Blu-ray: Are all players created equal?

Scrublet

I'm getting myself a blu-ray player for graduation. This purchase is geared towards the beginning of a very nice home-theater setup I've been planning. Awhile back, I was reading about DVD players and how they differ at the upper price ranges. On a normal TV you will never notice the differences; at bigger screens and higher resolutions, decoders apparently can make a noticeable difference.

Question: Are blu-ray players all the same? Does the PS3 blu-ray lack anything the stand-alone players have? Once the decision is made to buy, what criteria (besides price) should be used?

Rook

I'm still under the general impression that for the price the PS3 is far and away the best player as it can be updated to support the new features that the BRA keep bringing in.

Nibble

The main thing is that there are a total of three player "profiles" (1.0, 1.1, and 2.0), meaning that not all players have the same set of features. Most cheaper players are 1.1, which means that they have smaller local storage capacity and don't support online features. 1.0 is just crap. The PS3 is 2.0.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Player_profiles

useless4

Last I read , the PS3 is also the only player that can play back 100% the movies. It's spotty on stand alone players, more so with each new release that comes out, that it will be able to play all the discs based on minute differences in the authoring technique (or newer authoring technique)

You used to have this problem in the early days of dvd players as well.

Scrublet

Thanks for these replies. In a sense, I'm also looking for advice on quality. For instance, you can get a DVD player for $50 or so these days at Best Buy. You can also find players for $250-300 at specialty stores. There ARE differences between these players; the $250-300 have much better decoders that can handle problems cheap players suffer from (bad displays of reds, imperfections, etc.) Again, these are problems only noticeable on large displays. This is more what I'm getting at...have things like this become an issue in the blu-ray market? Or are these blu-ray players separated by $100-200 because of brand-name BS?

EggyToast

The PS3 is one of the best blu-ray players because it's a game console, oddly enough. Meaning that the margins are low thanks to Sony subsidizing the price due to the whole game-thing. Other players rely entirely on the sale of the hardware, so their margins are larger -- hence, their cost to consumers is higher, for equivalent or lesser features.

The PS3 has also seen steady firmware updates, which are easy thanks to the large hard drive and the wireless internet on all current models. For instance, last November Sony released a firmware upgrade that included upscaling for DVDs, turning the PS3 into a crappy DVD player (barebones) into one of the best (upscales, etc.). There are numerous specs for BluRay players, and 2.0 is not actually available on any of them yet. It really only includes a few output options that aren't even supported in most people's recievers, so you don't really have to worry about them. Sony has, though, said that when the 2.0 spec is finalized, the PS3 will be updated to support it. You won't find that on cheap $300 BluRay players on the market; you'll only find it on the more expensive, over $500 players -- which is why the PS3 is a good deal.

There really aren't any cheap players out there -- just old players - so differences in quality like color accuracy and so on aren't an issue.

Gafoto

At the moment the only player on the market that will be able to support 2.0 blu-ray is the PS3, it's actually the best available player on the market, bar non.

MichaelLC

From someone that has the PS3, it really is a good player. You do have to buy the BT remote ($25), but combined with the features, system outputs, and the upgradability, it's the best choice.

It's been said the next system update will add 2.0 spec, plus ability to resume after disc is ejected. Very cool.

You can probably get a used 20GB or 40GB cheap from EBStop.

EggyToast

You don't have to buy the remote (the triangle button will give you most all the options, and the controller lets you play, stop, fast forward, skip, and so on, in a pretty straightforward manner), but it is pretty nice to have. And it's bluetooth, so you don't even have to point it at the PS3.

You can also get it for $20 on Amazon. Also, if you're averse to multiple remotes, you can spend $20 on the Nyko remote that gives the PS3 an infrared sensor that lets you get away with using universal remotes. But yeah, having the options available for blu-ray is nice, since they have quite a few more options (notably pop-up menus).

MichaelLC

EggyToast wrote: »

You don't have to buy the remote (the triangle button will give you most all the options, and the controller lets you play, stop, fast forward, skip, and so on, in a pretty straightforward manner), but it is pretty nice to have. And it's bluetooth, so you don't even have to point it at the PS3.

True, it's not like the old XBOX DVD thing, where you litterly had to buy it for it to work, but the BT remote does make it a much more natural movie watching.

useless4

I keep meaning to buy the remote.
For some reason the Xbox 360 controller make sense and I never use the remote (hd-dvd one) to watch movies on it BUT the ps3 controller always seems to be knocked around or wrong button hit etc. and I am scrambling to figure out how to bring the movie back.

To recap buy the remote even if you don't have the ps3 because all research will lead back to the ps3 being : the most value for the dollar, one of the cheaper if not cheapest player you will find, most future proof at this moment.