Sony BDP-S560 vs Panasonic DMP-BD80

[misterweiss]

There seems to be a lack of reviews online for the new Sony 560 and Panasonic 80 Blu-ray players. So I purchased both of these Blu-ray players from Amazon, mainly becuase I wanted to do a critical, side by side comparison of all features and the audio and video quality. It wasn't a professional test-based comparison, just flipping back and forth between these players and my Samsung BD-UP5000 Blu-ray/HD DVD player on my Sony 52" Bravia LCD and studying the image with a critical eye. (I got 3 copies of the Braveheart Blu-ray to do this). Here's what I discovered:

Video Quality: Pretty much a dead tie. Both players had rich, dark blacks. Video noise (smoothness) of the pictures was so close that I couldn't tell which I was watching most of the time. Sharpness was the same. Both pictures had good "3D pop". I wouldn't be surprised if both players used the same chipset. (By the way, the Samsung uses the Reon HQV chip, and while it looked a bit "smoother" by comparison, a tiny bit of the sharpness and detail shown on the Sony and Panasonic was missing on the Samsung. Also the Samsung has a very slight cyan cast to the blacks and the overall picture.)

Audio Quality: I think the Panasonic wins here, but only by a slim margin. Panasonic touts this player as a "high clarity audio" Blu-ray player and it does sound sweet through my Onkyo TS-SR805 receiver, on my Paradigm Monitor 11 speakers. Again, this conclusion is based only on the DolbyHD sountrack on the Braveheart Blu-ray. I'm going to do more serious listening, but I think the Panasonic will still prove better, audio-wise, with any source material.

Audio Formats: Both of these players will Bitstream or PCM output the new HD audio formats. This means that if your receiver doesn't decode them, the player will. Or vice-versa. Some people say pre-amps/receivers do a better job at decoding than BD players do, but I guess that depends on your gear. The Panasonic DMP-BD80 sure sounds good, and I couldn't hear a decoding difference between it or my receiver. With the Sony, I think the receiver may have sounded a touch better, but that might have been in my head.

Speed and Handling: No question about it, the Sony beats the Panasonic hands down. This new Panasonic is no faster than last year's model it replaced, the 55. Everything about the Panasonic is slow...load times, react times when buttons are pressed, or when skipping chapters. The Sony 560 is about the same as the PS3. Every cloud has a silver lining, and the Panasonic DOES give you time to make a cup of tea while your disc is loading! Another little thing about the Panasonic that I don't like is the size (width) of the disc tray...it's the same size or a hair bigger than the disc itself (instead of being smaller on the sides like most players) so it's very hard to grab the disc. This sounds like a little niggle, but try it and see. It will drive you nuts every time you try to remove a disc...you'll end up dropping them back onto the tray if you're not extremely careful.

Remote Controls: They're about the same...both very flimsy and cheaply made. Put a gun to my head and I'll say the Panasonic's remote is a little heavier and has larger buttons that are a little better laid out. The Sony 560 is drawing fire for this because it doesn't have an eject/drawer open button on the remote. This is a silly complaint...correct me if I'm wrong, but you almost have to be standing in front of the player to put a disc in or take a disc out anyway, right?!?!?! So what's the big deal about having to press the "open" button on the player? Serious remote-picky people have a Harmony remote anyway.

Other Convenience Features: Neither of these players has Netflix built in, I guess that's a big deal now. Unless they can steam full-quality 1080P (without pauses, subject to my ISP speed) I could care less about that. The reason I have 3 Blu-ray players is because I care about quality and I'm not too cheap to buy Blu-ray movies! The Panasonic has the Amazon/VieraCast and YouTube feature though. Again, I have no desire to see a rough, low-quality mpeg video shot by an idiot on a cell phone on my high def TV! Both of these players are BD 2.0 (BD Live) capable, but only the Sony has Wi-Fi built in. That's a nice feature because you don't have to run a CAT-5 cable from your router to your Blu-ray player. I think the 560 is the first stand alone BD player to have this (the PS3 had it all along). The Panasonic has 7.1 channel analog (RCA) audio outputs, important to people that have older receivers without HDMI. The Sony 560 dropped this feature that used to be on last year's 550 model. Most people have newer, HDMI capable receivers, so I see why they did it. Sony also did it to make their step-up model, the BDPS1000ES seem more attractive. (That player is $699 and is basically a 560 with a handful of extra features added, like a headphone jack). The Panasonic has an SD card slot on the front, good if you want to view your pictures on your TV, and a USB jack. The Sony features two USB jacks, one on the front and one on the back. If you want to add BD Live memory on the Panasonic, you've got to look at a USB drive sticking out of the front of your machine if you don't have an SD card.

Build Quality: About the same, maybe the Sony wins here by a hair. Both are smallish players, not very deep. The Sony is about 8/10's of an inch taller.

Conclusion: Overall I like the Sony better. It's wireless connectivity is a great feature if you use BD Live, and Sony has a great history (with the PS3) of keeping the firmware updated, and Wi-Fi makes it easier. The Panasonic is a nice player, and has slightly better sound, but I'm sticking with the Sony. Anyone wanna buy a slightly used Panasonic DMP-BD80?

(By the way...I had no audio problems whatsoever with the Sony, like some other reviewers had. The Sony has a lot of audio output settings, and I still think some of them had them set wrong. That, or their other gear couldn't handle the output from the 560. I'm seeing a bunch of posts online recently about different TV's and receivers not being compatible or being able to handle certain audio signals, especially bitstream...if your gear doing the decoding doesn't have the "oomph" or processing power to decode it, it will choke and puke!)

[Geraldo]

I definitely like the video quality of the Sony BDP-S560, but I'm having problems getting the wireless to work. (See my earlier post "Sony BDP-S560 Wi-Fi issues"). Have you been able to get wi-fi working with yours?

[misterweiss]

Originally Posted by Geraldo

I definitely like the video quality of the Sony BDP-S560, but I'm having problems getting the wireless to work. (See my earlier post "Sony BDP-S560 Wi-Fi issues"). Have you been able to get wi-fi working with yours?

Yes, I got mine working ok. It took a few minutes though. I have a Linksys N Ultra WRT106N router. I have my wireless network secured with a very long 7-word password, and that was kind of a pain in the butt keying it in on the Sony's remote control, but other than that it was painless.

Your problem sounds like it's with your router. Maybe you would benefit from a dual-band N router if you're using lots of devices at the same time and the router is having a meltdown. The Sony 560 is wireless N compatible.

My ISP really sucks. It's a cable modem, but they drop connections all the time. It's not the router...I tried 3 different ones by NetGear and Linksys and they all do the same thing, and it does that hard-wired to the modem without the router! It's almost like if I sit idle for a while, my ISP cuts me off and I can't get IE or Firefox to open my homepage (Google!) for a few tries. I'm sure this will cause me some aggro when trying to watch BD Live content at some point.

[Geraldo]

You were right, it was the router. I bought the Linksys N Ultra WRT160N and I can access BD-Live now. Thanks for advice!

[misterweiss]

Originally Posted by Geraldo

You were right, it was the router. I bought the Linksys N Ultra WRT160N and I can access BD-Live now. Thanks for advice!

Cool! That's the same router I have. I typed 106 in my previous post though. I have a problem with my keyboard...there's a very dyslexic nut loose in front of it!

It's a decent little router. I only run my MacBook and now the Sony 560 off it.

[bembol]

Not surprised with the review, Sony really stepped with the new releases. I had the BD55K and the Audio was definitely better when I compared it to S550.

Not that BD-Live is anything to get excited about (rarely used it) but Wireless NEEDS to be Standard on future BD players.

[deano86]

How did the players look on upconverting regular DVD's? It seems the Panasonic has a great rep for its Uniphier circuitry... but has the 560 closed the gap in this regard?

[misterweiss]

Originally Posted by deano86

How did the players look on upconverting regular DVD's? It seems the Panasonic has a great rep for its Uniphier circuitry... but has the 560 closed the gap in this regard?

Well this is where the Samsung BD-UP5000 beats the newer players. And my Denon DVD-2930ci excels here too. That HQV chip in those players really does a fantastic job upconverting normal DVDs. But I'd say the Pansonic DMP-BD80 does a slightly better job upconverting than the Sony 560. I didn't have multiple copies of the same DVD to compare, so I had to pop the disc out and wait for it to load in the next machine, so I couldn't do a direct, fast A/B comparison.

The Sony's upconverted output seemed a bit sharper on edges of things in the images, maybe a bit less unforgiving, just like the PS3. Maybe that's why the HQV chip does so well upconverting, it doesn't make the images razor-sharp so they look a bit smoother, hiding some MPEG noise. Or maybe it's just better processing. I'd put the Panasonic in the middle here, as far as upconverted sharpness and smoothness.

But again, the differences are really minute, and I'm very critical and looking hard to spot those differences. They're all good machines, and each is better than the others in one area or another. I'm keeping all three of them in my A/V rack (a bit of BD overkill!) for now. If the Panasonic BD80 had wi-fi and was a bit faster at loading, it really would be the best here I think.

[deano86]

Thanks for the info.... I wish Sony would have coupled the awesome built in wireless with some more media streaming capability; mp3 etc. Or just got in the game like the other manufacturers with Netflix or Pandora also... I wonder if a future firmware update could provide that.

[atari52]

Sony Players cost more,(because of the name)and they will never out last a Panasonic. I don't think there is a Sony made that is built better that a Pany. Just my two cents.

[Lordoftherings]

If you don't need (or maybe you do) the multichannel analog outputs from the BD80, just get the BD60
(it's only about $130 street).

* But between your two players (Sony & Panny), the BD80 is the way to go, in my humble opinion.

[deano86]

Well, I tell you what, I am really impressed with the performance of the Sony 560! Quick operation and quiet, with flawless playback of any disc I have put in it so far... no stops, stutters, audio dropouts, or glitches on anything. Wireless works fine also for what little BD-live crap I have checked out thus far. And it lets me know when there is a firmware update available and that went just fine. In addition, I see it got a really good review of it's video performance both with Blu and of its upconversion of DVDs on Sound and Vision magazine. Wow, maybe I actually got a player that does what it is supposed to! Weird....

[kdigit0l]

Not that you guys haven't read this, but Kris Deering (a member here, and contibuter at Home Theater Magazine) wrote a complimentary review on the BD60 - pretty much the same machine as the BD80 - as mentioned in the article: link

I like the BD80 better vs. the 560, but I'm a little biased as I own the BD80!

One thing left out of the review here is that the BD80 also plays Divx files. Some users may find that feature handy

[Lordoftherings]

The OP mentioned how it is harder to get the disc out of the Panny BD80.

* Try this (I always do it myself & with all my players): Put your finger in the middle hole of the disc,
and just lift it up, voila! So simple, even Grand-Pa or Grand-Ma can do it.

* By the way, Thanks for the comparison' review.