It’s a Saturday.  That means I can play with things at home.  This weekend, my wife is in Houston with my oldest daughter (Meredith).  Bailey came home to “help” me with Jayden.  Of course, that means that she is out with her boyfriend – and I’m here alone with Jayden.  [Please know that this is very cool with me as my grandchild is a gem.]
But it is Saturday.  So I have to play with some kind of technology.  Earlier this week, I watched the new Iron Man 2 on Blu-Ray.  But before the movie began to play, I got a popup on the TV about a new firmware load for the Blu-Ray player.  So I loaded the firmware, rebooted the player and watched the movie.
But Saturday is for play so I had to know what had been loaded.  I went to the menu and noted that the Viera menu on the player had been updated.  OK, that must mean a problem was fixed, a feature was added or both.  I didn’t see anything in the Amazon Video on Demand screens.  But I did notice a “More” button that seemed new.  So I pressed it.
Lo and behold, there was now a menu option for Pandora.  For those who don’t know what Pandora is, you probably need to browse the web more often.  Pandora is an excellent streaming music service.  Yes, it plays your music – or music that someone thinks that you might like.  It is fairly good at picking music that I like.  But I like almost any music.
So I logged into Pandora and now I can stream any of the playlists/channels that I want to hear.  There is a fairly good on screen menu.  But most importantly, it plays the sound through my Blu-Ray player – which is hooked into a fairly good audio system.
Now I have good sounds whenever I want them.  What started as a good computer service has now morphed into a service that I can use with my home entertainment complex.  This is very cool convergence – and I wouldn’t have even noticed this except that I noticed the firmware patch that Panasonic released.
-Roo