Well it was bound to happen someday…a DVD and Cinema enthusiast and not all aboard the HD train? Well fear not loyal readers…The Movie Report is now fully Blu-ray compliant.

Feast your eyes:

I also purchased the following movies on Blu-ray:

Zodiac (Director’s Cut)

Cloverfield

and also included free in the box:  National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

The player was very easy to set up as I already had a HDMI lead.  Strangely the box the player comes in only includes a Composite cable, which cannot be used for HD!  Very bizarre.  The player is connected to my Samsung 32″ LCD television in the main room of my house, as thats the newest and best TV I own next to the still good quality Philips LCD in my bedroom. 

Update  (11/01/2009):

Well I have had a good play around with my Panasonic Blu-ray player and have watched Cloverfield and taken a look at Nation Treasure 2 and Zodiac, and here are my findings:

All 3 films look excellent, and although Zodiac and Cloverfield use subdued colour palettes, little details and close ups did seem an improvement over regular DVD image quality.  However I didn’t feel blown-away by the improvement, and when watching some of my regular DVDs such as Transformers and Wall-E the difference seemed minimal (looking slightly soft-focus).  This is especially the case as the player also upscales the DVD quality to near-HD and improves what you are looking at anyway.  Transformers especially looked incredible. 

I am happy with my player and look forward to road testing some other Blu-ray titles in the future, and in a way I am also happy that the difference isn’t so much a leap as to render my existing DVD collection obsolete.  The interactivity and new menu features of Blu-ray are still to be fully explored by myself…but so far, colour me HAPPY.