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Roberto Johnson from Warsaw has sent in review of Sigmatek BR-1000 Blu-ray player

July 6, 2008



I obtained this player with the2.0 firmware and it was great. Yes, it did take a very long time to load Twister  - almost 3 full minutes. That is due to the disc predominantly using Java (BD-J) for interactivity. Few days ago I flash updated the firmware to 2.60 in about 11 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 am very impressed with the clarity sharpness and rich color of the 1080p image. The picture is as good and in some ways better than the Toshiba.  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 unpolished 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.

Remote is reasonably good. No more fumbling around for 2 different remotes. The one area where this remote disappoints is that unlike the black aluminum Toshiba remote the buttons are not backlit.  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 hard to hear 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 bottom of the remote. Very convenient. 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:

4 Blu-ray rating

 

 

Review sent in by Roberto Johnson. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

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New Blu-ray player Sharp BD-HP50 reviewed by John Luben.

July 6, 2008



I aquired a Sony BDP-S300, Philips BDP7100, and PS3. In the 4 weeks that I've had this player, it's done a good job on video and audio quality. I'm playing it on a 46" Sony connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned.  I went with this player due to positive reviews and how I feel about the the brand. 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. 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.  One drawback that keeps this unit from being perfect is no ethernet connectability for firmware upgrading. It is my opinion that this player was released prematurely based on its feature set. This player did a great job on the Bluray compatibility & picture quality and the DVD upconversion quality.  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 great, which is paramount if you have large 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. This player has great Standard disc Upconversion.  Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.

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Rating:

5 Blu-ray rating

 

 

Review sent in by John Luben. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

Written by admin · Filed Under Reviews 

Philips BDP9000 Blu-ray player reviewed by Travis Fader

July 5, 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:

This player can play standard-definition DVDs and CDs. It cannot play any discs of the competing HD DVD format. The BD-P1400's high-resolution soundtrack support is excellent. It has onboard decoding for Dolby Digital Plus Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD High Resolution. This means it can output these soundtracks either in PCM format over the HDMI output or via the analog outputs. the player also offers bitstream output for high-resolution soundtracks. There should be absolutely no sound quality difference whether you let the receiver decode or the player decode. Connectivity is also solid. There's an HDMI output capable of carrying both 1080p video signals and high- resolution audio. One drawback for this player is that it is Blu-ray profile 1.0 which means it does not meet the hardware requirements that will be necessary to access some special features on Blu-ray discs released in the future.

Performance:

This player performed excellently by properly deinterlacing 1080i signals to 1080p without artifacts or jaggies. It passed the video resolution test easily and also had no problem with the film resolution test. It did stumble on the two video-based HQV tests--showing some jaggies on a rotating white line and three pivoting lines--but we tend to give these tests less weight as there is very little Blu-ray content shot on video (as opposed to film) currently available. we started with Mission Impossible: III. We immediately took a look at the stairs at beginning of Chapter 8 and the it had no problem outputting a clean image. After spot-checking some known problematic scenes we sat down with the excellent-looking Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Details are razor sharp and the jaggies of the DVD era were nowhere to be seen. The jaggies seen on the video-based HQV tests were nowhere to be found in all the program material we watched.

 Rating:
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4 Blu-ray rating

 

Review sent in by Travis Fader.  Thanks!  Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

Written by admin · Filed Under Reviews 

Steve Giegerich from Warsaw has sent in review of Sigmatek BR-1000 Blu-ray player

July 5, 2008



I bought this player with the1.6 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 predominantly using Java (BD-J) for interactivity. Few days ago I flash updated the firmware to 2.60 in about 15 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. After I had updated the firmware to the newest version at the time than even Van Wilder played perfectly. The remote also works great I just wish that it was backlit.  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 counter productive 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.

Remote is reasonably good. No more fumbling around for 2 different remotes. The one area where this remote disappoints is that unlike the black aluminum Toshiba remote the buttons are not backlit.  Many movies have tons of extra content not found on regular dvd's. Watching at 1080p is fantastic and any movie lover will be more than happy with this player.  There is slight 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 bottom of the remote. Very convenient. 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:

4 Blu-ray rating

 

 

Review sent in by Steve Giegerich. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

Written by admin · Filed Under Reviews 

New Blu-ray player Philips BDP7100 reviewed by Perry Young.

July 5, 2008



I purchased a Panasonic DMP-BD50, Pioneer BDP-LX70A, and PS3. In the 3 weeks that I've had this player, it's done a fine job on video and audio quality. I'm watching it on a 50" Hitachi connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned.  This player takes by far the longest of my three players to load movies and simply responding to an eject/open request takes 30 seconds for some reason. 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. But once you get that 1080p flat screen there's just no other way to watch video. Even with the problem it is worth getting this player for 1080p picures.

I was able to play many DVD that I had already and it does project it very nicely on my new flat screen tv. Very clear picture and very nice sound. Blu-Ray movie displays crystal clear.  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 most 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 essential if you have large library of DVDs.  I figured instead of spending $150 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. The upconversion is wonderful! Best part is I can use optical and take advantage of the new audio codecs.  Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.

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Rating:

4 Blu-ray rating

 

 

Review sent in by Perry Young. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

Written by admin · Filed Under Reviews 

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