Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

$800 for a portable Blu-ray player may seem crazy, but it’s really a step to make Blu-ray discs more prevalent.  One of the complaints about Blu-ray is “I can’t take it with me, so I’ll get a regular DVD instead.”  The portable player looks to take away that problem.

So you’ve seen this device before, but what’s new?  Gadgetell got to play with the DMP-B15 and found out a couple of new things.  The display is a bit finicky.  It only shows video if the unit is set up in tablet mode.  If you try to use the Blu-ray player in a laptop style mode, forget it.  The unit turns off.  Why this limitation?  The folks I spoke to at Panasonic also thought this is a bad idea.  Expect future editions to get rid of this oddball behavior.

Also, since this device is supposed to be portable, how about a shake test?  Of course, Gadgetell asked permission before shaking the portable Blu-ray player like a martini.  Take a look at an intentionally shaky video below.  Here you can see the device being shaken vigorously then wobbled to see what kind of anti-skip technology the DMP-B15 packs.  The disc didn’t skip at all.  At least that makes sense.