Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Now that HD is dead, Which blu-ray player to buy

I had been waiting for this to happen for a few months. Didnt have the budget to buy a dual player, I waited for Sony and Toshiba to figure it out between them. So blu-ray is the winner. Now I am confused which blu-ray player to buy. I am looking for one that is up to date, does not take forever to load DVDs, plays all features of the blu-ray DVDs. but most important for me is to make sure it supports Dolby HD and DTS HD. If someone can help me out with it, that would be great. i am currently looking at Samsung BD-P1400 or Sony BDP-S300/301.
Thanks.

I would not get either one that you mention.

The best player out is one of the new Denon’s, but they are mighty proud of them. The next best option is the Panasonic BD 50, but they are not out yet and I’d wait to hear what users have to say about them. Panasonic is having trouble with the LFE track on PCM audio. I’d wait to see if the 50 has the same issue.

I would say if your in a hurry go for the Panny 30 as it has pretty good reviews, but as Mike mentioned, it might be smart to wait and see what the 50 brings to the table.

My vote would be to go for a Panasonic. The Denon's are mighty expensive and the $1200 uses some of the same electronics as the Panasonic BD30 which is half that price. Stay away from Samsung. They're currently being sued.

The Panasonic BD30 is a great machine. It's profile 1.1. The new BD50 will be profile 2.0, but will probably cost more. If on-line content is important to you, wait for the BD50. If not, then the profile 1.1 machine will be just fine.

Buy a turntable and a nice tube amp and the hell with the new formats.

Bayne,

Its not just online content, its the fact that you can download a firmware upgrade just by plugging in your machine to your local network...I think thats worth waiting for IMHO.

That's one of the coolest features of the PS3--its wireless connectivity. Within ten minutes of plugging the machine in I had it connected to the internet and downloaded an upgrade.

So far the Panasonics have had almost no updates (last one was April 2007). I just did one Yesterday and (counting the time to download the firmware and burn the CD), it took a huge 6 minutes! I was worried about that too (as I was used to my Toshiba A30's upload capabilities), but it turns out it's even simpler with the BD30! So I would not hold out just for that.

PS: Not that upgrades are not a valid concern; just a lesser one with those panasonic units.

Timely discussion. I just got a new Denon 3808 and will be setting it up once I get some cables and networking stuff delivered.

With this thing being network-able, I want to take advantage of it's capabilities and also stream music, internet radio, pics, video, DVDs through it and the 58" plasma hanging on the wall. Also need a Blu-Ray player and having the ability to surf the internet with a bluetooth keyboard/mouse is also high on the list of "wants".

Sean mentioned the PS3. I have done an enormous amount of research and this piece of equipment is amazing. It does ALL of the stuff I mentioned above AND is one of the best Blu-Ray players out there (with the ability to take firmware upgrades.

Oh yeah, it is a game console too.

The price is pretty good when you consider the capabilities. Sony apparently has a deal right now where you sign up for a Sony credit card and get $100 off a purchase over $299 and no interest for a year. I'm thinking a new PS3 is going to be on the way soon.

Anybody using the thing for Blu-Ray? Pluses/minuses?

Ray

I use my ps3 for bluray often and no problem so far. Movies play flawlessly and no skips or freezing of any kind.

The cons would be the fact that you have to use the gamepad to control the movie (which is fine by me), or use one of the existing infrared addons so you can control it with a universal remote. The drawback of using this is that only the bluetooth remote/gamepad can turn it on or off, so you would have to manually turn it on or off (there might be some hack that allows you to use it but I'm not sure yet since I didn't research that).

Another con is that it doesn't have analog outs, only toslink/hdmi, and also only allows internal decoding of Dolby TrueHD/DTS HD (not MA as of yet) and passes multichannel PCM to the receiver only (no Dolby or DTS light on your receiver, just PCM).

I guess those 2 can be a real deal breaker for a lot of people, which isn't the case for me.