Panasonic is looking to jumpstart adoption of their Blu-ray players by bundling them with their plasma televisions this holiday season!

For an unknown amount of time, many retailers will be offering a $500 discount when you buy a 42" or 50" Panasonic plasma television and a Panasonic DMP-BD30K Blu-ray player together. Since the Blu-ray player goes for $500, that's basically getting the player for free!

Right now, the only retailer I found online that offered this promotion was Best Buy (see promotion page), but word has it that other big box retailers should be following suit shortly.

This is only a good deal if you're in the market for a new plasma TV and if one of the two TV's that are part of this deal are any good. I did find a review on Home Theater Magazine's web site for the TH-42PZ700U and TH-50PZ700U (different models than those being offered by Best Buy, but they may be similar) which was positive for the most part, even if there are some issues with deinterlacing performance and some question about its ability to take in a 1080p24 signal for the best possible performance from that Blu-ray player, but it has enough going for it that it may be worth checking out if you're in the market.

The Blu-ray player, on the other hand, is one of the best of the bunch right now. It's one of the few Final Standard Profile / Bonus View / Profile 1.1 compatible units, which means that the upcoming Blu-ray discs that have true Picture-in-Picture will be able to be enjoyed fully on this unit. You'll need an HDMI receiver that decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio in order to enjoy those formats, but every Blu-ray player has some trade-offs.

Related Links

• TH-50PZ77U Plasma HDTV Specs -- Panasonic web site
• TH-42PZ77U Plasma HDTV Specs -- Panasonic web site
• DMP-BD30K Blu-ray Player Specs -- Panasonic web site