OT: need Blu-ray player reco9mmendation

blink3times wrote on 1/1/2009, 10:01 PM

If you read my posts last year on getting a Blu Ray player... I was DEAD SET on NOT getting a "game console" to be used as a player.

How wrong I was.

The PS3 was and still is the best Blu Ray playback device out there. It has worked beautifully and I would not recommend anything else. The stand alone players are STILL living in the dark ages as compared to the PS3. You can shift audio output on the fly (unlike the SAL players) along with a ton of other shift-on-the-fly settings. It starts and loads a Blu Ray movie at pretty much the same speed as a dvd player can with a dvd. It's dvd upscaling is now about equal to that of my Toshiba A1.

With the help of this program:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/PS3_Media_Server
you can turn it into a full fledged media server.
And with the blue tooth remote (for an extra $25) you won't have to deal with the silly game pad.

Pretty much every site you go to you're reading something about one of these SAL players not meeting expectations in one way or the other.... something that you rarely hear with the PS3.

My STRONG advice to you is to save up another $100 and get the PS3. You can get them in Canada at $399 and the extra $100 is WELL worth it. I promise you that you will be in for some kind of disappointment if you do it any other way.

GaryAshorn wrote on 1/2/2009, 7:40 AM

Well, I have been HDTV for several years now and over a year ago went to a good HD DVD player. Well, I always new the HD versus Bluray war would come to an end. I knew I would need both. So last Christmas I got a Toshiba HD-A30. It is known for a good quality output and upscaling for standard DVDs and it is. So we have stocked up on cheap HD DVD disks. Now new ones will have to be Bluray for movies. What I decided I wanted was one of the two dual format drives. Samsung BD-UP5000 or I think the other is the LG BH200 or something like that.

These are not made any more but, my wife is great at deals and finding. So this Christmas I got a Samsung BD-UP5000 and it plays both Bluray and HD DVDS. Works great and I already updated the firmware.

I agree with blink3times, get a good one. There are other discussions on the war of disks and whether you can see the difference and yadi yadi yada. You have to compare to a reference point. But IMO...the UP5000 I got is one of the units with the HQV circuits. The upscaling of my Toshiba HD30 as his A1 is great. This Samsung UP5000 to my eyes is even better. I am feeding a Samsung 61" 6187S DLP with LED lighting and it blows my older Mitsubishi 65 HDTV away. But I now find my same disks I used before look even better from my Samsung DVD player.

So my vote is find a good Bluray player. You can still find the ones I have. We paid $450 for ours. Do a search on reviews on this unit and judge for your self. Upgrade the firmware and be happy. It does not support Bluray Live and such or at least I don't think it does. However, I have not tried and don't care. But after I did the firmware update I did notice some extra functions that showed up so maybe it does support it now.

To my comment on the discussions elsewhere. How well a picture looks or is better than previous versions of a format depends on where it started. If they are going to argue if you can see a difference then start with the same relative basis. Was it shot ORIGINALLY in HD format or converted from other sources? Was the file maintained though editing? What processing was used during the making of the disk and so on. I have a standard DVD of Dragon Heart and now a HD DVD version of it. I don't have a Bluray version. But I would like to compare them. The other issue is if the movie is made from a film version or shot originally in HD. The conversion processes affect how well the final disk will look. So keep these in mind when evaluating a disk in a new player. Consider its origins. My two cents.

Gary

craftech wrote on 1/2/2009, 7:46 AM

This Samsung UP5000 to my eyes is even better.
====================
Considering it's high cost, that unit should not be playing Dolby True HD in only two channels.

John

psg wrote on 1/2/2009, 9:42 AM

I have to agree on the PS3. It's a great Blu-ray player and you can find the Blu-ray remote (the PS3 uses bluetooth unfortunately, so none of the universal remotes with infrared will work) for $20.

And if you buy it from the SonyStyle website, you can get if for $249 after rebate (you will need to get a SonyPlaystation credit card - but you can cancel it after you get and use the rebate).

Haven't tried the MediaServer software yet. Blink...thanks for the tip.

wandering journalist wrote on 1/2/2009, 9:46 AM

My two cents and probably all my opinion is worth... go with the Sony. I'm still watching store-bought Blu-ray and previewing my Blu-ray product on my VAIO but my wife's uncle has the newest introductory level Sony player for his HDTV and the thing sings - great picture and sound compared to the Samsung of the same price point which seems to have audio problems. I've used it at sites, including a client which went against my suggestion and went Samsung because it was on sale and the player hasn't performed very well. Again only my two cents worth.

Dale.

GaryAshorn wrote on 1/2/2009, 11:57 AM

John, this is true about the audio but then I did not buy it for that. And I use outside decoders for all my audio here. I have not experimented yet with the audio selections and I may be disappointed but so far it has handle it all fine with my audio system.

Gary

blink3times wrote on 1/2/2009, 2:41 PM

"Haven't tried the MediaServer software yet. Blink...thanks for the tip."

Gotta give credit where it is due.

The tip actually came from Mozart:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=631329

Serena wrote on 1/2/2009, 5:34 PM

I've delayed buying a blu-ray player because I need multi-region, both for DVD (of which I have a large collection) and for BR disks (because I buy from USA and UK as well as Oz. Retail advice is that BR players are configured for only local region, although Sony advised that only BR restricted at this time on their players. Any comments on this issue?

farss wrote on 1/2/2009, 5:51 PM

http://www.kogan.com.au/shop/kogan-blu-ray-player-full-hd-1080p/

Can be made region free. No Blu-ray profile 2.0 support .
Still at AUD 349 might be hard to beat.

Bob.

Yoyodyne wrote on 1/2/2009, 6:31 PM

Just to add to the Blu Ray data pile.

I got an LG BD300 for Christmas (thanks me). This is the one that streams videos from Netflix. Blu Ray output is fantastic, DVD output seems fine, not as good as my Toshiba HD-DVD player but does the trick. Here is a link to the C-Net review if anyone is interested:

http://reviews.cnet.com/video-players-and-recorders/lg-bd300/4505-6463_7-33192430.html?tag=txt%3bpage

Two things of interest:

This player will NOT play standard DVD's burned as a Blu Ray disc, I just get a disc error message and it ejects the disc. Kind of a bummer...

The netflix streaming works great! If you have a netflix account you just add a bunch of movies/tv shows to Netflix "play it now" que and you can stream them right from this Blu Ray player. Navigation is super easy, the video quality is kind of all over the place ( I've only been watching Red Dwarf episodes so probably not a good metric). They do have HD streaming media which I believe is 720p VC-1 encoded at around 3meg in stereo, no surround yet. I'm more interested in all the british tv shows anyway, in fact I've been on a bit of a RED Dwarf bender truth be told...

The amazing thing is that all this streaming media is FREE! I have kind of mixed feelings about Netfix but this a pretty sweet value add.

srode wrote on 1/3/2009, 8:03 AM

I have have the Panasonic BD35 - very happy with it. Boots up faster than most. The drawback to the PS3 is it puts off A LOT of heat - you really need to have it out in the open not in a cabinet. Astheticly - it may offend some as it is not oriented like typical Home theater components horizontally - instead it is verticle. Read reviews and compared prices features and ended up getting the BD35 based on all I read on the options. B&H is where I purchased, best price on the web at the time - but may be different in Canada.

John_Cline wrote on 1/3/2009, 1:57 PM

You don't have to use the PS3 in a vertical orientation, in fact the little PlayStation logo on the front can be rotated 90 degrees.

Regardless of its (or your) orientation, the PS3 is a terrific multimedia player.

blink3times wrote on 1/3/2009, 2:19 PM

Mine's horozontal. I didn't even know you could stand it vertically. Bonus I guess!

Terje wrote on 1/3/2009, 4:19 PM

I am chiming in on the side of the PS3. It is a great player, very upgradeable, Sony has been doing very well with giving us new features. The fact that it can also be used with a Media Server (I use TVersity) is a huge bonus. Currently I have direct access to the following, directly from my PS3, played over HDMI to my HDMI capable amp and appropriately dimensioned 5.1 sound system (no 7.1 yet):

* Blu-Rays of course
* All of my old DVDs (I have ripped them all now, and they can ALL be played directly on the PS3 without looking around for the disk)
* My entire music collection (hundreds of CDs in high quality)
* All my photographs (to the chagrin of friends and family) are there on my TV in my living room. Easy access with my remote.
* All of my own video dating from 1985 and onwards is there too

I have access to all of this using my PS3 and my remote in my living room. I never have to pull out the laptop for showing vacation images to family. I never have to look around for that DVD I wanted to see (but I do have to do it for Blu-Rays). I never ever pull my laptop into my living room to play music all night any more when we have a party. Once the playlist is created on my PC it is immediately accessible from the PS3.

In short, a media center is a great thing, and the most versatile media center out there right now, by a significant amount, is the PS3. At least for the price, given the cost of adding a BD-ROM and an HDMI capable graphics card to your PC.

Edit: I should note that I had to add a bit of extra hard drive space to my PC to do this, but the price of HDs is ridiculously low these days.

Jeff9329 wrote on 1/4/2009, 12:01 PM

I agree with Gary if you want a dual format player to get one of the two still somewhat available. There are still LG BH200s and Samsung BD5000s around. The BH200 plays both HD-DVD and B-R burned on standard DVDs.

Otherwise, the PS3 seems to be the best option. What a sad state of the B-R industry.

Also, the PS3 won't have B-R playback capability as of May from what I hear. Sony is reducing the game console cost and has to remove the B-R player to cut the unit cost.

John_Cline wrote on 1/4/2009, 12:47 PM

"Also, the PS3 won't have B-R playback capability as of May from what I hear. Sony is reducing the game console cost and has to remove the B-R player to cut the unit cost."

What? Where did you hear this? Nonsense! And what's so sad about the PS3 being the best Blu-ray option?

There are several models in the PS3 line and I suppose that they may bring out another lower-priced model without the Blu-ray drive, but they sure as heck aren't going to remove Blu-ray drives from the entire line. No company is that stupid. Besides, aren't PS3 games distributed on Blu-ray media?

Terje wrote on 1/4/2009, 3:01 PM

Also, the PS3 won't have B-R playback capability as of May from what I hear. Sony is reducing the game console cost and has to remove the B-R player to cut the unit cost.

That is an absurd statement and pure rubbish. How are games for the PS3 going to be distributed? By magically enabling fast download of 10-20G over typical broadband connections?

You are either trying to be funny or you have not remembered to engage your thinking cap today.

craftech wrote on 1/5/2009, 7:17 AM

Also, the PS3 won't have B-R playback capability as of May from what I hear. Sony is reducing the game console cost and has to remove the B-R player to cut the unit cost.
------------------------
That is an absurd statement and pure rubbish. How are games for the PS3 going to be distributed? By magically enabling fast download of 10-20G over typical broadband connections?
=============
For those who choose insults first ahead of research, a Google search reveals that
while it may have been a rumor, there were seemingly legitimate reports last spring that indicated that Sony was going to do just what he said. Easy mistake to make.

John

prairiedogpics wrote on 1/5/2009, 7:47 AM

Another vote for the PS3. Heck, even Joe Kane uses one in his reference theater.

I applied for a Sony credit card when I purchased my PS3, which reduced the cost by $150. I also bought the separate bluetooth remote, which is much better than infrared (no line of sight required).

It's really an incredible machine and produces a stunning 1080p picture on my Pioneer plasma.

Plus, if you ever have any children visiting, you also have a gaming system at your disposal.

My wife laughed when I bought it and told her it was the best Blu-ray player on the market. Now she's mum on the subject and is a High-Def Blu-ray convert.

bbcdrum wrote on 1/5/2009, 7:52 AM

John,

The pages on your "legitimate" "reports" links are both dated April 1st. This makes me suspicious that they are April Fools jokes.

Have you seen this reported elsewhere?

Cheers.

Kevin

craftech wrote on 1/5/2009, 8:03 AM

John,
==================
They probably were, but they were even picked up by GameSpot last April. That wasn't the point.

All I was saying is that the poster got the notion from seemingly legitimate sources that were "fooled" as well and that the poster should not have been subjected to insults
by the very very very few people here who seem to resort to that tactic first before giving another poster the benefit of the doubt.

John

John_Cline wrote on 1/5/2009, 8:27 AM

As long as we're on the subject of PS3s, there is a new version (1.02) of the excellent Java-based PS3 Media Server software...

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

Jeff9329 wrote on 1/5/2009, 9:38 AM

I will find and post the May B-D playback removal article link when I get home.

Search for PS3 news will find several articles about it. A quick search showed these links (none are the correct article):

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/TV_theater/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=IWXLBC3LILFEOQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=212700277&subSection=News&_requestid=496845

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5HIPJ2DYCR2JUQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=212700129&pgno=2

http://play.tm/wire/1822034/sony-working-on-ps3-without-blu-ray-drive/

http://gigaom.com/2008/12/28/how-sony-can-boost-ps3-sales/

MozartMan wrote on 1/5/2009, 9:50 AM

Oh, come on Jeff, give it up. It was April Fools Day news.