Some blu-ray player questions

Soldato
Joined
6 Oct 2004
Posts
20,272
Location
England
Hi,

For xmas I am going to buy my parents a nice little blu-ray player (Looking at around sub 140ish) to go with the new TV they just bought.

Just some simple questions I want confirming -

Blu-ray players DO play dvd's yes? My PS3 does so im guessing the answer is yes, also do they upscale the DVDS?

Can all blu-ray players output at 1080p and not just 720p? (They have a 1080p TV)

Are they just plug and play straight into the HDMI slot on the TV? They don't have an amp/seperate speaker system (yet) so they will be using the tv's speakers.

I was looking at this sony player (Even though the TV is samsung...hopefully they don't have OCD and need it to match like I do :p)

'Sony BDPS360B Profile 2.0 Blu-ray Player with BD Live'
Whats profile 2.0/BD live?
 
will play back DVD's and upscale using HDMI, and will also play CD's
will output at 1080P
yup just use HDMI from player into TV.
BD Live is online content such as trailers, extra behind scenes ect.
 
My related Q would be...

2nd hand 60gb PS3 for BD playback or brand new BD player - roughly £150 each I reckon?
 
My related Q would be...

2nd hand 60gb PS3 for BD playback or brand new BD player - roughly £150 each I reckon?

Depends what you want it for. 60GB PS3 will use about 180W+ just to play BRs, standalones around 20W at a guess? PS3 is faster than most BR players still though.
 
Quality wise etc though should be a good bet?

If Im only watching a movie then the wattage doesnt really matter too much :)
 
Remember that blu-ray is a new format and always changing. So you will need to do firm ware updates. So if this is something that you parents might struggle with and you can't help them out. Find one which has a network port and is easy to do.
 
Yeah, they will play DVD's but that doesnt always mean they are the best way to replay a DVD. The upscaled output of my Bluray player has a lot more combing artifacts than the componant 576p output from my old DVD player. Basically my TV's upscalers outperform the upscalers in the Blu-ray player. I noticed the same thing when I tried an upscaling DVD player. The best results were achieved when the TV (panasonic plasma) handled all the scaling.
 
Depends what you want it for. 60GB PS3 will use about 180W+ just to play BRs, standalones around 20W at a guess? PS3 is faster than most BR players still though.

Newer standalones outperform the PS3 these days, the S350 and S550's from sony are extremely fast in loading disks, and getting through the menus. As for wattage, the S350 uses about 15W when playing.

PS3's use a lot of power even when simply playing a bluray disk, although in practice even if you watch 3-4 movies every day, the difference is still only going to be in the region of 1 unit (10-15pence) per day.
 
Newer standalones outperform the PS3 these days, the S350 and S550's from sony are extremely fast in loading disks, and getting through the menus. As for wattage, the S350 uses about 15W when playing.

PS3's use a lot of power even when simply playing a bluray disk, although in practice even if you watch 3-4 movies every day, the difference is still only going to be in the region of 1 unit (10-15pence) per day.

Not in disc loading. Check out HCC as they actually check and list disc loading times in reviews. I think only LG and Oppo players get close to the PS3 for loading discs, that said the PS3 slim is actually slower than the older PS3. S350 and S550 are previous gen players, S360 etc have been out a while now.

Picture quality they're all much the same, the only difference you're likely to see is if the player is applying any processing to the image before sending it to the display.
 
My S350 loads disks really fast, slip in the disk, close the tray, it pops up the screen which says this may take several minutes and boom a few seconds later its on the main menu. Definalty faster than my brothers PS3 40gig.

The S300's were slow, but the 350's are nice. I dont replace standalone kit every time there is a minor revision :P so I havent bothered to look at the 360.
 
Back
Top Bottom