. Does anyone know what the differences between these units are that warrants the price increase? All I can glean from the Panasonic website is that the 320 has a fancy remote, other than that they all seem to be exactly the same!
Cheers!
thanks for the clickety Andy! So it looks like the 320 and 220 are pretty much the same in terms of sound and picture, and its the slimmer chassis and remote that makes the 320 a bit more expensive.
I suppose my biggest problem with upgrading from 5 year old gear is that my TV and surround sound will start to seem old too!
And for what it's worth, as well as a now posted glowing review for the 500 that Andy mentioned, there's a bunch of us enjoying the 500 on these forums. I swapped it from a 220 and on DVDs which make a significant part of my viewing it does seem to be noticeably better (although I'm perfectly aware that may be due to me knowing I paid more for the 500, but what the heck).
Oh, and you can grab a 500 for £250 if you look around (multi-region, no less).
i picked up a 220 last week in the end. i'm pretty happy with it so far. looks and sounds better than the old sony, as well as loading itself and a disc in significantly less time!
Full details in our Panasonic Blu-ray story. Clickety. And full review of the DMP-BDT320 and DMP-BDT220 here and here. Review of the flagship DMP-BDT500 model will be published online later today.
Andy Clough is Brand Editor of What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision and whathifi.com