CompUSA pushing BR

[vurbano]

Visited CompUSA today, and the salesmen there were really pushing BR instead of HD-DVD.

Some such nonsense that BR is 8 layers, 200GB per disk. They also claimed the Sony BR player would be hitting stores this month, along with two laptops with BR writers in them.

I thought Sony had delayed their player till the fall, and I thougth BR was 50GB. The laptop thing might be true, tho.

Either way, they were dogging HD-DVD as "old technology".

They did have a BR demo going on an LCD TV. It was very pixelated, and reminded me of UHD back when it was on Voom. Very bad quality. I hope the real BR players don't perform this poorly.

-John

IMO its best to run from anything CompUSA is pushing.

 

[charper1]

I was saying the $800 model vs the $1000 simply to compare top model vs top model; and pointing out considering some of the important added features that BD does bring; 1080P and the extra storage capacity, the larger title library, and PC support partnerships. These to me are real added benefits and bodes my ultimate question, why not wait for a true real world side by side? Thats all.

 

[Customgamer1]

I was saying the $800 model vs the $1000 simply to compare top model vs top model; and pointing out considering some of the important added features that BD does bring; 1080P and the extra storage capacity, the larger title library, and PC support partnerships. These to me are real added benefits and bodes my ultimate question, why not wait for a true real world side by side? Thats all.

Well see you re wrong. Blue ray does not have a top model. It only has players that cost $1000. HD DVD has 2. One for $500 and one for $800. The $800 does not have that much different stuff to it but it does have a light up remote lol. Anyways it just goes to show you that buying a HD dvd player depending what model you buy would still be cheaper than buying any blue ray player...

Also who really cares about 1080P? I mean how many people have or would be willing to pay the price for 1080P? No tv station ever would put out 1080P and I don't care what Sony says about PS3 but no game will be 1080P. The only difference would be in movies and movies only and to me thats not worth it for me to buy a new tv just for that. If I did not have a tv it would not be worth it to me or many people to spend more on a 1080P tv.

 

[charper1]

Read all the rest of the specs/advantages; not just blindly about costs. You seem to have your mind made up without knowing or caring about all the interests past pure $$$. Maybe you are just anti-Sony/Blu-Ray (BD) or something along those lines. I will wait to see and use both in a real world side by side and weigh ALL options without regard to cost; I want what is better not just cheaper. To those that consistently buy high end gear for the long term know that "being better" can mean much more past the actual player device itself. In the end I might choose HD-DVD, but at least it won't be blindly or just because its cheaper. I don't have to be first to have it or to be "cool" or because someone says "dude you got to get that". Those are all stupid reasons for me. I just want the quality product with the largest and longest upside.

 

[teamerickson]

Here's a first review of the Samsung Blue ray from AVS.

Samsung first-look: glass half empty

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The title says it all. We have two Samsung players (yes, it is nice to have the purchasing department of the company going after a new product ). Being aligned with HD DVD format, don’t look for generous reporting here .

Unfortunately, no BD disc. So tonight we spent taking the box apart , and testing a few SD discs. More tomorrow.

The box is smaller and more compact than the Toshiba. There is fan in there but it is a lot smaller than the one in Toshiba. The unit produces a lower frequency hum than Toshiba but puts out much hotter air. Overall, it is a bit quieter than Toshiba given the lower frequency of the noise.

The power cord is permanently attached to the unit so you can not swap it out. No Ethernet on the box as reported.

Player menus are attractive but slow. Buttons take 2 seconds or so to respond so going through the menus can be a bit aggravating. It seems like that changing resolutions requires a trip through the set up, unlike Toshiba that has remote control settings. Not a big deal for average user but for us trying to test this thing, is a bit of a pain.

I was surprised that the front panel controls were cheaply made and not very responsive. Hitting pause for example, required multiple pressings, hoping the thing would take it. Yeh, just as bad as the Toshiba down button on the remote.

As reported, this is also a slow player when it comes to disc loading. We measured some 22 seconds from inserting a SD DVD until it showed the first picture. This is faster than the Toshiba but still pretty slow.

OK, picture quality. We don’t have a BD disc so we tried upscaling performance. We hooked up the set to the Sony Qualia 005, 1080 LCD through its HDMI port. The Samsung player would not let us select 1080p which is probably good thing because the TV would not show it anyway. But mystery remains as to how well this works. So we went with 1080i.

The verdict here is not good. The Toshiba is definitely sharper than the Samsung when upscaling SD DVD. We had the same disc in both players and moved the HDMI cable between the two and even with blind tests, my colleague could tell the difference. Then we asked him to open his eyes and he could still that the Samsung was softer .

We tried a 4:3 DVD and to my surprise, the Samsung stretched it to 16:9. None of the player settings would override this. And the quality was really bad here. The Toshiba nicely pillarboxes these discs.

We didn’t test the audio but some things are disappointing. The manual makes no mention of advanced audio codecs. The only thing that it puts out on its SPDIF/TosLink is DTS and DD as predicted. And PCM output on the HDMI but no decoding of advanced codecs. This means that if the BD disc uses advanced audio codecs, there is no way to hear them in their full glory. The Toshiba on the other hand, can decode DD+ and DolbyTrueHD (in 2 channel) over HDMI and analog. With Samsung, you are stuck with current DVD audio quality unless the disc is encoded with high resolution PCM.

Speaker set up was very rudimentary. It only allowed small/large size setting with no distance, cross over or level parameters like Toshiba has. If your processor performs such processing on HDMI PCM audio, you are fine. If not, then you have a suboptimal situation.

We took the box apart and indeed, it has the same guts as shown in the Poland thread. Additional things that we noticed are the fact that it uses a Samsung drive. We took it apart a bit and looked at the OPU (optical pick up). Could not see the manufacturer but it clearly had a two lens system (one to read CDs/DVDs and the other for BD). The complexity of the machine seems much less than the Toshiba but it clearly has a host processor with fair bit of memory for graphics and such.

Anyway, sorry that this review is not more positive. I am sure this device puts out nice HD video but we didn’t have anything to play on it so left with nitpicking on the corners here.

__________________
Amir
Microsoft
HD DVD insider

Link to topic.

 

[vurbano]

more:

Okay, I'll use Amir's thread to post this little tidbit that I have....
I have just gotten off the phone with a friend who's eye and judgement for this sort of thing I trust as much or more than my own. He got a hold of the Samsung player this afternoon. He also has access to a number of BD check discs (5, to be exact). Not Columbia titles. I will let him go into more detail when he feels comfortable doing so, likely a day or two of more evaluation, but I will pass along his first impression.
As Amir says of the player, at least as it applies to the discs evaluated this evening, the software side of BD appears to be at first blush, no better than the first player. Of the five discs looked at, only one is considered close to HD DVD for pure image quality. MPEG artifacting is common and not difficult to detect. Overall appearance is that of decent OTA broadcast HD, complete with that vaguely "digital" look. Certainly not that smooth, clean, transparent look of the VC-1 encoded HD DVDs.
Personally, I found our conversation very disappointing. With the state of these two formats, BD will be the only HD version of quite a few movies at least in the near term. I was hoping for something better as I will likely have to use two players for a while at least. I am holding out some hope that these first discs are not indicative of the best that we will see from single layer BD since that is the best we will get for a while.
I admit my expectations for BD were not high based on many things I had heard over the past weeks. Even so, it is still disappointing to find out your low expectations have been met.

 

[colofan]

So why write a review on the sammy when you don't have an HD disc? At that point I couldn't care less about the rest since the only reason for buying it as an early adopter is to se blu-ray. Too me really weird to spend the time to type something up that is really incomplete.

 

[navychop]

Well, Sony certainly isn't better, to judge by the DVD players I have. The baloney company's players have jerky fast forward modes, and limited ones at that. Comparably priced units from other companies perform better, smoother and with more FF speed options.

The root kit was the last straw. I hate to buy anything Sony, may they rot in bankruptcy. However, I think Blu-Ray has an edge in "winning" this battle. Not that it matters much- most of us will be quite happy with either as a winner. But judging from the above, and other postings, I'll certainly be waiting until next year at the earliest before I buy anything. Next year's players, or perhaps those a year after that, will likely have more features, perform faster, and cost less. I can wait. And my thanks to all the beta testers spending their money so I need not spend mine- yet.

BTW, the days of a perv and an 8mm camera are long gone. Porn producers have made huge fortunes. They have pushed and funded much of the development of the Internet, such as streaming video. They have the bucks and spend them- if they see a return.

 

[teamerickson]

So why write a review on the sammy when you don't have an HD disc?

To make a comparision of similar viewings with what is availble. I'm sure will get an update with HD discs. Still, the titles won't be the same so you won't be able to do apples to apples comparsion until the studios release in both formats. I think the upconverting is important, at least until the market is flooded with HD titles.

 

[vurbano]

To make a comparision of similar viewings with what is availble. I'm sure will get an update with HD discs. Still, the titles won't be the same so you won't be able to do apples to apples comparsion until the studios release in both formats. I think the upconverting is important, at least until the market is flooded with HD titles.

Well there are many issues.

1. No ethernet.
2. No streaming. Meaning updates only by Disk
3. NO Dual layer BD material! only 25 GB
4. Poor remote reception.
5. Poor upconversion.
6. Picture looks no better than OTA HD.
7. No advanced audio.

Is it worth twice the price to get 1/2 as much????

 

[vurbano]

So why write a review on the sammy when you don't have an HD disc? At that point I couldn't care less about the rest since the only reason for buying it as an early adopter is to se blu-ray. Too me really weird to spend the time to type something up that is really incomplete.

Originally Posted by Robert George
Okay, I'll use Amir's thread to post this little tidbit that I have....
I have just gotten off the phone with a friend who's eye and judgement for this sort of thing I trust as much or more than my own. He got a hold of the Samsung player this afternoon. He also has access to a number of BD check discs (5, to be exact). Not Columbia titles. I will let him go into more detail when he feels comfortable doing so, likely a day or two of more evaluation, but I will pass along his first impression.
As Amir says of the player, at least as it applies to the discs evaluated this evening, the software side of BD appears to be at first blush, no better than the first player. Of the five discs looked at, only one is considered close to HD DVD for pure image quality. MPEG artifacting is common and not difficult to detect. Overall appearance is that of decent OTA broadcast HD, complete with that vaguely "digital" look. Certainly not that smooth, clean, transparent look of the VC-1 encoded HD DVDs.
Personally, I found our conversation very disappointing. With the state of these two formats, BD will be the only HD version of quite a few movies at least in the near term. I was hoping for something better as I will likely have to use two players for a while at least. I am holding out some hope that these first discs are not indicative of the best that we will see from single layer BD since that is the best we will get for a while.
I admit my expectations for BD were not high based on many things I had heard over the past weeks. Even so, it is still disappointing to find out your low expectations have been met.

 

[teamerickson]

3. NO Dual layer BD material! only 25 GB

This is huge! There goes the more capacity argument. Either the studios will not put out BD on dual layer discs or this player may become useless when they do. Not good.

 

[jgantert]

Looks like the Samsung player isn't the best. Strange how they mention MPEG artifacts. This is exactly what I noticed at CompUSA. So maybe it really was the BR source, not the playback equipment or LCD TV.

I think we all might need to wait for the Sony & Pioneer players before BR gets a fair comparison.

-John

 

[Ilya]

Strange how they mention MPEG artifacts. This is exactly what I noticed at CompUSA.

I noticed that at Best Buy too! Was not impressed with the picture quality, but didn't want to judge too soon, as this could be a problem with the TV set, etc. Good side-by-side comparison is needed.

 

[vurbano]

This is huge! There goes the more capacity argument. Either the studios will not put out BD on dual layer discs or this player may become useless when they do. Not good.

Yeah ID bet future models have the ability but why put this one out without it? Without DL they will have to go to Mpeg4 IMO.

 

[mike123abc]

Things to consider:

1. The check discs are not commercial products, will have to see which encoders they use on real discs, BR supports VC-1 like the Toshiba.

2. Double layer discs can be played, but of course single layer discs are cheaper to make, so expect content providers to shoot for 1 layer if possible

The Sony player lists more audio formats, but not very specific on them:

Uncompressed Multi Channel Linear PCM Output
Dolby® Digital Plus(Dolby® Digital audio stream only), Dolby® TrueHD (Dolby® Digital audio stream only) dts®-HD --- (dts audio stream only) Digital Out and decoding capability
Dolby® Digital and dts® 5.1channel Output
Multi Channel 192KHz/24bit Audio D/A Converters

I did not order the Samsung, waiting on the Sony. Also, it gives some time for reviews of actual BR content, to see if I want to wait for a later player. I am already invested in HD-DVD with 20 discs already and a bunch more preordered, my main reason to also get Blu-Ray is that they have a lot of titles I want in BR.

 

[vurbano]

Another review:

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

Equipment list:
Toshiba 50” 50H13 DVI in from
Denon 3806 HDMI out and in from
Samsung BD-P1000 HDMI out and
Toshiba HD-A1 HDMI out

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7850079&&#post7850079

 

[Ilya]

Excellent review by Cliff! (I added paragraph breaks to make it easier to read.)

Oh boy! It really sounds like Sony has dropped the ball with Blu-ray Disc! Sony Pictures that is! I think it's not the player, but the first titles who blew it!
How can Sony possibly expect the early adopters to get excited about the new format when they use a single-layer disc, refuse to use superior codecs and state that 18mbps is all we need!!!

 

[mike123abc]

Ironic that the "more expensive" format is being used by studios because it is cheaper... I bet that the selection of MPEG-2 over VC-1/H.254 is that MPEG-2 royalties are pretty much done now. They have the software already for MPEG-2, no need to spend more to upgrade, and the quickly shrinking MPEG-2 royalties is making the single layer BR cheaper than double layer HDDVD using an AVC.

Sadly companies know 97%+ of people will not notice the slightest difference between HDDVD and BR in either direction. If BR manages to get the jump with more titles by the holliday buying season, combined with PS3 we could be stuck with a lot of MPEG-2 transfers. Only picky directors/producers may be able to force a studio to use better codecs. It could be a two years before the majority of BR switches to advanced video codecs.

 

[Ilya]

The Blu-ray camp needs rave reviews from early adopters to get a boost for their more expensive players. And they are not going to get that if the first released titles are clearly inferior in picture quality to what HD DVD Camp has to offer. Very, very bad move by Sony!

Betting the format success on the PS3 alone is a very risky tactics. It may backfire on them.