Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Which BluRay player to get ?

So... before the Warner announcement I had already decided that HD-DVD was the way to go, and even the "which Toshiba ?" question was simple -- save for an XA2, and if I didn't save enough get one of the less expensive but still excellent players.

If I go BluRay I don't even know where to start. I would be looking for a BR player which could also upconvert standard DVDs pretty well. I have a 720p projector which takes HDMI in (and apparently likes to be fed 720p rather than doing the conversion itself) and an HK630 receiver which does not take HDMI in and presumably can not decode some of the newest audio formats even with a firmware upgrade.

Do the BluRay disks also have soundtracks in older DD/DTS formats which can be used with slightly older receivers, or is there a way for the player to resample down to DD/DTS so that I can at least get DVD quality audio over a digital link ? Or do I finally need to get out the crimper and make up a 7.1 analog RCA cable ?

Any suggestions for players to look at ? I skimmed the new stuff announced at CES but nothing jumped out as being wonderful with the limited details I had time to read. Budget under $100 if possible, of course

Wait... Wait until the next generation players. Not only should you find better prices, but better features and functionality. Remember, Blu-Ray players are about 1 generation behind the HD-DVD ones, so still a little on the "buggy" side. Not that there aren't good Blu-Ray players, but when people are saying that the PS3 is the best player, that is saying something about the others.

The new Panasonic 50 sounded quite good. Is it out yet?

I agree with Nickbuol, you should wait a little bit. Unless you're also a gamer in which case I would recommend the ps3. It's a great blu-ray player and decent dvd upscaler (to my eyes it looks great, but I don't have any other upscaler so I can't say how it compares to others). Also is does output in DD and DTS, which is good since I don't have a newer receiver.

All in all I'm very impressed by it and I recommend it, except if you're not into gaming and/or if you need to control it with a universal remote and don't want to use one of the IR hacks out there to make it work.

I find it interesting that people on the boards are suggesting waiting. Anyone that spends time posting here is more likely to be towards the cutting edge, but even us early adopters suggest waiting on Blu.

It makes me think that much more that the PS3 is really the only thing driving their sales, and that the Blu format would have lost out if Sony hadn't put it in the PS3.

Yep, and vice versa, I don't think they would have sold many ps3's if it weren't for the fact that they're a great blu-ray player. After all the ps3 game selection isn't up to par with the XBOX360.

I have no doubt it would have been entirely different if Sony hadn't used their Trojan horse. They used the strength of their PlayStation brand to get Blu-ray into the hands of consumers, and while its sales have been dismal compared to their expectations, it certainly worked to defeat any standalone player penetration from HD DVD's side. HD DVD has done remarkably well considering this fact, and considering all of the fence-sitting that this whole war has inpsired.

I'm not that surprised. Buying an HD-DVD player seemed like a no-brainer -- the players were good, prices were good, and media prices had come down to the point where buying standard DVDs hardly seemed to make sense.

I can't help thinking that this is all a mistake -- that PS3 sales are distorting the numbers but are not really representative of the number of owners who will buy BR disks in any kind of volume. I guess the question is whether the HD-DVD camp can survive through the panic.

I was kinda tempted to stick with HD-DVD out of spite and just boycott Warner

The PS3/Blu-Ray combination really helped to "drive" up the numbers of Blu-Ray players sold since they are counted in the numbers. Most of what I've ready say that a majority of PS3 owners only have 1 or 2 Blu-Ray movies (Spiderman is most likely one since it came bundled with most PS3's of late), but they aren't buying additional titles.

Sony knew that they HAD to push a Blu-Ray drive with the PS3. It is helping them in the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war, but is hurting them to the extreme in the gaming arena. So was it a good idea for Sony to push Blu-Ray so hard with their PS3? A lot of "experts" say "no"... Going from #1 to #3 in the console game war is a HUGE loss. Plus to add insult to injury, Sony lost a lot of money on both the PS3 and the Blu-Ray drive that they put into the machines just to make that drop.

Back to the question at hand, though, there are Blu-Ray players on the horizon that should be a significant jump forward in stability and features for Blu-Ray to get them to where HD-DVD drives are at, which aren't perfect, but for a short wait...

But yes, if you are a console gamer, and don't have the #1 or #2 console (which if you don't would make me question if you are a console gamer or not), then go for the PS3. It is like getting a gaming console and for a small extra fee, getting a basic, but pretty good, Blu-Ray player as well.

I'm waiting for a combo drive at this point, and I am hoping to wait a year or so before getting it so that the costs are down.

I'm kind of surprised how Blu-ray's movie prices seem to have gone up recently. Now a lot of them are ending up the same price as combo format HD DVDs, for no discernible reason. Blu-ray may prevail over HD DVD, but they're sure not going to make a dent in normal DVD for a long time if they can't get the price of the movies down.