While this year won't be the best possible for Blu-ray adoption, given the (still) high price of BD movies and equipment, this is not stopping the most important names on the market from releasing new and improved players. And the best example comes from Panasonic, which has just announced pricing and availability details for its 2009 Blu-ray player lineup, which includes three new models, the DMP-BD60, DMP-BD80 and DMP-BD70V (the third one being the world's first Blu-ray-VHS dual player).

According to the company's statement, all of these three fresh players are built around the PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus image processing core, accompanied by a high definition audio decoder (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio Essential), whose purpose is to take advantage of the high quality 7.1 channel surround sound now integrated in Blu-ray discs.

Furthermore, in order to push the image quality even further, Panasonic's Blu-ray players make good use of high precision 4:4:4 signal technology, which, by working in tandem with the aforementioned image processing system, processes each pixel of the Blu-ray Disc video signal in the horizontal direction, to complement vertical direction processing.

P4HD (Pixel Precision Progressive Processing for HD) is another technology whose purpose is to improve the picture quality of the Blu-ray players. P4HD processes more than 15 billion pixels per second and applies the optimal processing to every pixel. Panasonic's Blu-ray players further utilize 16-level motion detection to categorize the image motion of each pixel into one of 16 levels; diagonal processing to detect diagonals and correct the pixels accordingly; 1080p up-conversion to up-convert content recorded in the 480i/p or 720p format to 1080p. The Blu-ray players also provide 1080/24p output, thereby reproducing cinema images from a Blu-ray Disc and DVD in their original 24p form with no need for conversion. This allows the user to enjoy cinema images in the same format used in cinema with a 1080/24p compatible TV.

Another important fact worth mentioning about these new players is that they use VIERA CAST technology, which lets the consumer access the Internet without the need of either an external box or a PC.

Those users who are waiting to get their hands on these three new devices from Panasonic will most likely have to wait until April (when the Blu-ray players arrive on the market), and will also have to prepare around $299.95 for the DMP-BD60, and $399.95 for the DMP-BD70V or the DMP-BD80.





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