Blu-ray Player Reviews

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Denon DVD-2500BTCI Blu-ray Player
Kris Deering  |  Apr 18, 2008  |  0 comments
Breaking new ground in HD.

Since the arrival of Blu-ray, I’ve been waiting for a player from Denon, whose high-end DVD players have served as references for me for years. So far, the standalone Blu-ray players I’ve used have left me wanting. Pioneer and Sony are the only manufacturers offering players with the construction quality I expect from a top-end player. But both of these manufacturers have delivered products with their own issues, including extremely slow response times and lack of support for cutting-edge Blu-ray features.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Sony PlayStation 3 Game Console/ Blu-ray Disc Player
Shane Buettner  |  Apr 07, 2008  |  0 comments
Sony’s gaming console still the Blu-ray player to beat.

[Update: The best just keeps getting better. Sony has announced at long last that a firmware update available April 15th will allow the mighty PS3 to decode lossless DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution, a lossy, higher bitrate version of its codec. This was the last technological hurdle for Sony's mighty gaming console. For those with HDMI switching and an AVR or pre-pro that can process multichannel PCM the PS3 is unequivocally the Blu-ray player to beat. It's not only the fastest and most reliable BD player, it's the cheapest and most advanced. Look to this space for an update to this review once I've had a chance to experience DTS-HD MA and BD-Live. -SCB]

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Other Source Component ReviewsBlu-ray Player Reviews
Samsung BD-UP5000 Duo HD Blu-ray / HD DVD HD Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 28, 2008  |  0 comments
A cease fire or a bridge too far?

Months ago, when Samsung announced its BD-UP5000 dual format player, there appeared to be no end in sight to an ugly format war that threatened the future of high definition on a disc.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Panasonic DMP-BD30 Profile 1.1 Blu-ray Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 17, 2007  |  0 comments
We've almost become jaded with the rapid rollover of high-definition disc players. Some manufacturers are now on third generation models, and ready to launch a fourth generation at the January 2008 CES. But even with that, Panasonic surprised everyone several weeks ago with the announcement of the DMP-BD30, its second-generation design.
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Other Source Component ReviewsBlu-ray Player Reviews
LG Electronics Super Blu BH200 Multi Format HD Disc Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 08, 2007  |  0 comments

The format war rages on. With the current stalemate between Blu-ray and HD DVD, and most studios exclusive to either one format or the other, the only options for the HD enthusiast would seem to be to sit on the fence, take sides, or pull out the old checkbook and buy two players.

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Other Source Component ReviewsBlu-ray Player Reviews
LG Electronics Super Blu BH200 Multi Format HD Disc Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 08, 2007  |  0 comments
With the current stalemate between Blu-ray and HD DVD, and most studios exclusive to either one format or the other, the only options for the HD enthusiast would seem to be to sit on the fence, take sides, or pull out the old checkbook and buy two players.
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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 26, 2007  |  0 comments

We've almost become jaded with the rapid rollover of high-definition disc players. Some manufacturers are now on third generation models, and ready to launch a fourth generation at the January 2008 CES. But even with that, Panasonic surprised everyone a few short weeks ago with the announcement of the DMP-BD30, its second-generation design. While a number of significant mid-year revisions to the DMP-BD10, the company's first player, resulted in its re-badging as the DMP-BD10AK, it remained essentially the same design throughout production.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Sony BDP-S300, Samsung BD-P1200, and Panasonic DMP-BD10A Blu-ray Players
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Nov 05, 2007  |  First Published: Oct 05, 2007  |  0 comments
3 More BD 4 U: Three second-gen Blu-ray players.

Hot on the heels of the first, and almost universally lame, generation of Blu-ray players, here's generation II. In the case of two of these players, the big news is a substantial reduction in price. Both are less than half of their predecessors. In the case of the other, the news is its fancy HQV processing, the same that's found in the excellent Toshiba HD-XA2. I have to admit, I get a certain amount of perverse amusement mentioning HD DVD in a Blu-ray review (and vice-versa).

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Blu-ray Disc Interactivity and You
HT Staff  |  Sep 19, 2007  |  0 comments
Hi, I'm Troy McClure, and you might remember me from such educational films as. . . Sorry couldn't help myself. The Simpsons are on the big screen as I write this, and obviously that's gotten to my head. But seriously folks, the reaction to a recent Blog I wrote on next-gen interactivity brought to my attention that now is a very good time to catch you up on what is going on with Blu-ray Disc interactivity and how the players currently on the market and about to be on the market will (and won't) handle these features.
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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Pioneer Elite BDP-94HD Blu-ray Disc Player
 |  Sep 16, 2007  |  0 comments

I know that technology moves fast these days, but we can hardly get a review of a Blu-ray Disc player out the door before a new model that supersedes it is released. And indeed, I received this Pioneer Elite BDP-94HD in August, just ahead of the rumors that a new player from Pioneer would be making its debut at CEDIA 2007 in early September.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray Player
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jul 23, 2007  |  0 comments
Power Processing comes to Blu-ray

While the in the end, Samsung's first foray into the Blu-ray world wasn't the major culprit in said format's poor picture quality (turns out most of the early discs just didn't look very good), it was still rather lackluster. It didn't upconvert DVDs very well, it didn't offer a 1080p/24 output, and it didn't decode any of the new audio formats. With its second-generation offering, Samsung has fixed most of these shortcomings. Most.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 22, 2007  |  0 comments

Samsung was first to market with a Blu-ray player in mid 2006: the <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/706dsamsungbd/">BD-P1000</A>. While it's no secret that that player drew serious criticisms from us, and others, it's also true that the first batch of Blu-ray titles did it no favors.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 12, 2007  |  0 comments

The price of machines that will play Blu-ray or HD DVD high-definition discs is coming down. The drop is faster on the HD DVD side of the battle lines, but at $499 Sony's new BDP-S300 is half the price of its (still available) first generation <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/1206sonybdps1/">BDP-S1</A>.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray Player
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 12, 2007  |  0 comments
The $499 BDP-S300 is an important product, giving Blu-ray some much needed traction in the affordable player category. Combine that with recent news from rental powerhouse Blockbuster that it is expanding Blu-ray titles in its stores (at the expense of HD DVD in most cases), and the BDP-S300 looks like a no-brainer.
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The S&V InterviewBlu-ray Player Reviews
Blu-ray and HD DVD Face Off
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jul 09, 2007  |  First Published: Jun 09, 2007  |  0 comments
Two that do one; one that does two.

LG shocked the consumer electronics world at CES when they announced that, not only were they coming out with a player that would play Blu-ray and HD DVD, but it would be shipping in less than a month. True to their word, it did, and I got one in to try out. Around the same time, Toshiba released a pair of second-generation HD DVD players. The model I look at here, the HD-XA2, is notable as it is the first HD DVD player to output 1080p. The Blu-ray camp (seeing as they had just released most of their players) had no such exciting newness beyond what you read about in our April issue. So, we got in the Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player, which is unique in that it doesn't seem to be a clone of any other players (which you can't say for many of the BD players out there). Where should your money go (if at all)? Just keep reading.

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