Blu-ray Festival: Day 2 - Panasonic Hollywood Labs

On Tuesday, October 30, Panasonic Hollywood Labs hosted the editorial staff of Blu-ray.com as part of the Blu-ray Festival. Panasonic Hollywood Labs is an immaculate facility located within Universal City just outside of Hollywood. For the last decade or so, Panasonic Hollywood Labs (PHL) has been at the forefront of home video technology. Initially developed as a one-stop-shop for DVD encoding and authoring, PHL has become one of the most influential video production houses in existence. They have been responsible for many of the technological achievements over the years that have improved the DVD experience. Essentially, Panasonic Hollywood Labs develops content and produces the encodes that wind up on your DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This would prove to be an eye-opening visit.

Upon our arrival at Panasonic Hollywood Labs, we were escorted directly through the courtyard of the Universal Pictures corporate headquarters. It seems that all of the brilliant Blu-ray work turned out by PHL happens, literally, under the noses of Universal. Our first stop within PHL was the Panasonic Digital Theater. This room exists as a large screening facility where Blu-ray encodes are projected via 2k projector onto a massive one hundred foot screen so that they can be scrutinized for any flaws or encoding errors. As we were welcomed to the event by Panasonic Vice President of Corporate Development and General Manager of the Blu-ray Disc Group, Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, and introduced to many visiting executives, a beautiful 2k projection of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was put up on the massive screen. As the introductions were completed it was announced that what we had actually been viewing was a split-screen presentation where one half of the picture was the 2k master and the other half was directly from the Blu-ray version of the film. To our astonishment, not a single attendee was able to correctly guess which side was which. PHL strives to produce truly transparent encodes for Blu-ray and this demonstration was a clear statement of just the kind of quality that PHL is capable of.

Panasonic presentation showing exactly why their Blu-ray players are considered some of the best equipment on the market.

The main reason for visiting that day, was for Panasonic's announcement of their new DMP-BD30 Blu-ray Disc player. As has been mentioned before, this player will be the first “Final Profile” player to hit the market and will arrive at a price point of $499. Panasonic also unveiled their new high definition handheld video camera. This device will record full HD video and 5.1 surround sound onto a SD memory card that is able to be read by the new DMP-BD30. This combination is an excellent value for the consumer who wants to experience the high definition lifestyle that Panasonic is currently promoting. We were also treated to demonstrations of an upconverted standard definition image compared to the full high definition Blu-ray presentation. The differences were not subtle. Lastly, we were shown a comparison in picture quality between the Panasonic DMP-BD10 and the new DMP-BD30. By using selections from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Panasonic was able to showcase a distinctive reduction in noise, inproved color fidelity, better motion capabilities and an even greater level of detail present from the new player.

The DMP-BD30 retains the same physical appearance in a much smaller package.

As the session ended, we were left with a great admiration for the skilled artisans at Panasonic Hollywood Labs. These dedicated professionals work tirelessly to make sure that we experience nothing less than the finest Blu-ray presentations in our homes.

We'll be back with more reports from the Blu-ray festival in the coming days. Stay tuned!