Blu-Ray avail

[Race Car Driver]

I believe today is the day that the stores can start selling the Blu-Ray Players. The stores have been getting them in the past few days and were not to be selling them untill today..
So whos first?
I lied, its next sunday ops: the 25th.

[Drewbert]

lol we have had ours out since tuesday..... already have one on display with the hl-s6187 I cant wait to see it!

[Race Car Driver]

Yea, I know some stores have had em and some are selling em.

I cant wait to see it also.
Myself, think im gonna wait for PS3

[Drewbert]

I just want to get some 1080P media.... I have a smile on my face thinking about it....

[peterS]

hello ebay

[Race Car Driver]

Yup, already $1999 on ebay, whoever pays that is nuts IMO.

[KeithM]

I'm considering getting one just to sell it one ebay and get an almost-free one. How easy are these to get at stores? Any easier than HDDVD?

[peterS]

I'm considering getting one just to sell it one ebay and get an almost-free one. How easy are these to get at stores? Any easier than HDDVD?

just as hard

[Chris D]

Well, what's the early opinions of the units and the technology? Any comparisons to HD-DVD?

[peterS]

no material to see what it does.... next sunday is its release

[peterS]

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/LCDTV/LNS4695DXXAA.asp

on this set ive now seen house of flying daggers blu-ray off the samsung br-p1000

after some picture settings it looks good... hard to say if the move was just not filmed that well or if the lcd is not that good... audio is great

i have been told that the pioneer elite 1080p plasma and elite blu-ray player is amaizing

[audioqueso]

[url]
i have been told that the pioneer elite 1080p plasma and elite blu-ray player is amaizing

Ohhhhhhhhhhh... that sounds delicious!!!!

[aud19]

Sadly, I've heard the black levels on the 1080p plasmas are even worse than their lower res counterparts

[Drewbert]

Sadly, I've heard the black levels on the 1080p plasmas are even worse than their lower res counterparts

I would venture to guess a higher res would have more bulbs, thus the crappier black levels....?

[ThomasW]

Some interesting comments from Cliff Stephenson, he's reasonably knowledgeble about these things since he's involved in DVD production...:wink:

Alright… after spending several days with the Samsung player and several different Blu-ray discs, I feel I’ve got an excellent grasp on what you can expect from this player and the format in general for the next few months. Old readers of DVDFile might remember that I used to be one of the site’s main reviewers for DVD content, so I do have a bit of a background here. I’m going to focus on what I viewed to be the best looking of the BD titles I viewed in addition to a title that hasn’t been covered elsewhere: XXX. This is a title that provides for a longer running time than most of the early BD titles (123 minutes) and also contains lots of movement to test MPEG2’s abilities.

The short of it is that I completely agree with Andrew P and, by extension, BigMikeATL. Blu-ray, as it exists today in both hardware and software, is a good, but not great format. I’m starting to see a bit of a pattern with these early BD titles as they generally are shorter films with bright, colorful cinematography. Those are the conditions under which MPEG2 BD looks its best. While I was initially questioning what the early adopter appeal of films like Hitch or 50 First Dates could be, now I can understand it.

Let’s start with SD ability as it compares to the Toshiba. Again, I put the player in the very good but not great slot. I think the Toshiba still presents a slightly sharper picture overall when compared to the Samsung. But the Samsung is very much improved over their older models. So if you owned an 841, 850, 941, or 950, you should be happy with the improvement that the BD-P1000 provides. However, those previous models provided an option to pillarbox 4:3 material and zoom 4:3 letterbox images, neither of which is possible on the 1000. So the Toshiba gets a point on that, but the Toshiba also lacks the ability to zoom 4:3 letterbox material, so shame on them both. But overall, advantage Toshiba on SD DVD presentation.

For BD ability, I’m now going back to my XXX disc and BD in general. Had this format and these titles launched in early April, I would have been happy. Unfortunately for Blu-ray, HD-DVD launched in mid-April and did two things to impair BD: They’ve gotten more titles out to consumers and they’ve provided an HD experience that is better than BD. Now the difference isn’t huge, but it should be noticeable, even to people who might not normally see these kinds of things. Sorry to have to say it, but BD is an unimpressive format in the shadow of HD-DVD. Had they happened in reverse, HD-DVD would have had to work hard to impress upon people that buying their player (even at half the price of BD) was worth the effort for the slight improvement they offered. Now, BD is in a position to justify a premium for a product that is slightly inferior to what is already available. When I first cracked open the HD-A1 in April and popped in that Last Samurai HD-DVD, I was wowed with what I thought to be the best HD image my television had ever produced. The HD image was smooth and rich with a sharpness and depth I’d never experienced. Most of the HD-DVD titles released thus far (with a few now famous exceptions) have this “pop” that takes them out of the realm of what I would consider normal HD. The Blu-ray discs I’ve sampled thus far, while they’ve looked good to even great, have all lacked that “pop” and instead generally look a lot closer to good OTA HD broadcasts. If you were to show me the XXX BD and tell me it was a Showtime broadcast, I wouldn’t hesitate to think you were telling me the truth. But I would never believe that about most of the HD-DVD titles out there right now.

The sad truth is that MPEG2 just isn’t cutting it against VC-1. Now while it’s difficult to impossible to be able to judge the quality of one film in one codec against a different film in a different codec, I can stack the deck to try and approximate a decent comparison. I compared XXX BD to Unforgiven HD-DVD. Unforgiven is 10 years older than XXX, so this should have been a slam dunk for image quality in favor of XXX. Guess what, the VC-1 Unforgiven consistently outperformed the MPEG2 of XXX. Just look at chapter 4 of Unforgiven. All of the characters are sharply in focus, while the intricate detail in the background wallpaper is consistently resolved. XXX, by contrast appears somewhat soft and lacking in dimensionality. In all of the BD titles I viewed there’s a consistent soft, yet noisy quality to the images that appears as a mixture of natural film grain and digital noise. Fine details, such as rocks on the ground or wall textures, are often seen flickering slightly, which is often annoying.

I’m also curious about how many of these initial discs are truly 1080p. I saw more stairstepping and artifacting throughout one viewing of XXX than I have in 2+ months of HD-DVD viewings. Here’s a few moments for reference… at :38 the tail of the Revolutions logo there is some pretty good banding visible. Right after that, serious jaggies on the XXX logo that starts the film. At 32:08, look at the grill of the car for more jaggies while 10 seconds later, at 32:18, you’ll also get some pretty good stairstepping at the base of the balcony. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view it), these artifacts don’t appear on the SD Superbit version of the film when viewed on the Toshiba A1. More surprising, they also don’t appear when the Superbit DVD is viewed on the Samsung BD-P1000. The banding was visible on the Superbit, but it was much less severe than the Blu-ray banding.

Essentially, from what I’ve seen so far, visually Blu-ray is, at its best, all of the worst qualities of HD-DVD right now. If you’re someone who was bothered by the HD-DVDs of The Fugitive, Full Metal Jacket, and Perfect Storm, you’re not going to find a ton to like in some of these early offerings. Again, they can look really, really good, but they don’t consistently look great. How much of this is a byproduct of the Samsung player is unknown until other players make it to market but a few things are pretty clear…

Sony, as a company, has a lot riding on the success of Blu-ray. With as much at stake as they have, these titles needed to raise the bar over what we’ve already seen. But because as a company they seem to be more focused on their royalties and the ability to cross promote, they have succeeded in being the second to market with the second best product. Here’s an example of what I mean… The XXX disc has a selection in its menus for “Previews.” These are the SD MPEG2 trailers for Stealth, Into the Blue, and SWAT. So there’s approx. 200-250MB taken up by Sony trying to get you to buy other Sony products. With that space, Sony could have instead done a few other things. Why not include the XXX trailer and the Rob Cohen commentary? Why not use that 200MB to try and eliminate that banding at the beginning of the movie? Instead, Sony appears to have needed that space to get you to spend more money rather than providing us with the best product to entice us to spend more money. Compare that with the Warner and Universal titles, which are not only visually more impressive, but also packed to the rims with bonus content. Universal certainly didn’t need to include all the stuff from the more expensive 2 DVD Cinderella Man, but they did and provided an excellent value on that disc.

Sony has two things that have to happen and happen fast in order for Blu-ray to really make this a good race: They need to implement the advanced video and audio codecs and they need to get 50GB discs working. They have to do both of these and they have to do them fast. With only 50GB and still working MPEG2, they’re probably going to be able to equal or hover slightly below HD-DVD as it exists now. With newer codecs but only 25GB discs, they’ll be able to match HD-DVD visually, but will have a 5GB disadvantage. Only with both of these in existence will this format even have a chance. And they need to do this much sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, by the time the Sony player launches in mid-August, there are going to be maybe 30 titles available, while HD-DVD, by that point in August, will be sporting double that and could be up to as high as 75 different titles.

A few of the quirks about the Samsung BD-P1000 that I haven’t seen mentioned yet are the resolution and audio settings. On the video side, I’ve had a few instances where the resolution would change on the player without me having to select it. It switched from the 1080i that I had set it to to a very much inferior 720p setting that softened the picture even more that I found it at 1080. I’ll be curious to see additional comments as the player becomes more widely available and whether the player switching itself from 1080 to 720 happens with others. On the audio side, I’m running the player HDMI to a new Denon 3806 HDMI in. Unfortunately, there seems to be something bungled with how the player handles the bitstream vs. PCM tracks. To play the Dolby 5.1 track, the player has to have the digital out in the player’s menu set to “bitstream.” However, if you select one of the Sony uncompressed 5.1 tracks from the menu, it will only play back in 2-channel PCM. Selecting PCM from the player menu will output 5.1 PCM via HDMI, but then converts the Dolby tracks to 2-channel PCM. So you could potentially have to change player settings depending on the disc and soundtrack you want to hear. Can anyone else using their player via HDMI confirm this behavior?

Ultimately, the potential is there for Blu-ray to succeed, but it is unclear when that potential might be approached. For all of the complaints about HD-DVD not being ready for primetime, I think that despite all of its faults, the bottom line is that HD-DVD delivered the big jump up in picture quality and interactivity that many of us were anticipating and has set the bar in terms of HD. Blu-ray, unfortunately, has failed to go “Beyond High Definition.”

Cliff

[Brandon B]

Since the releasing studio has chosen to release the titles in question in MPEG2, whereas the Bluray format supports all the same codecs as HD-DVD, it is sort of misleading of him to say the format is the problem. This is really a poor review of the released titles, not of Bluray itself.

BB

[ThomasW]

I imagine he'll review disks made with the more advanced codecs if/when they become available.

[peterS]

I would venture to guess a higher res would have more bulbs, thus the crappier black levels....?

no they still have zero :W ... and ive never heard any criticism of curent gen plasmas lacking darks... a little confused by that generalization

[aud19]

no they still have zero :W ... and ive never heard any criticism of curent gen plasmas lacking darks... a little confused by that generalization

Myself and a few others here have mentioned numerous times that neither plasma nor LCD have sufficiently inky blacks and generally have have poor gradiation through greys.

As for the Mpeg2/VC1...I seem to recall reading something about Sony doing testing to "confirm" the use/preference of Mpeg2 over VC1 and promoting it's use. So while they may technically support the "better" format, it seems they prefer Mpeg2 for whatever reason.

[P-Dub]

I've read another review that the picture quality is not a huge WoW. So I am still in the camp of wait and see. It is too early to tell who will come out on top.

[peterS]

Myself and a few others here have mentioned numerous times that neither plasma nor LCD have sufficiently inky blacks and generally have have poor gradiation through greys.

As for the Mpeg2/VC1...I seem to recall reading something about Sony doing testing to "confirm" the use/preference of Mpeg2 over VC1 and promoting it's use. So while they may technically support the "better" format, it seems they prefer Mpeg2 for whatever reason.

i wouldnt lump plasma's w/ lcds any more
also the sony xbr does a very good job with blacks

[Brandon B]

As for the Mpeg2/VC1...I seem to recall reading something about Sony doing testing to "confirm" the use/preference of Mpeg2 over VC1 and promoting it's use. So while they may technically support the "better" format, it seems they prefer Mpeg2 for whatever reason.

Nope. Sony "unprefers" VC-1, likely because of it its ties to Microsoft and their somewhat antagonistic stance toward Blu-Ray. They will likely go with H.264, but the mastering facilities for that are not in position yet, so they are staying with MPEG2 until that end of things is up to speed. MPEG2 needs substantially more space to equal VC1 PQ. More than the 20% advantage SL BD has over SL HD-DVD.

But it is making them look bad in the meantime. Later to market and lower PQ.

BB

[aud19]

i wouldnt lump plasma's w/ lcds any more
also the sony xbr does a very good job with blacks

Better doesn't necessarily mean good enough

[Drewbert]

no they still have zero :W ... and ive never heard any criticism of curent gen plasmas lacking darks... a little confused by that generalization

blah you know what I mean about the bulbs....

The blacks are more, gray/ charcoal.... not black.... Seems to be because of the surface of the plasma....

[ThomasW]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060622/ap_on_hi_te/japan_recordable_hd_dvd;_ylt=AqMSlAwXi..clFKHUlrkw3Os0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3cjE0b2MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

This announcement may not bode well for Blu-Ray....

One odd reason VHS flourished while Beta-Max died, was that the porn industry jumped on the VHS bandwagon. That helped drive demand for the VHS tape players. Since Blu-Ray won't have burners (or so I read), the availability of HD-DVD burners may fore tell the future of the format battle....

[Kevin D]

This is really a poor review of the released titles, not of Bluray itself.

BB

If car A has better performance then car B only after a special gas comes out 6 months down the road, I'm going to complain about car A not bad gas.

Kevin D.

[Alaric]

If car A has better performance then car B only after a special gas comes out 6 months down the road, I'm going to complain about car A not bad gas.

Kevin D.

Since I build engines for a living I'm probably that niche market that would gripe about fuel quality! Then again , there's that porn thing.......

[Brandon B]

Not the right analogy (why does everyone use cars?).

Two car companies start new lines of cars. A makes a pair of new cars first, and chooses to release them with high performance Pirellis. They kick ass in most respect. B releases their first car, it is double the cost of either of A's, and has some low end Firestones on it. But both these companies are using largely the same engines and other performance parts with the same specs. Car company B's body styles can take tires up to 100mm wider. Most race teams and high performance car parts companies have committed to B's line of cars though. Is car co. A "better" than B if there will soon be 25 different models of car and a full lineup of tires from Pirelli, Goodyear and Firestone from both? Kind of meaningless to say yet.

That's about as far as I feel like getting into this, ignoring things like Microsoft-based interactive features and menuing vs./ the java standard and audio differences. There are reasons to prefer one format over the other, but the PQ of the first 3, or even 30 titles are not among them.

The format is not the product. The player is the product, the BD disk is the product. The two formats can use the exact same codecs. They can use basically the exact same hardware and software to decode those codecs. The end performance is based on the effort that went into the disk and the effort that went into making the player. It is not a limitation of the format itself.

So he can certainly say the Samsung is not worth buying compared to the Toshiba, and he can certainly say the release BD titles are not worth the money over DVD, or compared to the current HD-DVD titles. But it's pretty meaningless to say the format is unproven, unless you honestly believe all the studios will continue with MPEG2-only titles on SL disks, which is a pretty unwarranted assumption.

BB

edited for sleep deprived bad mood snappishness

[Brandon B]

Oh, and to be clear, I probably had a mild bias in favor of BD over HD-DVD, but if Sony is going to play it like this, it would certainly serve them right to fall flat on their face.

BB

[audioqueso]

Not the right analogy (why does everyone use cars?).

Because the majority in this forum are all guys. And a lot of guys like cars. :T

[peterS]

well if anyone wants to see what blu ray is capable of go to a bb store that has the display along with the new samsung 1080p lcd
ask to see the wrist watch building documentary on the demo disk.....

:E :boobies:

[ThomasW]

Guess I was wrong about Blu-Ray burners, however they only burn single layer discs

http://shop.cd-writer.com/acatalog/ALL_PRODUCTS_BLU_RAY_RECORDERS_487.html

[Alaric]

http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/26/samsung-sh-b022-blu-ray-burner-reviewer/

Seems someone is working on BR burners

[peterS]

^ pioneer already has one

[Chris D]

Well, I stopped by Best Buy on the way home from church today, and saw the BR display the had up. Right away, I was turned off. The movie clip quality was really not all that great, (I think it was the Manchurian Candidate and some others) and it was quite grainy. Fuzzy edges. I read the info placards and saw that the BB people had hooked it up to a 720p display for some reason, so right there you're already starting at a disadvantage. But both my theater and bedroom displays are 720p running DVD's on an upconverted player, (cheap Bravo D1 in my bedroom) and even that one outperformed the BR display quality there. Not good. Later on, it showed some material actually filmed in HD, which looked nice, and recognizable at HD material, but nothing better than what I've seen before on 720p screens.

Again, just like my HD-DVD impressions, I was severely NOT impressed. If somebody can create a good setup with good material on either one of these formats to impress me, I'll be much more interested. Until then, I'm sticking with my upconverting DVD player.

It was tough to judge between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray since the display the BR was shown on was only 720p. But given the graininess of the movie clips in the BR demo disc, even taking that into consideration, I'd have to go with HD-DVD. (the graininess may be in the films themselves, not the transfer, but why would Sony use crappy demo material for their premire demo release of this new format?)

[Burke Strickland]

why would Sony use crappy demo material for their premire demo release of this new format?

Because they want Blu-Ray to repeat the smashing success they had with Beta. :>) Actually, I'd be willing to bet that the real problem(s) came from the Best Buy setup. They aren't exactly wizards in that area.

Burke

[peterS]

Because they want Blu-Ray to repeat the smashing success they had with Beta. :>) Actually, I'd be willing to bet that the real problem(s) came from the Best Buy setup. They aren't exactly wizards in that area.

Burke

:roll:

[David Meek]

Because they want Blu-Ray to repeat the smashing success they had with Beta. :>) Actually, I'd be willing to bet that the real problem(s) came from the Best Buy setup. They aren't exactly wizards in that area.

Burke

That (once again) begs the question: What is logic behind that approach? Best Buy has the distribution system and financials in place to basically allow it to dominate a fairly new consumer market - HD TV - and they spend less time on proper set-up and calibration of their demonstration sets than they do on arranging the shelf-space in the printer cartridge aisles. @#*&^#%$! accountants looking at the bottom line, again. :roll:

[Chris D]

I don't know what the deal is. I honestly wanted to offer to set it up FOR them. No charge. Just give me the use of a 1080p TV and an hour, and I'll set it up and calibrate it so it'll make you cry.

[Race Car Driver]

That (once again) begs the question: What is logic behind that approach? Best Buy has the distribution system and financials in place to basically allow it to dominate a fairly new consumer market - HD TV - and they spend less time on proper set-up and calibration of their demonstration sets than they do on arranging the shelf-space in the printer cartridge aisles. @#*&^#%$! accountants looking at the bottom line, again. :roll:

All i can say is its in the works.

[David Meek]

What's that? A corporation-wide correction?

[peterS]

I don't know what the deal is. I honestly wanted to offer to set it up FOR them. No charge. Just give me the use of a 1080p TV and an hour, and I'll set it up and calibrate it so it'll make you cry.

not necessary
in fact your assertion that it was on a 720p set is suspect- it is suppose to be the samsung 1080p lcd (potentially still the westinghouse) but 1080p regardless

did you look at the demo i suggested? sadly it is being viewed as the reference of what blu-ray is capable of... i really hope the rest of the source material gets to this quality fast

That (once again) begs the question: What is logic behind that approach? Best Buy has the distribution system and financials in place to basically allow it to dominate a fairly new consumer market - HD TV -and they spend less time on proper set-up and calibration of their demonstration sets than they do on arranging the shelf-space in the printer cartridge aisles. @#*&^#%$! accountants looking at the bottom line, again. :roll:

meh... its apparent you haven't been in one for a while
the purchased of Magnolia av (from your neck of the woods)
was the first tangible change
while there may be a fair share of ignorant sales people on the floor the focus is definitely on HT and domination of it

the focus is very heavy on correct solutions, display, and streamlined approach to sales (ie asking the right questions)... so it is hardly how you portray it to be

the only reason why its been held back is the people who obsess over price w/o ever deciding or caring that they are going to spend a lot of $$ regardless and may as well get something they like... i cant imagine how the commissioned based stores survive... i know we are sinking ultimate electronics. when i worked at BB it was constantly getting "farmed" for info and obsession over price.... if full retail it was too high... if on sale something had to be wrong with it and if we lowered the price they wanted it written down so they could get it for cheaper

the average consumer just wants a deal on a tv and then slaps on audio and dvd for $200
so blame them not the retailers
CC does a good job "cutting to close" (ie price cuts) while BB focuses on service as this differentiates it from buying online- yet while annoying for me since people would just pick out everything with me then get it for less CC's approach helped their first quarter profits



now retaining the people who do a good job of this is something they should work on because what they got out of me vs what they payed/ how they treated us was criminal --- very high turnaround

so i guess you could say its a corporate wide correction... a few years ago thats still being implemented

[jonathanb3478]

so i guess you could say its a corporate wide correction... a few years ago thats still being implemented

Or you could say it is failing. Due to they way they treat their employees, and/or other things, but failing.

[David Meek]

meh... its apparent you haven't been in one for a while

Meh???? Chill it Peter - real quick. Clear?

As you have no idea when the last time I was in a Best Buy was you need to learn a little circumspection.

For the record my last trip to BB was 10 days ago. The display in question in the location I was visiting was abysmal. Also, the environment is exactly what we (as consumers) continue to portray it to be, not what you want it to be.

[Chris D]

Peter, tell your bosses you need to do a travelling tour and kick some a$$ in BB's around the country! My local one is here in Puyallup, WA, and could use your help.