About eighteen months ago, after being burned in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray wars, I was uneasy about buying another HD player.  Then, a few weeks ago my HD-DVD player decided to let me know that it was dying.  It was only then that I jumped into the Blu-Ray waters with the purchase of a Panasonic DMP-BD60K Blu-Ray player.  I did a bunch of research and compared prices.  I consulted the the great group of people over at AVSForum.com and in the end was genuinely excited to finally have HD movies back in my theater again.

I wish I were here to say that everything was quick, easy and painless on the highway to HD movie heaven but it wasn't.  Back when I purchased my audio video receiver, I paid specific attention to things like HDMI 1.3a compatibility, 1080p/60 and Deep Color compatibility.  The receiver I chose, Pioneer Elite VSX-91TXH matched the specs of my projector and I knew 1080p goodness would eventually come to my movie watching experience.  To say I was let down when I plugged in the Panasonic and my AV reported that the HDMI connection was "NOT SUPPORTED" is an understatement but I am glad to say that this condition was temporary.  After a bit of wrangling with the settings, I was able to get it to work as advertised but I'm left with a feeling that the experience should have been better.  Spending a grand on an AV that's not that old and a couple hundred on a brand new Blu-Ray player should be plug and play.  I know my parents or my grand parents wouldn't have been able to figure it out and would have returned the player.

To resolve the issue, I first had to connect the player to a video source that worked.  Composite video did the trick and I was able to get to the settings menu this way.  Rip through the settings.  Deep Color is supposedly negotiatied based on the connection (and turned off for my setup) as is the resolution so I'm hoping the AV isn't getting in the way of the process.  Then, I checked the audio output to make sure it was on bitstream.  I even tried the PCM output just to be sure it wasn't the audio.  Next up was the network connection which I'm happy to say required nothing from me to get working as it found and used my DHCP server correctly.  At least that much was plug and play and I wasn't reduced to burning a CD-R to flash the firmware.  Turns out I was sitting on firmware 1.1 and version 1.7 was available.  Twenty minutes later, I was updated and still staring at a "NOT SUPPORTED" message on my AV.  That's when I started Googling and searching AVSForum for answers.  None were to be found and my spirits were sinking.  Two hours into the installation and I didn't have a working Blu-Ray player.

Just as I was about to give up, I decided to power cycle the whole system and what do you know, the player was working over HDMI.  Turns out that all this HDCP negotiation and HDMI connection stuff didn't work right out of the box and required a player to projector reboot once the player's firmware was updated.  It was a bumpy road to get there, but in the end it worked and it looks great.  Maybe now I can get a few good pictures of the image and post them to here, AVSForum and to Home Theater Spot.

Next: Coming Soon....

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