Sound & Video Magazine (Sept 2006 issue) already knew of the problems in the market place of the Samsung BR player and agreed to test a beta or preproduction player, they plan to market this fall that corrects the "soft picture”. While not mentioning the firmware upgrades of HDDVD or its True HD release via firmware v2.0, they talk up the linear PCM track that they only could test with a special Sony disk. The big laugh is that even with a ringer of a prototype unit, the weak picture quality remains.
"A couple of days after Samsung announced its upgrade, engineers from Korea delivered to our lab a modified BD-P1000 with its video-noise reduction turned off, allowing us to be the first to test this reworked sample.
So — drumroll, please — what difference did we see? You can get more from Al in "Blu's Clues," but the short answer is: not too much. Indeed, we struggled for 3 hours, in the presence of Samsung's engineers, to spot any obvious distinction between the original and modified players. It was only after the engineers had left and we spent several more hours A/B-ing a range of titles that we began to get a handle on some subtle but promising improvements."
Read the article from their web site:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=1683
They make a big deal of the 720p output, which is now better with new firmware. They do point out that 1080P output is a conversion from 1080i and it was no better than 1080i output. For that matter, they chose to use 1080i for the rest of the test.
" However, Samsung confirmed for us that the BD-P1000 converts video from the disc to 1080i before converting it back to 1080p for output. The same conversion is performed whether you use 1080p from the player or output 1080i and let the display convert the signal to 1080p internally.
I carefully compared the 1080p and 1080i output from the unit's HDMI connector and detected no difference — none. Eventually, we settled on 1080i, which, unlike 1080p, was compatible with our Yamaha HDMI switching receiver."
"Toshiba's clunky first-gen models have their own peculiar ergonomic issues, but the picture quality of HD DVD is something to behold — a fact that was dramatically driven home when we finally got the chance to compare it to Blu-ray."
Finally their summation said: "In the meantime, though, it would appear that Round One goes to HD DVD."
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