Gadgetory

hi this is ty pendlebury with a review of the panasonic be dt 2 30 PK blu-ray player as televisions get progressively smarter and more streaming services are loaded onto inexpensive devices like the roku all consoles like the ps3 people aren't looking to blu-ray players as much as they have in the past however a blu-ray player like the panasonic is both able to offer the same apps as roku like Netflix and Hulu Plus while also being much less power-hungry than a games console this is a very competent player with excellent picture quality and fairly responsive operation but it has two major flaws firstly its ejects you to advertising and secondly the menu system isn't very intuitive on most menu pages you will see ads and the worst thing is you can't currently turn them off if you're paying full price for a blu-ray player and its competitors offer similar performance and no ads why would you choose panasonic but i'll digress the design of display is changed from last year but it is an exact replica of the sony player with a trapezoidal shape and piano black accents the remote control is fairly simple to use and it does include a Netflix button but a wish it had a shortcut to the smart TV viera connect service because without that you have to deal with the vagaries of the menu system want to play pandora you can't simply go down to music instead you have to go up to network then right to network services and then find pandora from the menu system it's complicated performance wise though it's very good with excellent playback of both blu-ray and DVD movies and a great selection of apps but if you have about 120 dollars i'd suggest going for the sony bdp s 5100 instead which if nothing else doesn't currently subject you to unwanted advertising this has been ty pendlebury for cnet.com