Previously introduced at CES in January, the much-anticipated DMP-BD50 Blu-ray Disc player is almost ready to find its way to customers, as Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal U.S. subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. revealed at the beginning of this week.

The player comes with a new feature, which differentiates it from the previous model, the DMP-BD30: the BD-Live. The feature enables the device to handle Blu-ray Discs that have Internet-connected content, such as interactive multiplayer games, and trailers and extra features one can download from the Internet to local storage, either in the player or on an external memory card.
 
Of course, a more performant player also means more money, as the DMP-BD50 will be available for no less than $700, a premium over its older version. For the extra money, the device also adds in-unit of advanced lossless audio codecs like Dolby true HD and DTS-HD Master Audio, ensuring that regardless of your receiver's decoding capabilities, you will be able to experience the highest quality of audio as well.

So far so good…but the new model “lacks the minimum 1GB of on-board memory required for BD-Live,” so that you also have to purchase an SD card to use the player’s SD card slot, not that its price is very “catchy.” This gap will make the player lose ground in front of Sony’s upcoming BD-Live Player, the BDP-S550, which will be available for only $500 and also will have 1 GB on-board storage.

The Panasonic DMP-BD50 BD-Live Blu-ray Disc player will be available this spring, presumably the next 4-6 weeks.

“Panasonic was the first to bring a Blu-ray player with Bonus View (Final Standard Profile 1.1) to market and now with the DMP-BD50 we are again leading the industry with the inclusion of BD-Live. The beauty of the Blu-ray player is that we can now see movies the way the filmmaker intended, in glorious HD video and audio. The consumer can now combine the new generation DMP-BD50 with a VIERA flat screen televison to create a true living in high definition experience,” said Gene Kelsey, Panasonic Vice President Entertainment Group in a press release Tuesday, according to CNNMoney.com.