The DMP-BD70V is another new Blu-ray player from Panasonic that is designed to playback the majority of media formats found in the home.

Like any other Blu-Ray player it is capable to up scaling standard DVDs to 1080 but it is the first to have a built-in VHS player (remember them) and will up scale any VHS recording to 1080 HD, which just seems wrong. VHS does not hold the same detail as DVD never mind a that of HD, so I’m expecting the upscaling to be somewhat lacking usual HD quality, unfortunately there was no demo of this (the Panasonic representatives hadn’t seen it either). Along with the VHS player the DMP-BD70V has a card reader for for playback from various memory cards.

You’ll be able to buy the DMP-BD70V for $449 from March 09.