Post by Skaggs on May 7, 2009 8:05:18 GMT -5
How to Buy a Blu-ray Player
With better performance, more features, and lower prices than ever before, this is a great time to upgrade to Blu-ray. Here's what you need to know to pick the right player.
by Robert Heron, PC Magazine
For HDTV owners, the benefits of Blu-ray are crystal clear. Video from traditional DVDs is made up of fewer than 350,000 pixels, while 1080p HD video is composed of over two million. That requires a lot more storage space than you can get on standard DVDs. Blu-ray discs, which can hold more than five times as much data as DVDs, provide it. So if you want sublime, high-resolution detail from your disc-based movies and TV shows, you have to go Blu-ray.
And there's never been a better time to do it. Now that the format is gaining widespread acceptance, we're moving past the incredibly expensive, painfully slow, feature-barren first-gen devices. The latest crop of players offer much faster disc-handling speeds and more robust multimedia features than previous models, and the players cost only about $300. But there are still a lot of choices out there. Here's what you need to consider when shopping for a Blu-ray player:
The Basics
Big-screen 1080p HDTV owners benefit the most from Blu-ray, as screens smaller than 40 inches require you to sit pretty close to the screen to appreciate the high resolution. (I wouldn't bother shelling out for a Blu-ray player if you have a 720p HDTV.) Blu-ray videos are typically sampled from very-high-resolution source material that is converted to 1080p. Because upconverting a standard-definition DVD requires that a player generate more than 1.7 million additional pixels (which involves a lot of real-time "guessing"), image quality can vary from one model or manufacturer to another. But all Blu-ray players can upconvert traditional DVDs, so getting one doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your current disc collection or add another device to your home-theater setup.
Nor will you have to find much space: Players have recently shrunk as a direct result of manufacturers' lowering costs by reducing the amount of raw materials that go into the machines. Almost all players retain the standard component width of 17 inches and are about 2 inches high, but chassis depths have been trimmed down to around 8 or 9 inches (from the 13 inches that was common in early models).
As for the discs, two core Blu-ray features are increasingly utilized in new movie releases: Bonus View and BD-Live. Bonus View is basically picture-in-picture and requires a player equipped with a secondary audio/video decoder. (Almost every device produced in the last two years supports this feature.) BD-Live encompasses downloadable or streaming multimedia content that a particular title may offer, such as games, cell-phone ringtones, wallpaper, and features for interacting with other fans. Many of the latest players I've seen are described as "BD-Live ready," meaning that the player lacks the necessary internal storage to support the feature, but you can add an optional memory module (via USB or memory card slot) to enable the functionality. You'll sometimes see a player referred to as supporting Blu-ray Profile 1.1 or 2.0; these, refer to, respectively, hardware that can support just Bonus View or both Bonus View and BD-Live (and thus requires an Internet connection). Profile 1 was the original Blu-ray spec, and you're unlikely to find it on a new player; a Profile 2.0 player typically costs more than a Profile 1.1 player.
Blu-ray players in general are very energy efficient, with most models consuming less than 25 watts on average during playback. Some players offer a QuickStart feature that significantly decreases the time it takes the player to wake from standby, but enabling this feature often results in increased standby power consumption. Considering how much more time a player typically spends in standby mode than it does being used, I recommend leaving this feature disabled if your player supports it.
Connections
You'd be hard pressed to find a Blu-ray player without a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port that can stream audio and video over a single cable. HDMI supports Blu-ray's maximum video resolution as well as all audio formats, including the lossless ones (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) that some new A/V receivers support, so it's generally the best way to hook the player to your HDTV.
Most Blu-ray movies are stored in the 1080p24 format (1080p resolution at 24 frames per second), and most Blu-ray players can output this format via HDMI for a cinema-like viewing experience. Component video output, featured on most players, supports HD output but limits DVD upconversion to an essentially standard-definition format (480p) due to copy-protection technology on commercial DVDs.
All current models feature an Ethernet port, and some newer ones even feature a wireless connectivity option, so you can connect the player to the Internet to access BD-Live, and more important, keep your player updated with the latest firmware.
Extra Features
Many Profile 2 Blu-ray players incorporate multimedia streaming from services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Some manufacturers also include widget-style apps that can display customized information such as news and weather updates right on your HDTV screen. Then, of course, there's the Sony PlayStation 3, which in addition to being one of the best Profile 2.0 players on the market also lets you stream video and play hundreds of games.
As the Blu-ray player market matures, prices are dropping, and features and performance just keep improving. What you can get today is markedly different from what was available just a year ago. So if you're ready for Blu-ray, this is a great time to dive in. Check out our recent reviews (links below) or compare the latest models side by side.
With better performance, more features, and lower prices than ever before, this is a great time to upgrade to Blu-ray. Here's what you need to know to pick the right player.
by Robert Heron, PC Magazine
For HDTV owners, the benefits of Blu-ray are crystal clear. Video from traditional DVDs is made up of fewer than 350,000 pixels, while 1080p HD video is composed of over two million. That requires a lot more storage space than you can get on standard DVDs. Blu-ray discs, which can hold more than five times as much data as DVDs, provide it. So if you want sublime, high-resolution detail from your disc-based movies and TV shows, you have to go Blu-ray.
And there's never been a better time to do it. Now that the format is gaining widespread acceptance, we're moving past the incredibly expensive, painfully slow, feature-barren first-gen devices. The latest crop of players offer much faster disc-handling speeds and more robust multimedia features than previous models, and the players cost only about $300. But there are still a lot of choices out there. Here's what you need to consider when shopping for a Blu-ray player:
The Basics
Big-screen 1080p HDTV owners benefit the most from Blu-ray, as screens smaller than 40 inches require you to sit pretty close to the screen to appreciate the high resolution. (I wouldn't bother shelling out for a Blu-ray player if you have a 720p HDTV.) Blu-ray videos are typically sampled from very-high-resolution source material that is converted to 1080p. Because upconverting a standard-definition DVD requires that a player generate more than 1.7 million additional pixels (which involves a lot of real-time "guessing"), image quality can vary from one model or manufacturer to another. But all Blu-ray players can upconvert traditional DVDs, so getting one doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your current disc collection or add another device to your home-theater setup.
Nor will you have to find much space: Players have recently shrunk as a direct result of manufacturers' lowering costs by reducing the amount of raw materials that go into the machines. Almost all players retain the standard component width of 17 inches and are about 2 inches high, but chassis depths have been trimmed down to around 8 or 9 inches (from the 13 inches that was common in early models).
As for the discs, two core Blu-ray features are increasingly utilized in new movie releases: Bonus View and BD-Live. Bonus View is basically picture-in-picture and requires a player equipped with a secondary audio/video decoder. (Almost every device produced in the last two years supports this feature.) BD-Live encompasses downloadable or streaming multimedia content that a particular title may offer, such as games, cell-phone ringtones, wallpaper, and features for interacting with other fans. Many of the latest players I've seen are described as "BD-Live ready," meaning that the player lacks the necessary internal storage to support the feature, but you can add an optional memory module (via USB or memory card slot) to enable the functionality. You'll sometimes see a player referred to as supporting Blu-ray Profile 1.1 or 2.0; these, refer to, respectively, hardware that can support just Bonus View or both Bonus View and BD-Live (and thus requires an Internet connection). Profile 1 was the original Blu-ray spec, and you're unlikely to find it on a new player; a Profile 2.0 player typically costs more than a Profile 1.1 player.
Blu-ray players in general are very energy efficient, with most models consuming less than 25 watts on average during playback. Some players offer a QuickStart feature that significantly decreases the time it takes the player to wake from standby, but enabling this feature often results in increased standby power consumption. Considering how much more time a player typically spends in standby mode than it does being used, I recommend leaving this feature disabled if your player supports it.
Connections
You'd be hard pressed to find a Blu-ray player without a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port that can stream audio and video over a single cable. HDMI supports Blu-ray's maximum video resolution as well as all audio formats, including the lossless ones (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) that some new A/V receivers support, so it's generally the best way to hook the player to your HDTV.
Most Blu-ray movies are stored in the 1080p24 format (1080p resolution at 24 frames per second), and most Blu-ray players can output this format via HDMI for a cinema-like viewing experience. Component video output, featured on most players, supports HD output but limits DVD upconversion to an essentially standard-definition format (480p) due to copy-protection technology on commercial DVDs.
All current models feature an Ethernet port, and some newer ones even feature a wireless connectivity option, so you can connect the player to the Internet to access BD-Live, and more important, keep your player updated with the latest firmware.
Extra Features
Many Profile 2 Blu-ray players incorporate multimedia streaming from services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora. Some manufacturers also include widget-style apps that can display customized information such as news and weather updates right on your HDTV screen. Then, of course, there's the Sony PlayStation 3, which in addition to being one of the best Profile 2.0 players on the market also lets you stream video and play hundreds of games.
As the Blu-ray player market matures, prices are dropping, and features and performance just keep improving. What you can get today is markedly different from what was available just a year ago. So if you're ready for Blu-ray, this is a great time to dive in. Check out our recent reviews (links below) or compare the latest models side by side.