If you’re one of the two people to own a 4K TV or projector, you may be pleased to know that the DMP-BDT330 offers 4K upscaling, boosting Blu-ray discs up to 3840 x 2160 resolution.

Everyone else will be more impressed by the deck’s range of network features, including newly-added support for Miracast. This replicates the picture from an Android smartphone or tablet on your TV, and because it works via Wi-Fi Direct you don’t have to go through a home network. It’s a really useful feature for those who want to play games or watch movies on a bigger screen.

And when hooked up to the internet you can also access the Viera Connect portal. This uses the same layout as last year’s models, and sadly not a version of the improved smart menus found on Panasonic’s latest TVs.

There’s a decent amount of content, including BBC iPlayer, YouTube, Netflix, Dailymotion, AUPEO!, SHOUTcast and Skype, but we still think it’s blighted by the lack of ITV Player, 4OD and Demand 5, all of which are found on Samsung’s latest players.

The DMP-BDT330 can also be used as a DLNA client, streaming music, video and photos from other DLNA-certified devices on the same network. You can stream MP3, WMA, FLAC, WAV, AAC, JPEG, MPO, AVCHD, XviD and WMV, but not MKV or DivX. You can also play files from USB storage devices and external HDDs, including MKV.

There’s a built-in web browser too, which might come in handy if you want to look something up quickly without the laptop to hand, but like most browsers in AV products it’s too slow and cumbersome to use for lengthy periods. The cursor crawls around the screen and entering text with the virtual keyboard is laborious.

Elsewhere the deck plays 3D discs, converts 2D material to 3D (including web-streamed video) and upscales DVDs to 1080p using Panasonic’s PHL image processor. Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio can be decoded into PCM or output as a bitstream.

There’s a range of picture presets too (Normal, Soft, Fine and User, the latter offering contrast, brightness, sharpness and colour adjustments) and you can also set the perceived distance of 3D images.