Panasonic Hollywood Labs is taking a leading role in the advancement of the Blu-ray optical disc format for consumer and HD video products.

We were delighted to have Bhanu Srikanth of PHL on hand to give a demonstration of everything Blu-ray has to offer.   Attendees received an overview of the Blu-ray format itself and how discs are authored and encoded.  We also learned about how the company was responsible for initial titles that included BD-Java, BD+ copy protection and BD Live.   We also received an overview of all the different BD Profiles to date including profile 3.0

                        Click on PLAY arrow above to start video

As far as the Panasonic Demo goes, I really had no idea that PHL was so involved with mastering, authoring and encoding of Blu-Ray. The talk walked us through ALL of the areas they have their fingers in and it was really eye opening. I want to sincerly thank Panasonic for their donation of the BD-50 and wish all attendees the best of luck in winning it, it seems like the first deck that is a true worthy competitor the the PS3! As other attendees noted, its not clear if this deck has ANY on board memory tho, and it seems weird that a deck with this price point would require a further investment in storage to make profile 2.0 titles work and not support them 'out of the box'. Would like more info on that. Also, I had never heard of Profile 3.0 and cannot wait to get a BluRay Audio Disk 3.0 player in my next car! As someone who owns both SACD and DVD-A titles I say 'bring it on!'

-Sam Posten, HTF

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All photos taken and used with permission from Samuel Posten.  Visit his website on

NAVESINK.NET and to see additional photos from this event be sure to check out

his flickr page.

Panasonic was gracious enough to loan us a DMP-B50 to show off and use in our theater demo room. Ms. Bhanu Srinathan led the presentation, talking with our group about all the technical and mastering they are involved with. It was very informative and educational. Even though there seemed to be some confusion between Ms. Srinathan and another member, about the SD card and on board memory feature, I still like the idea of an SD memory card feature, to show off some HD video/pictures on your television. I was afraid that we were just going to walk away with just a player demo and a few short words. It was nice to hear the more technical side of things and would love to see them again next year.

-John Steffens, HTF

Video courtesy of Brendan Surpless, HighDefDiscNews.com

This is a mere highlight of the presentation.  We had no microphone to amplify Bhanu (though she could be heard in the room). For

that reason we have included screenshots of her presentation below.