The exterior design is nearly identical to the DMP-BD35. Compared with the sleek and glossy designs of Samsung and LG, the DMP-BD60 looks pedestrian, as if it has a job to do, rather than attract attention. The disc tray is in the center of the unit, behind an automatic flip-down door, and farther right is a manual flip-down panel that reveals an SD card slot, a USB port, and some minimal playback controls.

VieraCast is Panasonic’s proprietary online content portal, available on its Blu-ray players and some HDTVs. As of publication time, the available services on VieraCast include YouTube, Picasa, weather, and stock quotes; Amazon Video On Demand is slated to be available in May. The inclusion of Amazon’s streaming service contrasts to competing Samsung and LG Blu-ray players, which offer Netflix streaming on all their players. Both online video services have different strengths and weaknesses. Netflix streaming is free with a subscription, but has a somewhat limited selection of content with few new releases; Amazon has more new releases, but it costs about $4 per rental. Which service is “better” is to some extent a matter of personal preference, but we find Netflix’s service more attractive, especially since your subscription can be used to rent new Blu-ray releases.

A lot of the buyers don’t pay too much attention to the remote control when they are purchasing television or disc players. The remote control for the DMP-BD60 doesn’t change much from the previous remote controls. The top of the remote houses the volume and channel buttons. This can take some time getting used to since most remotes have them in the middle or the bottom. However, there is separate volume button for your receiver. This is particularly convenient if you have receiver set up and don’t have a universal remote control. The numeric buttons are right below the channel and volume buttons. The playback function buttons and directional buttons are in the middle. The menu buttons surround the directional pad. The bottom of the remote houses the special function buttons like Viera Cast and set up buttons. Overall, it’s a solid remote control. It’s not Harmony but you can do much worse.

The DMP-BD60  includes an SD Memory card slot and USB slot, making it easy for the consumer to view and share both digital still images and HD video recorded with an HD camcorder in the AVCHD format.

In order to produce the ultimate picture quality, the Panasonic’s DMP-BD60 Blu-ray players employs high precision 4:4:4 signal technology, which working in tandem with PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus processes each pixel of the Blu-ray Disc video signal in the horizontal direction, to compliment vertical direction processing. P4HD (Pixel Precision Progressive Processing for HD) is another technology that contributes to the superior picture quality of the Blu-ray players. P4HD processes more than 15 billion pixels per second and applies the optimal processing to every pixel.