Panasonic today announced that its US subsidiary, Panasonic Corporation of North America, will establish a Panasonic Hollywood Blu-ray Testing Center (PHBTC) within the existing facilities of Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory and start testing services today.

Blu-ray Discs feature strong copyright protection technology, and conducting logical format verification of entertainment content in replicated BD-Video discs requires technical sophistication. Until now there has been no testing service available for content verification before disc replication although many in the motion picture industry expressed the need for a testing center to provide such services, especially in Hollywood area. The new Panasonic testing center, PHBTC, meets this industry's need and is expected to accelerate the release of BD-Video titles by the motion picture industry.

In addition, Panasonic is inviting the member companies of Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) to install their BD-Video playback products, including Blu-ray recorders and players in PHBTC so that content providers and authoring studios can confirm the interoperability of their titles using these playback products.

The testing services that will be provided include format verification service for the logical format of BD Video/Live Discs, playback testing service for BD Video/Live Discs with the BD Video playback system as well as rental site service for format verification and playback testing.

Established in 2001, Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory is a leading authoring, replication and encoding facility and has been a major contributor to the creation of Blu-ray pre-recorded discs.