Testing out the Panasonic portable Blu-ray player, the DMP-B15

$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.