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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