New Bluray player - which?

Associate
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Hi all,

time to concede i'm well out of the loop of whats hot or not with consumer electronics and it's too much grief to start a whole new genre of magazine subs again.

My sharp BDP-10H Blu ray player has died. Frankly it was rubbish but was free with the tv, which isn't :)

I have a growing collection of discs and hundreds of Dvd's so need to sort something. requirements are as follows, however I'm pretty easy going. I still have a few contacts left in the industry and can get hold of pana / sony for a good price but i'm open to suggestions:


- Blu ray player that does a good job of upscaling dvd's
- On board audio decoding - I have pre / power amp set ups, 6 channel plus powered sub, originally set up for 5.1 DTS / DD
- Champagne coloured...... to match the rest of the gear..... if at all possible
- easy to upgrade firmware - network connection?
- fast start up / loading times

Not really sure what else needed / available? I left the industry and stopped being bothered as Blu-ray hit the market and haven't had the need to keep up. Budget is flexible - however after building this new i7 I'd prefer to keep things towards the budget / id end of the market. Better add I have no need to record.

thanks in advance, all comments welcome.
 
Soldato
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Samsung ones such as BDP-1600, BDP3600(wireless) and BDP4600(wireless and streaming) have good visuals and upscaling but I would say stay clear. I had nothing but trouble from a BDP-1600 its damn awful. Its not WiFi out of the box and is misleading, there are dodgy ones out there that won't region hack via the remote and have dodgy firmware. (US firmware "broke" many BDP1600's) and they take an age to load a Blu Ray disc and an an age just to get to the player menu screen. I got rid of my BDP1600 had nothing but trouble.

I just got myself a LG BD370 and it is a dream to use. Its very fast to turn on and launches a blu ray in seconds. The menus are fast and intuitive and the remote is responsive. It has You Tube and plays divx, xvid and HD MKV's too. The upscaling engine is not too good but Blu Ray is excellent. Its in the top 5 best players in HCC magazine.

However they have just launched the LG BD390 which was out last week. Stocks sold out in seconds, it has WiFi built in and streams video from your PC. It has a new upscaling engine which is supposed to be really good. It retails for £199 but there are places selling it for £170 if you can find it in stock. It sounds like a really good budget player especially for the streaming.

Another player that is highly rated is the Panasonic BD55 and the newer BD80.
 
Associate
OP
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streaming, probably won't use it but if it could stream slideshows it'll get used eventually for customers.

LG - hmmm never been that impressed in the past by there gear, sure it's good value and generally packed with features (usually gimmicks) but build quality doesn't cut it. I bought a 32" pure flat (inside and out) from them direct when flat crt at 32" meant £800-1000. It was eol stock, new boxed but they were short of cabinets. I paid £150 + vat for it. Pic quality was excellent, not upto the pana of the day bit for the oney it was great. Based on that one I took a fair few more and sold them on with nice alphasson stands as a 'free upgrade'.

Prob was they, like all the lg gear I ever stocked sold etc aged really badly. Mine was used as the main tv for around a year until I got my first plasma and by that time the pic was realy poor - biggest issue was that it looked very dull, like a 10 year old set. I spoke to some of the customers who brought them, most coulfdn't tell the difference seeing it day in and out but when you brought stocked and sold the best day to day I did.

Don't have any dealings with them at all nowadays, they still seem to sell high spec nice looking stuff for relatively nothing and their mobile phones I've come into contact with are awful. Will give them a look though, as upscaling is important (old sharp did a good job, only thing it did do well) I'll stear clear of the bd370.

Anyone else have any thoughts?
 
Associate
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The OP needs a player with onboard decoding.

I'm in the same boat myself at the moment as I'm trying to replace my ps3 with something with onboard as well so as to make the best use of my amp. The BDP3600 is one of the few in the more budget end of the market that I've come across that even has the option. Most seem to only output in digital. I'm assuming there is more out there with onboard decoding but unfortunatley I haven't come across them, in the 200ish price bracket.
 
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Associate
OP
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25 May 2009
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Derbyshire
just checked out the lg 390 - definately has onboard decoding, and has been well recieved. Fugly though.

As a budget choice I might give one a whirl, I'd rather spend the money or more on a player without all the wireless streaming gumf. Can't find one for sale anywhere though after a quick glook.
 

RSR

RSR

Soldato
Joined
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Id personally go with:

Pioneer BDP-320 or Denon DBP-2010U :)

Lil off topic, have Arcam released a Bluray player yet?
 
Associate
OP
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Location
Derbyshire
thanks picked those up via google. at a horrendous thread on whf. prefer the us glossy black to the uk one but def not going to pay the near on £600 for a hacked import. presumably having limited distibrution and prosuction means these won't be aggressively discounted. Pity.
 
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