Mark this day in your calendar. On June 1, 2009, Blu-ray officially jumped the shark — and you can thank Panasonic for that.
That’s when the consumer-electronics company announced it was bringing to market the DMP-B15, the world’s first portable Blu- ray player. You read that right. Stunning high-def video and 5.1-surround sound on an 8.9-inch screen, with mini stereo speakers. Let me file that under gizmos you don’t need. Actually, $800 gizmos you don’t need.
I bet even Panasonic views this product as more of a high- end engineering exercise (akin to Sony’s 11-inch OLED display) than a truly viable product. Who needs hi-def at 9 inches? And sure, the B15 also can connect to your HDTV screen with an HDMI cable, but why not just get a standard Blu-ray player for half the price and be done with it? Panasonic’s own DMP-BD60 does everything the portable player does: It can get you online and access BD Live content via Panasonic’s Viera Cast service, and it costs $250. At that price, you can use the money you save on the B15 to buy all those costly Blu-ray movies. Sonia Zjawinski
