Any Blu Ray Owners Here?

Sherardp

Just got back in the US from Japan and went into Best Buy, got offered a smoking deal on the Sony Blu Ray player for 899.00(reg price 999.00) I was wondering if any of you guys here actually had a chance to sit down and actually enjoy the format. How would you compare it to HD DVD? I am an early adapter of HD DVD and love it, just wondering and thinking hard on going with Blu Ray as well, it would be nice to enjoy both formats.

Frank Z

I've got a Samsung player but haven't compared it to an HD player. I've been waiting for BR for quite some time and prefer the format over HD-DVD. No bashing intended, just a personal preference.

Systems

Wow 899, and people are complaining about the psx3 being 600 and your getting a blue ray player to boot. Anyway I have the psx3 and the HD-DVD player for the 360.

I watched the King Kong HD-DVD that they packaged with the 360 player and was very impressed with the picture, was running it at 720P on my little Samsung. I hooked the psx3 up too it to watch the Teledaga nights movie and the clarity was fantastic also. I can't really give too good of a review on the players yet as I haven't watched enough movies on them. But from what I've seen so far I haven't any complaints.......

Holydoc

$899 just does not seem to be that good a deal when you can get the PS3 for so much less.

But on your original subject you can read a lot of comparisons and observations on the AVS forums. During the AVS podcast they were also very turned off for the price and felt HD-DVD gave as good or better picture for half the price. Here is a link to the forums. There are arguments on both sides of the fence:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

Emlyn

I say go for it. To me the "format war" is just a variation of DVD-Audio versus SACD. Same results, different packaging. Blu-Ray is sort of short on titles to watch at the moment, but their release schedule goes into overdrive starting in January. Many of the movies available now are also available on HD-DVD. Eventually, I'll expect to see a crop of universal players, probably by the third generation of Blu-Ray, maybe not until mid-2008 (but I'm just guessing).

cnjvh

I've done hours of testing with both the Toshiba HD-DVD player and the Samsung Blu-Ray player and the the Toshiba HD-DVD beats the samsung player absolutely and in all ways.

That being said:

- The sammy blu-ray player was the intial blu-ray release and the first titles were still using MPEG encoding as opposed to VC1 used by HD-DVD. That has since been corrected (I think the newer blu-ray titles are VC1 encoded).

- The samsung was shipped with DNR permanently enabled in firmware and I'm not sure if new firwmware has been or will ever be released to correct it.

I have no personal experience with the sony blu-ray player. I have heard that they don't support the new audio format such as DD+, TrueHD, DTS-HD, etc. However, that is complete heresay and not verified by me. Right now there are no receivers that can decode these bitstreams so in order to enjoy these formats the players must decode them and dump multi channel PCM out the HDMI connector or analog out the multi-channel analog outputs on the player.

Frank Z

Head to head comparisons are all well and good, but keep in mind that what looks good on your display may not look quite the same on another. All things being equal, anu HD-DVD or Blue-Ray player is going to be a big jump in PQ over a 480p DVD player.

Although I haven't had the time to spend comparing other players or formats in my HT, I can tell you that on my system the Blue-Ray video quality is nothing short of breath taking. FWIW, my system is based on a 720p LCD projector and 106" 16x9 screen.

cheddar

I know you were only looking for owners, but why not wait? Do you really need it by Christmas? Buying this time of year, you may get good $100 off deals like that, but you may also be buying into the frenzy and the season's almost over.

So if you don't mind the first generation stuff and won't miss the cash, by all means go for it. But we're so close to getting past all this holiday madness and getting onto the good stuff like hdmi 1.3 new audio format decoding receivers and 2nd generation (probably much cheaper too) equipment in the coming year. So why not just wait a while and put the grand into the new receivers and 2nd generation players and enjoy HD-DVD now?

cnjvh

Frank Z wrote:

Head to head comparisons are all well and good, but keep in mind that what looks good on your display may not look quite the same on another. All things being equal, anu HD-DVD or Blue-Ray player is going to be a big jump in PQ over a 480p DVD player.

Although I haven't had the time to spend comparing other players or formats in my HT, I can tell you that on my system the Blue-Ray video quality is nothing short of breath taking. FWIW, my system is based on a 720p LCD projector and 106" 16x9 screen.

That is a valid point. I should have been more clear. The testing was actually a matrix done with:

Toshiba HD-XA1
Toshiba HD-A1
Samsung BDP-1000
Pioneer Elite 79-AVI
Denon 2910
Marantz DV-9700
Onkyo SP1000
Samsung HD950

I cant remember all the model #'s on the display side but the were 2005 models of

Philips 32" direct view CRT HDTV
Panasonic 50" LCD Rear Projection HDTV
Sony 50" Grand Wega (LCOS based)
Samsung 50" DLP Rear Projection HDTV
Viewsonic LCD flat panel HDTV
Samsung LCD flat panel HDTV
InFocus IN76 DLP projector
Panasonic LCD projector (PT1000 or something like that)
Westinghouse LCD flat panel HDTV
JVC LCD flat panel HDTV
Insignia LCD flat panel HDTV
HP LCD flat panel HDTV

So I did see it on a few displays but your other point is valid as well. Both are remarkably better than SD.

BTW that Sony Grand Wega is breathtaking - wish I had one :-)

pearsall001

I wouldn't even consider buying either one at this stage of the game. Not until a clear winner of the format war emerges or if your lucky both formats survive & you can still get new movies for both. Better yet, I'm going to wait until the universal players hit the market. As we speak they're not too far off.

dane_peterson

I have a PS3, and I've been very impressed with the video quality. Even the Fifth Element, which is one of the worst quality BRDVDs produced, looks excellent. You won't be disappointed with either, in my opinion.
Though like others have said, I don't know that I'd invest in a standalone player for either format at this point in time. It was just convenient getting it in the PS3.

polksda

One cannot wait forever. Think of all the time you could have been watching stellar HD.

I bought a Toshiba HD-A1 the weekend the format came out in April. The day before Thanksgiving I got lucky and bought a PS3 20GB. Both formats for under $1K total.

You can get an HD-A1 for $350-400, or the now-shipping HD-A2 for $499. As far as the PS3 is concerned, for BR playback there's no reason to pay the $100 extra for the 60GB version.

From what I've seen, the forthcoming universal players (although we have no solid release date information on any of them) are going to be priced close to $1000 anyway.

I'm up to 68 HD-DVDs and 12 BR in my collection now.

I still lean heavily towards wanting HD-DVD to win the format war, but at least now have the option of watching both...

It's like buying computer equipment: there's ALWAYS something faster, better, and cheaper coming out. If you wait for "the perfect time to buy" you'll be waiting forever.

Artifact-free HD is here now. Enjoy it.