Related Sections: Portable Gadgets
A Blu-ray portable? Really? Why?
Don't get me wrong — I love Panasonic. They make the best plasma HDTVs for the money, and the company produces unpretentious proficient products.
But a portable Blu-ray player? Yes, a lot of people wondered about the utility of a portable DVD player back in the day, but there's one crucial difference between a DVD and Blu-ray in a portable configuration: it's nigh on impossible to see the benefits of Blu-ray on a 42-inch screen, much less an 8-inch screen.
Be that as it may, this first Panasonic portable Blu-ray prototype is double-jointed and can be twisted and flexed into more positions than are in the Kama Sutra. And I guess you could buy it and use it both as your home Blu-ray player as well as a portable.
When it appears in stores it'll be priced closer to $1,000 than to $500 (we were told the price we were told couldn't be told), another "really?" since you can get a standard portable DVD player for around a tenth of that.
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By xmccaw at 6:23 AM ON 01/09/09
What will they think of next? Dumb.
By mdrshazam at 7:10 AM ON 01/09/09
WTF???!!!!
It's bigger then my Acer One from the look of things, I've got a co-worker who has a DVD player the size of a cd case with a 4 inch screen, I understand wanting a rock solid pic on a portable but who wants to lug a brick around.
By jtessier at 9:06 AM ON 01/09/09
Well it would keep me from having to buy two copies of every movie I want to be able to watch on my 'portable' player and also watch on my PS3.
By chesterthecat at 10:17 AM ON 01/09/09
As the JTESSIER points out, you don't have to buy two copies of the same movie if you enjoy BD at home. New tech is always expensive until it gets adopted.
As for me, I am waiting until disks are finally obsolete and movies will be distributed on flash cards. At least those will not get scratched.
A 64GB usb flash drive is around $100 now and 4GB are below $10. Once 64GB gets below $1 it should be feasable.
By Well,Duh at 11:17 AM ON 01/09/09
The whole reason I don't buy Blu-ray is because for $30, I can't take 'em along in the car! So, I'm supposed to pay another $20 for a standard version that I'll never watch at home? Once a blu-ray portable comes down to the same price as home units, I'm sure there will be plenty of takers.
By dorkMan at 5:37 PM ON 01/09/09
Yo CHESTERTHECAT.... word to your mother! SD, microSD, USB.. any flavor of flash is what I'm talking about.
By skullivan at 10:04 PM ON 01/10/09
"it's nigh on impossible to see the benefits of Blu-ray on a 42-inch screen, much less an 8-inch screen."
Are you kidding? If you can't see the difference between Blu-ray and DVD on even a 26" screen (let alone 42"!) you need to get your eyes checked.
Especially seeing as watching any SD source on an HD set automatically makes it look even worse than it would on an SD set because of the higher resolution of the screen.
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