New Blu-ray player Sony BDP-S500 reviewed by Ethan Derrick.
June 29, 2008
I purchased a Panasonic DMP-BD50, Pioneer BDP-LX80, and PS3. In the 2 week that I've had this player, it's done a good job on video and audio quality. I'm watching it on a 37" Panasonic connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned. This player started having hardware/software problems. It would simply quit playing during the middle of the movie The BR players are all updatable so it's possible to play the latest movies. However, this player has a VERY weak failure mode and upgrade procedure. This likely makes this required operation out of reach for most people on this device.
I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY DISC PLAY OR CONNECTION ISSUES AS HAVE BEEN REPORTED BY OTHER USERS. MY ONLY ADVICE ON THIS IS TO KEEP THE FIRMWARE UPDATED EITHER BY LAN OR BY CALLING SAMSUNG AND REQUESTING A FIRMWARE DISC. For those who wonder if it will play homemade Blu-Ray DVDs I can report that I have sucessfully created a Blu-Ray DVD with menus on a 25G Single Layer BD-RE (Rewritable) disk using the LG GGW-H20L burner. Other firmware updatres are available but I haven't needed them yet. This player is good as far as disks that work on it but it does not support 48kHz/24-bit HD true sound that few blu-ray disks come with. The sound will pop out of sync with the visual. Before you buy call the manufacturer and ask if they have solved this problem by issuing a firmware (disk to put in the machine to update the harddrive) or not.
Upconversion on this player is mediocre, which is essential if you have vast library of DVDs. I figured instead of spending $50 or so on upconvert DVD player to work with my new TV, I decided to go directly to Blu-Ray, since the Blu-Ray is now standard of HD DVDs. I found that the picture quality is great and the upconversion quality is superb for this player. Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.
Rating:
Review sent in by Ethan Derrick. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com
Sigmatek BR-1000 Blu-ray player reviewed by Tom Vitter
June 28, 2008
Design:
Like many of its precedessor designs this player looks shiny and high tech. The front panel features a glossy black finish that's prone to fingerprints. There are only On/Off button coupled with directional pad for forward and reverse operation. There are plenty of LED lights to indicate operations.
Remote Control:
We absolutely hated the remote on the previous model. Luckily a more reasonable clicker was included on this model. Toward the bottom half of the remote is the circular directional pads surround by three large buttons and four smaller buttons in the corners. Our biggest complaint with the remote is that the setup menu button was buried at the bottom.
Features:
This player is one of the first player to be Blu-ray profile 1.1 compliant. This means it meets several hardware requirements including 64kb of onboard persistent memory 256MB of local storage and both secondary audio and video decoders.This should allow the player to play picture-in-picture commentary and perhaps take advantage of other interactive features available on Blu-ray Profile 1.1 discs--none of which are on the market yet. This player is one of the first Blu-ray players that can output both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks in bitstream format. The connectivity package on the player is very good. The main video output is naturally HDMI which is capable of outputting both 1080p video signals as well as HD audio.
Performance:
This player evinced middling performance. It didn't pass the Film Resolution Loss Test. as the edges of one of the boxes exhibited strobe-like behavior--we've seen other players perform worse. We could see some minor moire in the grandstands of Raymond James Stadium but otherwise it did an acceptable job. It had no problem passing the Video Resolution Loss Test demonstrating its competence on video-based material. On M:I:III it did well by showing no moire on the stairs at the beginning of Chapter 8. We also looked at some movies in 24 frames per second output. The output at 24 frames was not as flawless as it should have been. We saw quite a few instances of stuttering that wasn't present when we had set at standard 1080p/60 mode.
Rating:
Review sent in by Tom Vitter. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com
JING WEN Laroche from Baghdad has sent in review of Pioneer BDP-94HD Blu-ray player
June 28, 2008
I purchased this player with the1.9 firmware and it was great. Yes, it did take a very long time to load Pirates of the Carribean - almost 3 full minutes. That is due to the disc mostly using Java (BD-J) for interactivity. Few days ago I flash updated the firmware to 2.60 in about 14 minutes. See manufacturer's web site for the firmware and carefully follow the instructions. They will even provide you with the disc.
I purchased a 46" HDTV and a Toshiba HD-A20 1080p HD DVD Player player along with this Blu-ray Disc Player. I wanted to see the results of both Blu-Ray and HD DVD before investing in more expensive units. I've not had many complaints of load times. The average is about 30 seconds for most films. I have had a few that take several minutes but I don't sweat it much. It just gives some extra time to get something to drink and run to the bathroom before starting! There needs to be a ethernet port or some other way to access updates online direct to this player, a wireless method possibly? My Toshiba HD DVD player has the CAT-5 ethernet port and it makes updating (not exactly simple) more flexible. Manufacture's website offers the image (ISO) burn to DVDR method for updating, but this seems not convenient at best. One other thing I immediately noticed is how whisper quiet this player is. There is no noticeable fan noise whatsoever. Compare this to the Toshiba HD-XA2 fan, which has a sound resembling the whine of a tiny fighter jet.
The remote is as usual with other electronic devices. It is extremely clutered. It takes about 30 seconds or so once a disc is inserted for the movie to begin its menuing/playing sequences. The unit loads the movie info into memory during that time I believe. Some movie discs aren't produced to support the Resume functionality where you can watch a movie. There is low fan noise during dvd playback, which was only detectable with the tv turned off. While the movie is playing, I couldn't hear the fan at all. The display on the front is a gray-blue. There are 4 brightness settings (High-Med-Low-Off), which can be accessed with one button on the top left of the remote. Very nice. With the display turned off, this is a very nice viewing experience. There is also an additional display button on the remote, which tells you the TRT of the disc, which chapter you are watching, time remaining in the chapter, and bit rate.
Rating:
Review sent in by JING WEN Laroche. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com
New Blu-ray player Panasonic DMP-BD50 reviewed by Alex Hruby.
June 28, 2008
I aquired a Panasonic DMP-BD30E, SharpBD-HP20S, and PS3. In the 1 week that I've had this player, it's done a marvelous job on video and audio quality. I'm watching it on a 49" Pioneer connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned. This player started having hardware/software problems. It would simply quit playing during the middle of the movie The BR players are all updatable so it's possible to play the latest movies. However, this player has a VERY difficult failure mode and upgrade procedure. Since Bluray is still in its infancy (so-to-speak) there aren't many options for players.
I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY DISC PLAY OR CONNECTION ISSUES AS HAVE BEEN REPORTED BY OTHER USERS. MY ONLY ADVICE ON THIS IS TO KEEP THE FIRMWARE UPDATED EITHER BY LAN OR BY CALLING SAMSUNG AND REQUESTING A FIRMWARE DISC. For those who wonder if it will play homemade Blu-Ray DVDs I can report that I have sucessfully created a Blu-Ray DVD with menus on a 25G Single Layer BD-RE (Rewritable) disk using the LG GGW-H20L burner. Other firmware updatres are available but I haven't needed them yet. This player is good as far as disks that work on it but it does not support 48kHz/24-bit HD true sound that other blu-ray disks come with. The sound will pop out of sync with the visual. Before you buy call the manufacturer and ask if they have solved this problem by issuing a firmware (disk to put in the machine to update the harddrive) or not.
Upconversion on this player is great, which is paramount if you have vast library of DVDs. I figured instead of spending $75 or so on upconvert DVD player to work with my new TV, I decided to go directly to Blu-Ray, since the Blu-Ray is now standard of HD DVDs. This player is by far the best picture quality on DVD upconversions thanks to the HQV chip that player uses. The audio and video quality is also great for blu-rays. Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.
Rating:
Review sent in by Alex Hruby. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com
Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player reviewed by Ted Aquino
June 27, 2008
Design:
This player received the highest design score of any next-generation player we've reviewed so far. Its silver chassis and a black front panel combine for an unusually stylish look. The front panel is glossy and is marked by only two buttons: power and disc open/close. our only complaint about the design is that the aforementioned blue light around the disc drive and the blue light next to the power button cannot be dimmed.
Remote Control:
Included remote control has a decent button layout. The remote has a centrally located directional pad surrounded by useful buttons such as Back and Pop-up Menu. We liked the separate rocker buttons for volume and channel control--for those who want to control their TV with this remote--but the placement of the playback controls is subpar. The back side of the remote is covered with a glossy finish attracting finger prints.
Features:
The main feature of this player is that it can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs. It can play standard DVDs and audio CDs plus it can read MP3s and JPEG files stored on data discs. One of the more frustrating issues with Blu-ray has been the confusion over Blu-ray profiles which indicate what features a Blu-ray player supports. The good news if that this player supports Blu-ray Profile 1.1 which means it can play back picture-in-picture commentary tracks available on some newer Blu-ray Discs coming out this year. It does not currently support Blu-ray Profile 2.0--which allows for Internet-enabled features--but neither does any other current player. Soundtrack support for high-definition disc players has always been confusing but getting a handle on exactly what this player can and can't do is mind-boggling. While this player sports the Dolby TrueHD logo on the outside of the player it's only capable of decoding Dolby TrueHD soundtracks to two-channel PCM. The connectivity of this player is a bit disappointing.
Performance:
We put this player up against several other players we had on hand. We spent several hours watching footage on these players and the verdict was clear: all the players we looked at offered extremely similar image quality. Despite there being tons of very detailed scenes we found the players to be nearly equally sharp. Every time we thought we noticed a difference we'd watch it on the other player and noticed that it was there too. We decided to move on to the Mission: Impossible III disc and found more of the same. This player and indeed none of the Blu-ray players we've tested so far cannot output 1080p at 24 frames per second (1080p/24).
Rating:
Review sent in by Ted Aquino. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com
