After a mastery over the fundamental Blu-ray functions - such as BD-Live and high-resolution audio decoding - Panasonic has gone a step ahead with its introduction of three new Blu-ray players at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The biggest new feature of all the three devices - the entry level DMP-BD60, the dual deck VHS-Blu-ray player DMP-BD70V, and the DMP-BD80 - is utilize Panasonic's VIERA Cast technology, which was introduced last year in PZ850 Plasma TVs.

Moreover, a change from the regular DTS-HD Master Audio, the new players support DTS-HD Master Audio Essential, which drops support for some of the more advanced DVD audio formats, like DTS ES, ES Matrix, DTS 96/24, and DTS NEO 6.

With the use of the IP service, users with an Internet connection can access YouTube, Amazon's VOD service, Bloomberg, Google's Picasa Web Album, and The Weather Channel. To facilitate the play of MP3s, JPEGs and Divex video, the devices also include an SD Memory card slot and a USB slot.

These BD-Live capable models, all three of them, will likely hit the market in the spring.

However, all their new fetures withstanding, Panasonic's new Blu-ray players stop just short of the high expectations. Even with Viera Cast and Amazon Video On-Demand support, there is no Wi-Fi. In addition, these players do not have support for one of the favorite value-added features for Blu-ray - namely Netflix Instant Streaming.

Looks like the standalone Blu-ray player Editor's Choice award - which Panasonic won hands-down last year - is about anybody's game this year!