Browse > Home / Archive: July 2008

New Blu-ray player Sony BDP-S2000ES reviewed by Dianne Chambliss.

July 3, 2008



I aquired a Daewoo DBP-1000, Sony BDP-S350, and PS3. In the 3 weeks that I've had this player, it's done a good job on video and audio quality. I'm watching it on a 46" Vizio 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 hard to understand failure mode and upgrade procedure. Since Bluray is still in its infancy (so-to-speak) there aren't many options for players.

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.  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 mediocre, which is very important if you have large library of DVDs.  I figured instead of spending $100 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:

3 blu-ray rating

 

 

Review sent in by Dianne Chambliss. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

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Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray player reviewed by Pete Dochterman

July 2, 2008



Design:

The look of this player is a refreshing break from what we see on other Blu-ray players. The dark gray plastic casing has rounded corners rather than the traditional boxy edges. The faceplate is darker glossy black with the  logo prominently featured in the center of the unit.

Remote Control:

The remote for this player is probably the best remote we've seen packaged with a high-definition disc player.  It largely resembles the Philips TV remotes--which we're not huge fans of--but this one gets a lot right. At the very top is an illuminated strip of device names and you select which device you want the remote to control by scrolling through them with the Select button.  The directional pad is easy to use with the appropriate buttons littered around it. There are convenient rocker buttons to control TV channels and volume.  We also like the way the remote felt in our hand; it has some weight to it and feels solid.

Features:

This player can play back both Blu-ray and standard DVD discs as well as standard audio CDs. There's no support for either of the niche high-resolution audio formats. Soundtrack support is adequate for a Blu-ray player but somewhat disappointing when compared to Toshiba's HD DVD players. This player has built-in decoding for standard Dolby Digital and DTS as well as Dolby Digital Plus which is a slightly higher resolution format of Dolby Digital. This player has no support for those highest-resolution next- gen audio formats. The connectivity of this player is nearly comprehensive for a Blu-ray player. The highlight is the HDMI jack which is capable of outputting both high definition video (up to 1080p at either 24 or 60 frames per second) and multichannel high resolution audio.

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.

 

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Rating:

3 blu-ray rating

 

Review sent in by Pete Dochterman.  Thanks!  Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

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Ethan Derrick from Paris has sent in review of Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player

July 2, 2008



I obtained this player with the1.9 firmware and it was great. Yes, it did take a very long time to load I Am Legend  - 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 18 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. Setting up was quick and straightforward - no problems here. I noticed that this Sony player weighs much less than the Toshiba HD-A20 HD DVD player.  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.  We have DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 coming out now. The color quality is exceptional and images are very sharp. When playing regular DVD's the images aren't as sharp naturally.  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 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.
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Rating:

3 blu-ray rating

Review sent in by Ethan Derrick. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

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New Blu-ray player Denon DVD-3800BD reviewed by David Parekh.

July 2, 2008



I bought a Samsung BD-P1200, Sony BDP-S300, and PS3. In the month that I've had this player, it's done a excellent job on video and audio quality. I'm running it on a 49" Sony connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned.  I can say right off that Panasonic has taken the sting out of the higher price of Blu-Ray players with a good offering of features you won't find in other models. 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 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 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 large 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. 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.

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Rating:

4 Blu-ray rating

 

 

Review sent in by David Parekh. Thanks! Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

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Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu-ray player reviewed by Mat Smithernan

July 1, 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:

The included remote is pretty good. Most of the standard playback controls  glow in the dark which makes them easier to see in a darkened home theater. There's a directional pad toward the bottom of the remote and handy buttons located around the perimeter. A little more button differentiation would have been nice.

Features:

The main feature of this player is its ability to play Blu-ray discs. It can also play standard-definition DVDs and upconvert them to higher resolutions . Unlike Sony's PlayStation 3 and Sony's older BDP-S1 the BDP-S300 doesn't support SACD. This player has support for standard Dolby Digital and DTS surround soundtracks and it also has support for the slightly higher quality Dolby Digital Plus format. What's more important is that this player lacks support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks. The connectivity is standard for the breed. There's an HDMI output which can handle both 1080p high-definition video along with high resolution audio. This player also has a couple of additional enthusiast-friendly features. One is the ability to output at 24 frames per second. We've tested a few players with this ability and haven't seen any increased performance with the displays we've used.

Performance:

Image quality on Blu-ray discs from this player is excellent. Blu-ray discs generally deliver very impressive picture quality. The level of detail visible on extremely sharp releases such as Corpse Bride and Crank just isn't possible on even the best-looking DVD discs. This same increase in image quality is also found on HD DVD discs. While the image quality of Blu-ray discs was excellent we found it to be essentially equal to the other Blu-ray players we've tested. We also took a look at this player's ability to output Blu-ray movies at 24 frames per second (fps) and found no improvement using this method. The Blu-ray performance using Silicon Optix's HQV test suite on Blu-ray. It handled the film resolution test nicely displaying the full resolution of the test pattern and also smoothly rendering a slow pan across Raymond James Stadium without significant moire or jaggies. It also had no problem with the less important video-based tests deftly handling two jaggies tests and another resolution test. We were impressed with its performance on test patterns but of course the true test is how it holds up with program material. We found the player's image quality on Blu-ray Discs to be excellent on a par with other top contenders such as the Samsung BD-P1200 and the Sony PlayStation 3.

 


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Rating:

3 blu-ray rating

 

Review sent in by Mat Smithernan.  Thanks!  Send in your reviews to Admin@buyblurayplayers.com

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