Video Asylum

Posted by cfraser (A) on May 24, 2009 at 11:24:37

In Reply to: RE: Yes it is. posted by audio_d on May 23, 2009 at 17:51:54

My experience. And that of plenty of others too. Very very little diff. Not enough to bother with, and as I said, not even close to being the biggest consideration when choosing a model. It is not at all like DVD which requires a lot of jiggery-poke to get a good image. BD is quite straight-forward using the available chips, for HDMI output.

I have a dealer friend (he's the owner) who does Denon, Marantz, Pioneer Elite. Though of course he has to pay for his personal gear, it is "cheap" for him. He chooses to use a PS3 for BD on his Pio Elite display (only at home of course). Because it plays everything. Doesn't use it for DVD though. The problem is the brands he sells don't update firmware nearly often enough. Panasonic and Samsung have similar records with that so far, let's see how they do with their newer models.

I have the feeling you are just getting into BD if you think regular firmware updates are not extremely critical and necessary at this stage still. Can make BD viewing very frustrating otherwise.

If you hate using a gaming machine or just Sony, well then say that. Plenty of people do. Not so keen on those aspects myself...

I would check out what the Oppo BDP-83 users say. The current owners are very critical and have a good range of players to compare with. After all, they PAID to essentially debug them. I have a Pio 151 to view on and am fairly picky. I see so little diff between BDPs with BD over HDMI that I am far more interested in how they handle DVDs, which *does* vary hugely, strictly because of the limited content in BD. This DVD handling is the significant downside to the PS3, and I guess its overall cost including integration into an HT system.

Anyway, enjoy the Panny. You can be virtually assured that no other BD player makes BD look better.