The Panasonic DMR-BW880 sports an internet connection, like all good Freeview HD boxes. But it’s not just there for some future firmware upgrade: it’s ready to hook you up to your home network and stream files from gadget to gadget, or even jump online and fling videos on demand to your flatscreen. Read on for our Panasonic DMR-BW880 review, and we’ll tell you whether those net connected skills are up to scratch.
Read the rest of our Panasonic DMR-BW880 review
Panasonic DMR-BW880 review
Panasonic DMR-BW880 review: PS3 beater?
While we found the Panasonic DMR-BW880’s network features by and large easy to set up, we came away a tad disappointed in their scope. We were excited by the prospect of easy DLNA media streaming across your home network with the Panasonic DMR-BW880 when it was announced back in February, but if you’re more of a movie than a music fan, the options are a bit disappointing.
Connecting the Panasonic DMR-BW880 to your network is just a matter of selecting the “Network Easy Settings” button and watching it log on in seconds, but once you’re there, you might struggle to play anything. It’s fine streaming your photo collection to your PC but irritatingly, the Panasonic DMR-BW880 only acts as a server, so you can’t stream content from other devices to it (rather than the other way around), which makes it a tad pointless for anyone with large media hoards on their laptop hard drives.
The result is that anyone with a downloaded video stash will have to pop everything on a USB stick and hope for the best: the Panasonic DMR-BW880 will happily play DivX encoded AVI files, but won’t accept the existence of H.264/MP4 videos, which is a shame considering how increasingly common they are.
We could learn to live with these restrictions, but sadly, the Viera Cast IPTV service on the Panasonic DMR-BW880 is also disappointing, falling far short of what Sony and Samsung can provide in boxes already on the market.
We do like the option to use YouTube, granted. The content on the site really has expanded beyond a few clips of cats and babies gurgling, with Channel 4 shows and even the odd full length feature film available to stream to your flatscreen. But it’s not a great selling point: YouTube has been available on Blu-ray players for well over a year now, and the UI with the Panasonic DMR-BW880’s Viera Cast isn’t a great deal easier to navigate through than the optimized YouTube XL website. We’d like to see more YouTube designs as good as the iPad’s from now on, but that’s not happening here.
Otherwise, you’re left to browse through Picasa photos (Pleasant, but you could save on your leccie bills by turning the TV off instead of leaving it on as a slideshow), or browse news and stock tickers, as if there were no freely available news channels on British TV. The Panasonic DMR-BW880 loses a lot of marks for missing out on BBC iPlayer meanwhile: it’s on just about everything these days, not least Freeview HD tuners and rival Blu-ray players, so it’s a shame Panasonic hasn’t seen fit to include it in something so expensive.
The Panasonic DMR-BW880 is still a quality gadget that hoarders will love for its comprehensive recording skills. Anyone looking to stream lots of internet video onto their TV would do well to consider a rival brand: we’ve got our eyes on an almost identically specced Samsung set top box, the Samsung BD-C8500M, so stay tuned for a full head to head with it when we land one.
Read the rest of our Panasonic DMR-BW880 review
Panasonic DMR-BW880 review
Panasonic DMR-BW880 review: PS3 beater?
