Panasonic’s DMP-BD65 and DMP-BD85 Blu-ray players, which first emerged at the CES 2010, will go on sale in Europe this March. Panasonic has also released more details of their specifications.

January 28, 2010 — At this year’s CES, Panasonic announced the forthcoming release of two new Blu-ray players, the DMP-BD65 and DMP-BD85, but the audio-video industry has had to wait for confirmation of a release date. Reports earlier this month suggested a release in Japan on February 15, and now Panasonic has announced that it will release the devices in Germany in March — although the company did not quote a specific date. The players will offer an impressive list of features — including BD-Live, improved disc-loading times, and multimedia playback via LAN and WLAN, as well as via the players’ USB port and built-in SD-card reader. Panasonic also claims to have decreased the players’ power consumption to just 16 watts in operation and 0.2 watts in standby. Recommended pricing stands at 199 Euros (170 GBP) for the BD-65 and 349 Euros (300 GBP) for the BD-85 — we’ll bring you UK pricing and availability as soon as Panasonic publishes further details.