Panasonic DMP-BDT220

The Panasonic DMP-BDT220 Blu-ray player packs a lot of features into an affordable package. It has built-in Wi-Fi, 3D support, and even an SD card reader, all for $114.99 (direct). It wasn't too shabby in our lab tests, either, with quick load times and very good video processing. It isn't quite as well-designed as the Editors' Choice budget Blu-ray player, the LG BP620 ($149.99, 4 stars), but it comes close.

Design, Remote, and Apps
The front panel of the 1.5- by 16.9- by 7.1-inch (HWD), 3.3-pound BDT220 is a single piece of glossy black plastic that tips down to expose the drive tray, SD card slot, USB port, and Play/Stop buttons. The panel is punctuated by a shiny silver Panasonic logo and a shiny blue Blu-ray logo, and part of it is translucent to let the blue LED display shine clearly through. Power and Eject buttons sit on top of the panel, accessible even when the panel is flipped up over the other ports and controls.

The back of the player holds an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, another USB port, optical and stereo analog audio outputs, and a composite video output. Strangely, you have to use the SD card slot for the required 1GB storage for BD-Live features; you can't just pop a USB drive into one of the ports. The front USB port is for playing external media, which is counterintuitive considering you'd be just as likely to pop your SD card from your camera to look at pictures on your HDTV than to put your photos and videos on a USB drive.

The 6.6-inch remote is small, clunky, and unlit. The direction pad and playback controls sit low on the remote, while the seldom-used number pad sits right under the thumb, which is slightly inconvenient. There are dedicated 3D, Internet, Netflix, and Skype buttons for accessing the player's features easily.

The player can access multiple online services through Panasonic's Viera Connect system. The Internet button loads a tiled menu showing all the installed services on the player, and offers access to other apps and services through the Viera Connect store. Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube, and Vudu are available out of the box, along with MLB, NHL, MLS, and NBA sports services. It also comes with Skype, if you want to plug in your own Webcam for video chat (it's compatible with certain Panasonic, Logitech, and Freetalk Webcams). The Viera Connect menu interface is a little clunky and doesn't offer an accessible list of all the services you have installed?instead, you have to browse through eight-icon panes. But you can organize them so your most often used services are in the front.

Performance and Conclusions
The BDT220 is pretty speedy, averaging 24.8 seconds to load a non-BD-Live disc (Ralph Bakshi's Wizards), and 22.3 seconds for a BD-Live disc (The Sound of Music 45th Anniversary Edition).

We test Blu-ray players with the HQV benchmark Blu-ray disc, and the BDT220 passed nearly every test on the disc with flying colors. It handled both 30fps video and 24fps film footage well, and it showed horizontal motion and text crawling with very little choppiness. It did little to remove random noise, but that's a minor issue.

The player upconverts DVDs relatively well. I loaded The Sitter on DVD and while the player didn't work any smoothing or noise reduction magic, the upconverted video was very watchable. No upconverting can create details where there aren't any, and you'll almost always get a better experience with the Blu-ray version of a film. For example, fine details like hair and movement in shadows were easily visible on the Blu-ray version of The Sitter, but vanished into murky blobs with the DVD version.

The Panasonic DMP-BDT220 is an excellent budget Blu-ray player. It supports 3D, has built-in Wi-Fi, and its price makes it very friendly to budget-minded home theater owners. The remote is clunky and you're probably going to want to fiddle with your online service list, but these are small complaints for an affordable, full-featured Blu-ray player. It's comparable to the Editors' Choice LG BP620, but with a less comfortable remote and slightly less convenient menu system. IF you really want to splurge, the Oppo BDP-93 ($499.99, 4 stars) still stands as the best high-end Blu-ray player you can get. Of course, for its price you can get three BDT220s and a few Blu-rays to watch on them.

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