Looking for a Blu-Ray Player
Eighteen months ago, my wife and I decided to buy an HD-DVD player for our new Home Theater setup. Christmas was right around the corner and the $150 player sales were hard to pass up. Of course, we all know how that decision went. A few days after Christmas, Warner Bros decided to go Blu-Ray only and HD-DVD became a dead man walking format. *sigh* At the time, very few Blu-Ray movies were available, so we decided to simply stick with DVD and watch what we could on HD-DVD while the format was still available on Netflix. Well, yesterday my HD-DVD player started showing signs of dying on me. When the disc spins in the tray, the machine gives off a loud clicking noise and no amount of percussive maintenance will make it go away.
Into Blu-Ray, I go. Over the past few years I've learned that being a home theater enthusiast can take its toll on your wallet so I set a budget and I'm firmly sticking to it. I don't want to spend more than $250 on a new player and would prefer to spend less than $200. Here's what I found along with the price as listed at B&H.
JVC XV-BP1: $229
Panasonic BD60: $199
Pioneer BDP120: $199
Sony BDP-S360: $239
They all will bitstream all audio codecs to my Pioneer Elite VSX92TXH receiver. Each player is a profile 2.0 player. Each player supports 1080p/24 and 1080p/60 playback. They all have comparable picture quality but the general consensus is that the JVC is the best of the bunch. The Pioneer comes with a 1GB flash drive but those are so cheap that the inclusion really doesn't matter. The JVC has back lit buttons which for many people is a turn off. Since my player is buried in a closet behind the seating area, it's usually dark in the closet when I need to access the closet so back lit buttons on the front face is a nice benefit. The JVC seems to have significantly better loading times. After suffering through the Toshiba's 35 seconds to tray open loading time, I consider this important. I can't tell you how much I hated standing in front of the player waiting for it to boot, while the rest of the theater was up and running. The DVD player should not take longer than your projector to boot. In the end, I'm leaning toward the JVC as my first Blu-Ray player choice.
Comments on any of these players are welcome and thanks to AVSForum for all the help there.
Next: Bought the Panasonic
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4 Comments
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I'm not an expert about blue-ray but what's about a PS3.
It can handle 1080p and there's are constantly firmware updates so the blue ray player will also improve.
The PS3 can also be used as a Media Server to stream Photo, Music and Videos in Full HD(cable) or lower resolutions (wireless - sometimes up to 720p video material).
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I've looked at the PS3 and it's out of my price range. Because I own a Xbox 360, the gaming features of the PS3 are not important to me and neither are the media center features. While I believe the PS3 to be quite a capable player, only the moving profile standard seems to be a real reason to buy the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player. That said, I can spend $199 - $229 on a Profile 2.0 player, pocket the difference and upgrade to another player when Profile 3.0 finally hits the shelves. In the end I'll pay the same amount as I would pay today for a PS3.
For me, the extra features are mostly duplicates of features that I already have in my home theater and as such are not worth the extra money. For someone without a Xbox 360, the PS3 makes a tun of sense because it is a very good Blu-Ray player.
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"gaming features of the PS3 are not important to me"
What about exclusives? MGS4 & LBP alone are "most-see" titles for everyone in games industry, in my opinion.
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I agree that those are important titles but I already own a Wii, a DS, an iPod Touch, a Windows Mobile phone, an Xbox 360 with a Gold Live account and a fairly new gaming PC. With all the games at my disposal on these devices, the PS3 would have been redundant in many ways. I simply do not have the time to see all of the games that every game industry person should see so some have to fall by the wayside.
The PS3 also presented me with remote control problems whereas the Panasonic that I purchased worked out of the box with my RF based Harmony 890. Buying a Bluetooth dongle wasn't an enticing benefit of the PS3.
7.13.2009 at 7:11 PM