Panasonic DMR-BWT800 review

Standard definition television broadcasts were reasonably clear, but some of the lower quality channels suffered from noise artefacts. Thankfully, high definition content was almost completely free of noise, both on free-to-air television and Blu-ray. 3D playback was just as smooth as regular Blu-ray content, although the quality of the effect will depend on the 3DTV you connect the player to.

In spite of all these excellent features, we weren’t impressed with the on-screen interface. It isn’t the most attractive interface to begin with, despite being less cluttered than those of other set-top boxes we’ve seen, but the confusing remote control and context-sensitive buttons made it difficult to use some of the more advanced features without reaching for the instruction manual. Things improve with time, but it’s still initially frustrating. The TV guide, in particular, fills the entire screen but has no on-screen preview and cuts all sound, so you can’t choose another program without missing out on what you were watching originally. Picture quality options were quite sparse, leaving most of the image processing to your TV, but you are able to control noise reduction and enable or disable upscaling of standard-definition content through the player itself.

We were quite impressed with the BWT800; it has every feature we would hope to see in a Blu-ray player, plus PVR functions and internet TV. Although recording 3D content isn’t quite as important as Panasonic would have you believe, the ability to record to Blu-ray is great for anyone that likes to archive their TV programs but it certainly adds to the BWT800’s steep price. User interface aside it’s an impressive all-in-one system, but bear in mind that there are better separates available for less.