Dark details

Could the BD55 also handle dark scenes? Judging by The Omen, which is all night scenes, driving rain and darkened churches, the answer is 'yes'. Despite the gloom, there is plenty of detail in the darkness, and the laser sights of the SWAT team in the climactic scene burned through without degrading shadow detail.

General levels of detail are extremely high, with no sign of fuzz. I could see every whisker of Tom Cruise's designer stubble.

There's no doubt that the BD55's chroma processing is doing its job, but if we had any criticism of the BD50, it was that treatment of DVD playback was unexceptional. So has this aspect been tackled on the BD55?

Our Tech Labs came up with some interesting figures for analogue video output. While results were pretty much comparable to those of the BD50 in most respects, there were improvements in some significant areas; video jitter is down, chroma amplitude modulation down. Most significantly, though it marginally failed the HQV Benchmark 'jaggies' test, was that it passed the text crawl test, which the BD50 failed.

Standard-def

Testing with the DVD of Arrow Films' edition of Caligula proved illuminating. The BD55 couldn't do much about the graininess of the original print, but upscaling to 1080p did bring out some detail.

Similarly the EIV edition of the Director's Cut of Dark City showed a little more detail when upscaled, and the BD55 certainly brought out all the detail in its gloomy street scenes. It seems that Panasonic has certainly responded to criticism, and come out with a Blu-ray player which is also an above average DVD player.

Of course, audio performance will depend largely on the sound system you're using, but on my reference system, the BD55 really shone. The soundtrack of The Omen had me jumping out of my skin, with the doomy score, cracking of thunder and shock moments superbly handled with a huge dynamic range and strong positioning.

My music demo disc of choice, the Blu-ray audio Divertimenti by Trondheim Solitene on the 2L label, delivered a rich and involving sound with every nuance of the performance brought out by the player's uncoloured audio processing. Standard CD playback impressed too, with our Linn Records edition of Fiddler Tam by the Concerto Caledonia delivering a rambunctious performance.

The final standard?

In my colleague Jim Hill's review of the Panasonic DMP-BD50, he said "I think I speak for all hardcore home cinema fans in saying that this is the dedicated Blu-ray player the world has been waiting for." Well, right sentiment, Jim, but as it turns out, wrong player – Panasonic's DMP-BD55 is really the business.