Panasonic goes old-school with Blu-ray/VCR combo player

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23 Jan 09 12:39 by AdamT in category Uncategorized To news archive

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Want to embrace Blu-ray without abandoning all those episodes of M*A*S*H you recorded to VHS? Panasonic’s Blu-ray/VCR combo player could be the answer.

The DMP-BD70V is a BD-Live compatible Blu-ray player featuring a front USB port, memory card slot and amazingly, a "slot" for inserting your old VHS tapes. Otherwise, it offers the same features at the DMP-BD60 Blu-ray player, such as on-board Dolby TrueHD, DTS-Master Audio Essential decoding and networking functions such as VIERA Cast Internet content, including Amazon Video On-Demand.

While it seems like a strange combination in one device, the upside is that the DMP-BD70V will upscale both DVD and VHS to 1080p. Expected to sell for around the US $500 mark, it will hit the shelves in the spring.

11 Comments

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 24 Jan 09 02:28

FAIL

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 24 Jan 09 13:36

It has potential. There're different versions of this player in Japan.

Crabbyappleton: Posts: 5756; Posted on: 24 Jan 09 15:42

Well, they are both in about the same demand

*ducks*

neo1918: Posts: 259; Posted on: 24 Jan 09 22:41

I've *love* to see what VHS looks like upscaled to 1080p. I bet you can't even tell the difference between upscaled VHS and bluray!!!!! :P

DukeNukem: Posts: 998; Posted on: 26 Jan 09 04:23

1080p upsampled VHS? Sure, could happen.

rontheripper: Posts: 20; Posted on: 26 Jan 09 21:54

For that price it should burn too!

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 29 Jan 09 18:06

tapes just make too much sense in my household, so this might be nice ... but ... I wonder if it handles DVDs and VCD's as well. I found that the PS3 as a BluRay player will NOT play VCDs, so that sucks.

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 21 Feb 09 08:59

I guess you would get a pretty bad blurry pixelated mess blowing up a VHS on a modern big screen HDTV so why bother??
Here the resolutions with each video generation:
VHS=320x224, DVD-640x480, Bluray=1280x720/1920x1080

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 27 Feb 09 15:31

I think is a good idea, because i got movies in all 3 formats (vhs,dvd,blu-ray) i got several tapes that have never been released on to dvd or blu-ray.

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 17 Mar 09 20:54

I WANT ONE!

evo69: Posts: 904; Posted on: 17 Mar 09 22:50

Is there an option to get a Betamax add-on? http://www.cdfreaks.com/jochem/../im...ies/2/puh2.gif

If there is, I'm completely sold.

Panasonic goes old-school with Blu-ray/VCR combo player

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