Best Blu-Ray player?

Robert1986

Robert1986

Robert1986

Soldato
Joined
17 Apr 2007
Posts
23,162
Location
stat city
I am pretty sure my PS3 is on its way out as its one of the original 60gb BC models from launch. I wondering about getting a stand alone blu-ray player just for back up or sharing with someone else in the house.

Whats the best stand alone Blu-Ray player right now? My budget is around 150GBP.

Thanks.
 
Get one of the newer samsungs, these players alllow full bitrate dolby digital and dts sound, which apparently isn't far off HD audio anyway.
 
just got my Samsung BDP1600 as it was quite cheap and as -Ad- has stated the audio side of this player suits me, very quick loading times although the remote is too laggy (not a problem for me as i use a harmony anyway)

if i didnt find the sammy at such a good price then i would have bought the panasonic :)
 
richolmes72 said:
I would say the same thing about my Sony S350. Got it for a bargainous price last November.
Click to expand...

I would second that, Bought the 350 as I really didnt need a PS3, and its great, totally silent operation, hardly uses any power, picture is great, and it has coaxial SP/DIF which suits me better as my AV amp has 2 opticals and 3 coaxial inputs, and the opticals are already in use.

It's also stunningly fast to load disks, its almost comical how the "this bluray may take a few minutes to load" message pops up and disappears almost before you can read it.
 
Corasik said:
I would second that, Bought the 350 as I really didnt need a PS3, and its great, totally silent operation, hardly uses any power, picture is great, and it has coaxial SP/DIF which suits me better as my AV amp has 2 opticals and 3 coaxial inputs, and the opticals are already in use.

It's also stunningly fast to load disks, its almost comical how the "this bluray may take a few minutes to load" message pops up and disappears almost before you can read it.
Click to expand...

If connecting this way get a samsung. As I have said they give you the full bitrate DTS and DD soundtracks, better than those from the sony player.
 
The sony has maximum DTS bitrate over SP/DIF (1536kbps), and 640kbps DolbyDigital, which is the maximum for both standards over sp/dif. Have yet to find a bluray disk which is lacking one or other of these standards. Have had no problem with TrueHD or DTS MA not outputting the high bitrate versions. So dont know what your talking about. My processor displays what the bitrate is, and every disk I've tried gives the correct maximum quality (for sp/dif) output.

I did hear that they forgot to include a 640kbps Dolby track on the Ironman bluray, but I dont have that disk so I cant comment on it. But I get 640k from any disk with dolby encoding, and 1536 from DTS encoded disks. I guess what your saying is it will recode the Dolby track's to DTS 1536... I'd have to listen to that before I decided, as the codecs are not the same efficiency, and the majority of people cant tell the difference between either 640kbps dolby, 1536 DTS, or a PCM master, in a blind test.
 
Last edited:
Corasik said:
The sony has maximum DTS bitrate over SP/DIF (1536kbps), and 640kbps DolbyDigital, which is the maximum for both standards over sp/dif. Have yet to find a bluray disk which is lacking one or other of these standards. Have had no problem with TrueHD or DTS MA not outputting the high bitrate versions. So dont know what your talking about. My processor displays what the bitrate is, and every disk I've tried gives the correct maximum quality (for sp/dif) output.
Click to expand...

It seems I fail at life, goodbye cruel world :(
 
For a budget player I wouldn't look further than the Pioneer BDP-51FD, I upgraded my Sony BPB300 to it and was blown away by the difference both in terms of PQ and Sound

Only down side of it is it isn't Profile 2.0 compatible but I really couldn't care less about that:p
 
-Ad- said:
It seems I fail at life, goodbye cruel world :(
Click to expand...

Nah, I see what your getting at, that it downmixes PCM, and TrueHD to 1536DTS, but the question remains, is it's downmix actually better than the lower bit rate 640 Dolby stream. All depends how good that on the fly conversion is. Plus does it strip out the dolby dialog normalisation etc, and/or add the DTS 10db bass lift.

The main difference between DTS and Dolby is normally put down to slightly different mixes in the first place, I suspect that switching on the fly is more a gimmick than anything else.

PS, I did say that one reason for picking the sony is that its sp/dif is coaxial and I have no spare optical inputs on my amp :P
 
Munkeh said:
Slightly off-topic but can it not encode it at a higher bit-rate than 1536kbps? I thought you could get 192kHz/24bit in stereo over optical which is around 9000kbps?
Click to expand...

1536Kbps is the max bit rate supported by DTS. Tis a standard and if you try and go outside that standard, amps etc won't be able to support or decode it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom