I think you've overlooked one aspect of the bass management setup: speaker "size" settings.

1: If the fronts are set to "large" the crossover isn't applied. Thus it doesn't matter what setting you use for the fronts.

2: I've not used the analog output from the Panasonic or Samsung, but I beta tested the BDP-83. You might want to look at my [url=http://prillaman.net/setup-950bdp83.html]BDP-83/950 setup guide, but if you have no sub there are three things that needs to change: you need to set the 950's analog bass management switch to "off", you need to set the front speakers to "large" in the BDP-83's setup, and you need to disable the sub in the BDP-83's setup.