here's my take...picked up the DMP-BD30 last week (Sorry to have to say it but this thing looks like it was built in the 80's, as far as looks and build quality it seemed cheaply made to me.)upscaling on my pioneer elite DV-46AV DVD player was 10 times better. exchanged it for the Sony BDPS500, and when I got home realised they had given me an open box with no manual or remote, no way to actually start the disc beyond the menuscreen. ok..someone trying to tell me something?
Exchanged it for the Pioneer BDP-HD50-K, and when I realised that, although it can internally decode True HD, DTS HD, Master HD etc... that it is only capable of outputting the core source DD, or DTS, through both its HDMI 1.1connection and it's 5.1 analog outputs. (Very misleading on Pioneers part as the website leads you to believe that it is as capable as it's elite counterpart.)
I must admit that the upscaling was significantly better than the Panasonic, but I ended up with the Pioneer Elite BDP-95FD. Significantly more expensive than any previous models, but it does what I want it to do. Although you don't get the features of the 2.0 compliant models coming out, it has HDMI 1.3 which can decode or send original uncompressed Master Audio Bitstream to another source for decoding.
Startup times are a little slow, but functionality while playing discs seems fairly effortless. Upscaling seems as good as the previous Pioneer, but I've read that Sony's 500 model is basically the same machine internally at basically half the price...BTW the pioneer and Sony models decode all High Def audio signals internally which can be output to analog inputs, whereas the Panasonic DMP-BD30 has no internal decoding, so if you don't have a Receiver that will cover this you are SOL. not sure about the newer DMP-BD50 model coming out later this spring.
