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208.58.2.83
Got it on approval, and now I'm sold!
Only downsides: Hot and heavy.
My comparison basis: an Oppo 980, then that plus a Calibre Vantage HD (on loan) with its Silicon Optix Realta chip, said by many to be the best available for deinterlacing and upconverting. Ought to be! The unit retails for $3200. (Out in July, a $700 Gefen with the same chip.)
I had been fairly pleased with the results, but not kilobucks worth.
Then the Sony entered my life. Discounts are virtually unobtainable, but with a Blu-ray remote thrown in, I took the plunge. I had been told that its ability to play DVDs was nonpareil among standalone devices, so I was really more interested in that than in Blu-ray per se.
Now I am here to tell you, with well-made DVDs the result so closely resembles high-def that one needn't obsess over any missing quality.
Point of example: The DVDs of Bones, a series I missed but man! is it great! Even apart from that, the DVDs achieve (either on the Oppo or Oppo combo) an image that's among the best I have ever seen, but on the Sony they're breathtaking.
What's the thing here? Resolution, of course, and noticeably fewer artifacts, but color rendition and range are notably superior; complexions appear more lifelike and all colors are deeper, truer. Closer to film, in a phrase.
Now to Blu-ray discs. I bought a handful, including three for comparison purposes: Black Hawk Down and Gattaca (cf. Superbit editions) and The Searchers (same restoration, on DVD). Omigosh! What a surprise. The Superbits were damn close, and the DVD not bad, on the Sony. Very watchable. One must wonder whether the premium price of admission to Blu-ray is worth it.
Last night I went through and checked out a couple dozen DVDs and discovered that, like audio recordings, the quality varies considerably. More variance than I had noted with any previous player, but no complaining as each and every DVD looked better than ever. Why, I almost watched one!
The Blu-rays themselves I'm saving for company.
What's my stuff? you ask. A JVC D-ILA projector (RS-1), an 8' Da-Lite 1.1 screen (too much gain for a darkened room, but there I am), and a thirty-foot room with a fifteen-foot throw. Up front, a pair of large VMPS towers, and thas' all folks. Just stereo. Most mixes, both film and TV, support it superbly. Plus there's the esthetics: the sound should remain within the general space of the action that's happening through your viewing window.
The television season ends tomorrow with the season finale of Lost. Then for the summer, Movies! Movies! Movies!
clark
PS A word on HD-TV. I receive exclusively OTA, and it looks great. The local ABC outlet does the news in HD and it's still the best signal, if overlit, including Blu-ray, that I have access to. Everything else... falls into place...
PPS On the Sony I find that different discs now manifest with variant frame sizes and aspect ratios. For one thing, most of the Blu-rays are 1.5" taller. Anyone?
Follow Ups:
I have the PS3 and recently I just bought the Samsung BD-UP5000 BD/HDD universal player. Prior to buying the Samsung I was using the PS3 for all the BD and normal DVD up converting viewing duties. The picture quality was amazing it was much better than my Denon DVD-2900 even on the normal DVD viewing. Although IMO the Denon trounced the PS3 in terms of sound quality. However, I’ve just upgraded the firmware on the PS3; with the upgrade it finally bettered the Denon regarding the sound quality.
All is well with PS3 until it starts to develop a handshake problem with HDMI so I went and googled the issue and I’ve found out according to the blogs in AVS forum and others this PS3 malady is all too common. So I went and bought the Samsung as I was getting tired dealing with the PS3 issues. The Samsung universal player is arms with the REON (HQV) btw, according to the AVS forum the REON chip is the best in the market right now regarding the up conversion and I believe them after I saw the results with my own two eyes. The Samsung is the best that I’ve seen so far IMHO while watching the BD or HDD movies as it has a slightly better HD video quality than the Sony BDP S1 and the Toshiba HD-A2 during my comparison however. Also it bettered the Sony regarding the up convertion duties as it has a very smooth devoid of the jagged edges artifacts that Sony player had. Also the Samsung sound quality is in par with Sony BDP S1 and much better than the PS3 and Denon. Of course YMMV.
BTW, I’m using the SharpVision XV-10000 DLP projector projecting on a 110” wide screen Draper fixed Silver Screen with a gain of 1.2. The Yamaha RX-VX2500 handles the processing duties as I’m using (2) Adcom 555 power amps for surround channels, Hafler P-500 power amp (700 watts) configured to mono driving the Paradigm center channel speaker and the Crown K2 power amp at 750 watts/channel driving the Martin Logan Quest for FL and FR channels. I know this is not as good as some HT set-up that I’ve seen and heard however, I’m very happy with the results so I can’t really complain much.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
Finding "evidence" of PS3 maladies on AVS is like finding monocotyledons on your lawn. However, if you look at comments about the Samsung, there have been many complaints. It is not a quality piece and very expensive. The folks at AVS tend to like it more than any Blu-ray player because they still have a fetish for HD DVD--a bias that is actively fostered and encouraged by the forum's moderators.
-------------Call it, friendo.
I have compared the Samsung to Sony PS3 which I owned, Sony S1 and Toshiba A2 when I was shopping for a new BD player to replace my PS3 and based on own experience Samsung is better in my system anyway. BTW, I’ve just upgraded the Samsung’s firmware as well so it’s good to go until another upgrade arrives. All the nitpicking that they’ve mentioned in the AVS forum about this player I can’t really comment on them as so far it’s been behaving very well for me. We will never know though.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
My buddy bought the Samsung and promptly returned it for the PS3. But having never compared the two myself, I should probably butt out. It's great that you downloaded the latest firmware for your Samsung.
-------------Call it, friendo.
x
Not a single mention of the difference in sound quality between the uncompressed/lossless options on BD and the older, compressed soundtracks on DVD. I would have thought that rated a mention and I would have expected a BD like "Blackhawk Down", which I own on BD but never owned on DVD, would show that up superbly.
My DVD player is/was a Denon 2910, not a bad player by any standards if not up to the best and now retained only to play non-Region 4 discs since Sony won't release a zone free PS3 here in Australia even though I understand that their stand-alone players, like those of every other major manufacturer, are zone free as a result of a court ruling many years ago here in Australia. Overall I'd have to rate the PS3 as equal to the 2910 and maybe a fraction better, though I occasionally see something I think the 2910 handled better. As a DVD player the PS3 certainly represents superb value for money.
In general I think I'm happier with BD picture quality compared to DVDs than you are. That may well be a function of our displays since mine is a 32" Loewe 1366 x 768 LCD TV, a little different to your projector setup. Even on a BD like "Lady In The Water" where the reviews I've read were pretty equivocal about picture quality and suggested little improvement, I've been quite pleased by what I see as an improvement. Maybe I'm looking on the sunny side of things and perhaps it's partly my eyes since I've got the start of cataract development which I don't tend to notice when viewing something at home on a bright screen at a close distance but which really annoys me in a cinema with a dimmer screen and greater distance because movies in the cinema no longer look in focus to me and the contrast becomes degraded as well. Whatever the reasons I've been really happy with the picture quality results on BD for every comparison I've made.
But sound quality! BD high def sound quality is noticeably better than DVD sound quality. Voices sound more natural, as do other sounds, and everything sounds richer with better dynamics. How could you discuss the PS3 and talk about differences in picture quality for BD compared to DVD and not make even a passing comment on sound quality?
Clark, this is a sad day…
David Aiken
...first of all, I've had the rig for only a few days.
Clearly from the lack of info, I lack a decoder for the elaborate sound on BDs and many DVDs.
Finally, I did mention that I prefer the sound to be upfront. Perhaps you can tell me which if any of the encoding schemes yield good stereo?...
clark
OK, now I understand the ommission.
As someone who started out watching movies in simple stereo and has progressed in stages to 6.1, I'm happy to share some of my thoughts on surround vs stereo plus how I felt I got the best stereo results. YMMV.
Basically I've come to the conclusion that you get the best results when you reproduce the soundtrack with exactly the same number of channels as the soundtrack possesses. It's common to hear people complaining about how expanding stereo to 5.1 doesn't sound all that brilliant, but I've come to the conclusion that collapsing 5.1 to stereo also introduces problems. Mixing channels together seems to reduce the clarity of things to my ears, just as fake surround often sounds, well, fake.
If you are going to go for stereo, however, my best results with stereo—prior to my surround days—came when I selected a dedicated stereo sound track when the disc offered that, and when I avoided the 2 channel pseudo-surround options offered by my player and receiver. In other words, best results for stereo came from stereo sound tracks (see point above) which were then left unaltered with fancy processing. The only time I really felt happy with pseudo surround effects were on those rare soundtracks like on the 4 disc Lord of the Rings movie sets where the 2 channel mix on the disc included the pseudo surround effects, ie the 2 channel soundtrack had specifically been mixed to provide those effects.
Few BD discs seem to have dedicated stereo soundtracks and I haven't tried downmixing a BD surround track to stereo. If you're not using HDMI you probably don't have much choice other than letting the PS3 do the downmix. In the absence of experimentation I'd downmix the highest quality soundtrack on the disc if you have a choice of soundtracks. I'd go for downmixing an uncompressed PCM soundtrack first before choosing a Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA soundtrack. I somehow doubt you'll find a choice between Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA on any disc since the standard practice seems to be to offer one or the other but not both but, in the unlikely event that both were offered I'd probably tend to pick the DTS HD MA track over the Dolby True HD track since I tend to think that DTS sounds better than Dolby, at least for the old formats. I don't have any discs which let me do an A/B comparison on the same soundtrack.
I wouldn't choose to downmix an older Dolby or DTS soundtrack over a high def version of the same soundtrack but it might be worth actually comparing an older Dolby/DTS dedicated 2 channel soundtrack to a downmixed new Dolby/DTS soundtrack. I'm not certain whether a proper stereo soundtrack in a lossy compression format would win out over a downmixed lossless surround soundtrack.
David Aiken
...I may not!
As for, "You get the best results when you reproduce the soundtrack with exactly the same number of channels as the soundtrack possesses" -- all too often those other channels are faked. Feh!
One thing I must do is learn how best to collapes the whole shmear into simple stereo. Regrettably (?) I do not yet have any decoding gear in house, so that must wait. I hate that "they" may have deprived us of the simple solution.
clark
"all too often those other channels are faked."
No more so than a stereo mix from a multi-channel recording is also faked.
My point was simply that taking a given soundtrack and altering the number of channels, whether it be a 2 channel soundtrack you're converting to more channels or a 5.1 channel soundtrack you're converting to stereo, can't be done without some damage. I found that the clarity of sound from the front L & R speakers in my HT system improved when I added side surround speakers and took the surround content out of what they were playing, and I found it improved again when I added a centre speaker and took the centre information out of what they were playing. Doing the reverse and folding channels into a smaller number of channels reduces clarity for me.
"One thing I must do is learn how best to collapes the whole shmear into simple stereo. Regrettably (?) I do not yet have any decoding gear in house, so that must wait."
Actually you do have some decoding gear which will collapse a surround sound mix to 2 channels: your DVD/BD player. They all have options for 2 channel or multi-channel output. Simply choose the 2 channel option and avoid selecting any option that adds pseudo-surround effects. Whatever you do, don't try the "simple" approach of just connecting the L & R output jacks of the surround sound outputs to your stereo amp because you're likely to find that all that does is give you 2 channels of the surround mix without any folding down to 2 channels and the first thing you'll notice as missing in action will be most of the dialog. Some players may work with this sort of connection PROVIDED you choose the stereo output option in their setup menu. Best advice: Read the manual for instructions on stereo output options.
David Aiken
...to a stereo amp?
I've just been doing as suggested, using the player's own stereo out. No problem yet with intelligibility!
I was only worried by what I read, about BDs having no real two-channel mix.
cj
and some others are sure to do so in the future. If an error can be made, there's always someone around to make it.
There are a couple of BDs of older films, "The Searchers" for one, with mono sound tracks. I was looking at the BD selection available locally yesterday and if I remember correctly "The Road Warrior" starring Mel Gibson actually has a stereo sound track so there's a stereo BD for you. The film may not be to your taste and I have to admit that I passed it by myself. Stereo soundtracks on BD are not impossible but I think you'll only see them on older films and at present there are relatively few films available on BD which did not have surround soundtracks when they originally released and I think there is little motivation to go back and create stereo soundtracks for hi def releases. I suspect there's a lot more chance of seeing the original soundtrack format preserved so I'd keep my eye out for re-releases of older films if you want native stereo on BD discs.
Selecting the stereo sound track option on DVDs is definitely the way to go when a stereo option is provided but a lot of people have a tendency to just tell the player to play the disc and accept the default soundtrack without investigating what's available, and the default is more and more often surround. It will definitely be surround with BD.
David Aiken
d
He's doing stereo, and he may be using the analog outs (doesn't specify)-not the PS3's strongest feature.
Jack
nt
I think as you see more material, as impressive as you find upscaled DVD, the resolution is superior on HD broadcasts and better yet on Blu-ray 1080p (although I don't know if your projector and screen setup is letting you make those kinds of determinations). There is a lot of variability but for overall resolution, 1080p is the way to go.
Certainly the lossless multichannel audio content supported by Blu-ray is a big leap in my enjoyment of HT. I'm glad you're enjoying two-channel, but you are missing out on much of the HT experience.
Aspect ratios of BDs correspond to the films' theatrical release.
-------------Call it, friendo.
Very few are considered top tier, more so the newer movies released like Casino Royale, Pirates, and some animated movies.
Very few BDs I have am I not really happy with. If it is content I like and it has both an upgrade for picture and sound over the SD DVD, I usually take the plunge but I don't own lots like some folks.
An older title to knock ones socks off BD versus SD? That's easy! Blade Runner.
z
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