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In Reply to: Thanks for the notes on blue-ray and the link in the next post. posted by grantv on January 9, 2009 at 07:01:28:
"As for the PS3, my philosophy is that if you pay $200 for a PS3 that's built to play games, or $200 for a dedicated blue-ray player, there's a likely chance the dedicated player will perform better for the audio and video portion"
Not necessarily true with the PS3 which is actually selling for less than the manufacturing cost because Sony are trying to capture gamers and hoping to make their profits on the games. Competing players at the same price aren't being sold at a loss but at a profit. There's more than a fair chance that the PS3 will perform equally well as a dedicated player at the same price, perhaps even better on some things. It's certainly still the fastest loading BD player which may not sound like much but some BD players are very slow loaders.
You don't need multi-channel analog for BD, you don't even need anything more than 2 channels, but the PS3 has some very individual limitations on it's output. If you want the full benefit of the new lossless formats you have no choice. You have to use PCM output via HDMI. The full lossless format signal isn't available any other way. You can get it in 2 channel, 5.1, 7.1 as you wish but you have to use HDMI and PCM output if you want to get that. Also, if you want analog output, you can only get 2 channel, not 5.1 or 7.1 so if you want surround sound you have to use digital output of some kind.
The PS3 does BD very well, does a quite good job with upscaling DVD but isn't top of the pack, and does audio well within the limitations of it's output. It has specific ventilation needs and it can be quite noisy if those needs aren't met. As far as BD features go it's basically got the full feature set and Sony have been keeping it up to date with firmware updates. Many of the standalone players don't have the full set of BD features but I seriously question whether many people really want the full set. I'm not really interested in BD Live, for instance.
If the PS3 does what you want a player to do and you can meet its ventilation needs, you should give it consideration and I think you'll find it stacks up well against the competition, being a little better in some areas and worse in others. It's currently good value. There are good reasons for choosing one, and good reasons for choosing a different player.
Coming down the track are a number of new players and player prices are dropping. While it's competitive and good value now, it probably won't be as competitive when those new players hit but it will still probably provide good value.
If you're considering a BD player, take your time. Decide what you want and look carefully at the specs because sometimes it's hard to work out whether or not a particular player provides a certain feature or not. Keep an eye on announcements of new players because the situation is fluid.
But as far as BD itself goes, it's certainly gives you a better experience with both picture and sound than DVD, and I can see and appreciate the differences on a 32" screen so you should have no problems at all seeing them on an 84" screen, much less a 110" one. That's the one thing you don't need to have any doubts about.
David Aiken
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Follow Ups
- On the price… - David Aiken 14:45:01 01/09/09 (0)
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