Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

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From my expert friend when I asked him whicvh format to buy:

Posted by rico on November 8, 2007 at 07:12:57:
I would recommend waiting for the Samsung BD-UP5000 SD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray combo player that is supposed to be on the market before Christmas. I believe it will be the best standard def player as well as the best HD format player. A colleaguee has already worked with Samsung on their BDP1200 and BDP1400 Blu-ray players which, needless to say, are outstanding Blu-ray players. Oddly, the BDP1200 is a better standard def player than the BDP1400 because they had to change scalar manufacturers.

Right now the HD-DVD format has an edge over Blu-ray because all HD-DVDs are encoded via VC1 encoding (a version of windows WM9 codec which a friend at Microsoft helped develop). Blu-ray discs have mainly used MPEG encoding and it shows. Blu-ray is now starting to use the H.264 encoding codec but because they are not using the codec to full potential the VC1 encoded HD-DVDs still have an edge. According to this friend H.264 has the potential to actually be better than VC1 but the people who are doing the Blu-ray encoding (there are only 5 facilities capable of doing so) are apparently not interested in learning how to exploit this codec to its full potential.

I also believe that we are going to live with both formats for a long time and feel it will be necessary for most serious movie fans to incorporate both formats into their systems. Last I heard the Samsung BD-UP5000 was going to have a list price around $1000.00 but that is just a figure that I heard bandied about.

By the way, the best way to get the best audio from these HD players is to let the onboard decoders do the work so if you have a 6 channel bypass through your preamp your all set.

Hope this helps.