Which BluRay DVD Player?

Hessian

Hessian

Hessian

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I was thinking about buying myself a nice BluRay player, but I've got absolutely no experience with BluRay and was just wondering if anyone here could let me know what the brands are that are highly recommended! And if money wasn't an issue which is the best of the best?
 
I'd go Samsung BD-P1500 for £160 if on a budget

Sony's BDP-S350 is popular at £200

The new Panasonic BD35 gets rave reviews and I've played with this model myself and its great, between £260-£290 and their flagship BD55 for over £350

All of the above either ship with profile 2.0 or in the case of Samsung it's downloadable shortly

Their are some Dennon over £500 but you wont go wrong with any of the above but your best off looking at those in detail depending upon the rest of your setup etc
 
Most blu ray players are stupidly slow at loading up.

The PS3 is a popular choice as it is very good quality, stupidly quick to load up, and does soo many other things, like being the most up to date player out there (availablility of updates when needed). Plus the dvd upscaling from it is fantastic :D

Also if money is no object then check out the new pioneer LX-71 (think that's the model number), but that is x2 the cost of the PS3.

Those would be my only 2 choices of players out there.
 
I still highly rate the PS3 as a Bluray player - as with the PS2 bringing DVD tot he masses with a good player, so the PS3 has now done the same with Bluray.

I'm not a big gamer.
However the way I looked at it was I was (at the time) buying the only Bluray player that was definitely going to be upgradeable to Profile 2.
It has a fast boot and spin-up time.
And there was the added feature that if I really did want to game I could.
 
I actually bought a PS3 lastweek for the purpose of being my media centre and blue ray player. The gaming fuctionality of the machine was secondary to me, I've never been into console games, well not since the SNES days at least (although I've had some fun on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue :D which I got with the PS3 )

I highly recommend the PS3 for general media handling purposes and blue ray. It just does so much and offers so much value compared to any of the other options really. I consider it a bit of a nobrainer when all is a said and done. It upscales DVD's better than my DVD player does aswell, then again that was £50 so I guess that's to be expected. So in one fell swoop I removed the requirment I had for me to make a media centre pc, I removed the need for my DVD player, I gained a blue ray player (they look astoundingly good at 1080p) and I gained a games console, for what that's worth ...but hey Gran Turismo 5 (the full version not the Prologue) is rumoured to be released next March :D so that's a bonus of having a PS3.
 
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Panasonic BD-55 or Sony S550. These players both decode all HD sound formats and send it over 5.1 analogues, so you can get a cheap AV amp (rather than a newer HDMI equipped one) and get great surround sound.

For DVD and Blu-Ray, IMHO the surround sound is just as important as the increase in picture quality.
 
Whilst the BD35/55 arent as quick to spin as a PS3 they are no slouches, the PS3 is good value for money providing a lot of useful features and good BD and upscaled DVD performance, earlier this year it would have been my 1st choice for BD quality but it can't match the likes of the BD35/55 now in my opinion
 
ten80p said:
Whilst the BD35/55 arent as quick to spin as a PS3 they are no slouches, the PS3 is good value for money providing a lot of useful features and good BD and upscaled DVD performance, earlier this year it would have been my 1st choice for BD quality but it can't match the likes of the BD35/55 now in my opinion
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If you only want a BD player then dedicated is great. But at £300 you get a first rate dvd upscaler, quick loading player, ganes machine, and great streamer for all divx content and music.
 
Bossk128 said:
Panasonic BD-55 or Sony S550. These players both decode all HD sound formats and send it over 5.1 analogues, so you can get a cheap AV amp (rather than a newer HDMI equipped one) and get great surround sound.

For DVD and Blu-Ray, IMHO the surround sound is just as important as the increase in picture quality.
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Good avdice imo... You can pick up some awesome non-HDMI amps for little cost these days. These older 'flagship' models will sound much better than cheaper HDMI equiped ones I should think.
 
Bossk128 said:
Panasonic BD-55 or Sony S550. These players both decode all HD sound formats and send it over 5.1 analogues, so you can get a cheap AV amp (rather than a newer HDMI equipped one) and get great surround sound.

For DVD and Blu-Ray, IMHO the surround sound is just as important as the increase in picture quality.
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I don't see the point of getting HD audio if you are going to put it though a 'cheap AV amp'. HD Audio is only worth it if you have components of sufficient quality to make use of it otherwise it's a waste of time.
 
i think he means a last-gen amp which doesn't have the HDMI audio capabilities and is now priced on par with lower quality HDMI enabled amps......and if he doesn't he should have meant that lol coz you're right.
 
marscay said:
i think he means a last-gen amp which doesn't have the HDMI audio capabilities and is now priced on par with lower quality HDMI enabled amps......and if he doesn't he should have meant that lol coz you're right.
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If that is the case then what's the point in getting DVD player that can decode HD sound formats internally. If you are using an decent spec older amp that's designed for older codecs then surely you should be using the older codecs as well.

Or am I missing something?
 
-Ad- said:
Most blu ray players are stupidly slow at loading up.
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guess you havent tried the 350 bootsup in 6 seconds and is on par with the ps3 in loading the disks and gets better reviews for picture quality,but to me all blu-ray are about the same for picture quality


-Ad- said:
Also if money is no object then check out the new pioneer LX-71 (think that's the model number), but that is x2 the cost of the PS3.

Those would be my only 2 choices of players out there.
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money would have to be no object if you bought the pioneer which will be no better at blu-ray than the others,thats just my opinion
 
[DOD]Asprilla;12662272 said:
If that is the case then what's the point in getting DVD player that can decode HD sound formats internally. If you are using an decent spec older amp that's designed for older codecs then surely you should be using the older codecs as well.

Or am I missing something?
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Analogue signals do not need decoding.
 
There are loads of older amps which are good amplifiers, but do not have current gen codecs. This doesn't stop them being good amplifiers though, after all amps should really only amplify the audio they are given. Flagship amplifiers from 5 years ago (you can't go too far back, because there weren't really any multichannel amps before DVD or Laserdisc) will probably be better than the current crop of high feature-low audio quality amps that have come out since HD audio was available.
 
pre1twa said:
Analogue signals do not need decoding.
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I mean, what's the point in getting your BD player to decode HD to analogue when you can used the DTS (or whatever) track on the DB and out put it digitally to the amp. The let the amp to the work as that's what it's built for.

Bossk128 said:
There are loads of older amps which are good amplifiers, but do not have current gen codecs. This doesn't stop them being good amplifiers though, after all amps should really only amplify the audio they are given. Flagship amplifiers from 5 years ago (you can't go too far back, because there weren't really any multichannel amps before DVD or Laserdisc) will probably be better than the current crop of high feature-low audio quality amps that have come out since HD audio was available.
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This is very true and I agree whole heartedly. I feel that unless people are spending an awful lot of money (many £ks) on their amp and speakers, the are much better off looking at older pre HD / HDMI amps which will offer superiour audio for their money.

However, I still don't understand why you would want to decode the HD audio in the BD player and then output it as analogue when you can output the 5.1 or 6.1 track digitally to an older amp that can handle it.
 
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