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A friend brought his PS3 over and hooked it up in my theater (BenQ PE-8720, B&K amplification, Martin Logan speakers, Velodyne, Sony DVP-NS900V, Stewart Firehawk) to see how Blu Ray would look. The results were really not that spectacular due in part to lack of calibration of my projector. Anyway, the std. DVD's didn't look any better on the PS3 than my old Sony "tank" player. The NS900V is at least 5 yrs. old; progressive scan (obviously does not upscale) and plays SACD's. That's the real reason I am posting this. My friend had a new Celine Dion MCH SACD he wanted to hear on my system played through his PS3. We played Celine both on his PS3 and my old NS900V. All who were present were unanimous: the old Sony was noticeably better than it's newer cousin. The difference was dramatic. My point posting is this: if you are considering purchasing the PS3 because it is one of the few BluRay players that plays SACD's, you may want to reconsider and like in my case, hang on to that older DVD player that also plays the SACD format. There is a good chance that the older player will sound better than the playstation. Now I can start narrowing down my BluRay player search to one that has all the new high resolution audio processing on board (I want to keep my old B&K too) and one that has good upscaling performance. Just thought some of you may be agonizing over this like I have been. Good luck with your search.es347
ps...we played Celine on my trusty 2 CH system (Marantz SA15S1 player, Audio Research/McCormack amps, Martin Logan/Velodyne speakers, MIT cabling) and that blew away what we had just heard on my theater system. It at least makes me feel a little better regarding my investment in the Marantz player. Now if there were only sufficient SACD titles out there....can you say Beta....can you say Elcaset?
Edits: 02/08/08 02/08/08Follow Ups:
I do have the PS3 as well as the Denon 2900 that has the DCDI progressive scan capability that I used to play the DVD movies on prior to purchasing the PS3 in my dedicated HT room. BTW, I used the Sony VPL PX-20 LCD projector projected on a 110”X52” 16:9 aspect ratio screen. In comparison, the PS3 beats out the Denon in all counts regarding video quality even on the normal DVD. However, the Denon beats the PS3 in SACD music it seems that it has more engaging quality to it than the PS3.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
If I understand you correctly, you didn't play a BD, just a DVD and SACD. If you didn't use HDMI connections, it won't upscale. Did you try the Celine Dion Blu-ray? Its supposed to look pretty good.
FWIW, I wouldn't use any next gen player for audio only, they really cannot compare to a good high end stereo.
Jack
We played several bluray discs but not Celine Dion's...only SACD. The picture quality with Bluray discs was short of spectacular but my BenQ needs someone with the magic touch to set it up. I just can't warm up to the $400-500 price to do so.
Thanks for the civil reply.
HDMI? Component? Composite? You give no indication. You really need to provide more information. If you didn't have connectors and menu settings capable of delivering upscaled DVD, there is no reason to expect it to look any better than what you are used to. Also, if your friend didn't optimize the settings in the PS3 menu, let alone the celine dion setup menu, for the higher resolution sound and it was output as DD, rest assured: you are not hearing or seeing what the PS3 or Blu-ray or even upscaled DVD is capable of delivering. The improvements are not subtle.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Woah there big fellow. Take a deep breath and give this whole thing it's proper perspective. I didn't take copious notes regarding setup. I can tell with some confidence that we were using HDMI player to FP. My old Sony is via component video (ugh, right?). My bad for posting. From now on I'll leave the "reviews" to the experts.lowly, clueless retired EE,
es347
... ~ I didn't take copious notes regarding setup.
Awww, c’mon, don’t be so precious. If you don’t think it is important (with or without copious notes) if the PS3 is set to 480i or 1080i (I don’t think your projector is compatible with 1080p) I doubt anyone will take you seriously.
IMHO set-up menus are extremely important to get the best out of any format &/or source. Of course, YMMV.
Audio set-up is just as important for the best sound. I’m not sure of the relevance of comparing the Marantz source with the other two when you use different amplification?
Smile
Sox
Not sure I appreciate your tone but will respond. The PS3 was set to 720p otherwise there would have been no picture at all. The audio as via optical cable and as far as I know, with the Celine SACD, there was no further setup required. Processing took place in my B&K which cannot process the new hi-res formats so not sure what was happening there. The sound was etched and harsh; essentially, in my opinion, unlistenable--an opinion shared by everyone present. The reason I mentioned my 2CH system, however irrelevant, was not so much to compare with the PS3 but to state that I have made many, many comparisons to my 2CH system vs. my AV system regarding SACD playback. My AV system (my opinion here) is fairly high end (Martin Logan speakers and B&K amplification) but it can't compete with my 2CH system for critical listening. I realize now that one probably shouldn't post anything on this forum regarding a 2CH system. Sorry about that.
Precious retired EE
"The PS3 was set to 720p otherwise there would have been no picture at all. The audio as via optical cable and as far as I know, with the Celine SACD, there was no further setup required."
Good grief, Charlie Brown! Is it any wonder why you were asked to describe the connection and setup method? In other words, the PS3 output SACD/converted to PCM/downsampled to 44.1 over an optical cable to your B&K. You're comparing this to the NS900V playing the same SACD with no PCM conversion/no downconversion to 44.1/over analog to the receiver. Nope, no reason for a difference in sound quality. Should be exactly the same. Yep, must be that shitty PS3. Might as well dump that sucker on some unsuspecting retard.
Not gonna comment on the video, as the sarcasm was used up on the audio.
What could I have been thinking. Thx. for the sarcastic reply. Adios.
> > The audio as via optical cable and as far as I know, with the Celine SACD, there was no further setup required. Processing took place in my B&K which cannot process the new hi-res formats so not sure what was happening there. The sound was etched and harsh; essentially, in my opinion, unlistenable--an opinion shared by everyone present. < <
Well, again, without trying to criticize you, it's premature to write off the audio on this or any other BD. For one thing, your comments pertain more to DVD than BD becuse you were only accessing Dolby Digital. BDs allow you higher-resolution audio, if you can access it. Even using HDMI you need to go into the PS3 menu and make sure the audio output supports 24-bit (which your B&K couldn't handle anyway unless it can pass-through uncompressed PCM without processing it) and the Blu-ray disc menu must be elected to output uncompressed PCM from the disc setup menu.
I'll defer to your judgment on the video as I've never seen this BD or tried to watch a BD via a 780 projector. On my old 780 plasma, the picture of BDs was significantly better than upscaled DVD. It wasn't even close.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
No offense, but you can't expect better-than-DVD picture or sound out of a BD without accessing its high resolution content--there are different audio options included on each BD and different video output options in the PS3 menu. Setup is also an issue to ensure the PS3 is actually outputting what you want it to--for both audio and video. After I got my preamp, I had the PS set wrong for a whole week and was scratching my head wondering why I couldn't get multichannel uncompressed PCM before I realized what was wrong. Hopefully your buddy knows about the menu settings.It was an innocent question--I just hope people realize that many of the criticisms of BD are actually criticisms of their own setup or the implementation.
-------------"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
My reply was strictly tongue-in-cheek. I must admit though that I now understand that this forum is not for the casual poster. Shame on me. The PS3 was setup for 720P otherwise the FP wouldn't have shaken hands with the player. The audio setup as set for MCH but I guess I'm not aware that there are other fine-tuning setups beyond that such as DTS or Dolby, etc?? The audio from the PS3 to my B&K was via optical cable and the processing took place in the AVR. Being some 6 yrs. old, my B&K cannot process any of the new hi-res audio out there but not sure what sort of MCH audio the Celine Dion SACD had. I didn't look at the box to see. The audio on my trusty NS900V was through 5.1 analog cable to my AVR. The PS3 sounded very thin and etched. Frankly there was no comparison. I suppose it could have been a setup issue but for me, I'm keeping the NS900V connected just for SACD playback even after I buy a BluRay player with SACD capability. So I will focus on BluRay players that have the hi res processing on board and have an analog 5.1 output and won't care if they have SACD capability.The reason I included the feedback on my 2CH system albeit with different amplification, was merely to point out that, in my humble opinion, for critical listening I still prefer my higher end 2CH stereo system. MCH is great for certain DSD recordings but I still prefer 2CH for sitting in the sweet spot without a picture and drinking wine. Call me a dinosaur.
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