New Blu Ray Player

Officer Giggles

Have a budget of about €150 to get a blu ray player, anyone have Amy recommendations.

I was looking at this one if anyone can guide me in the right direction please

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/11906678/art/samsung/bd-e5500-zf-3d-blu-ray-pl.html?key=0&srcid=10538&partenaire=google_ppc_ie&mctag=gg_goog_1432&nopopup=1&CodePromo=oui&gclid=CK2Kq-3om7ICFWLHtAodxBUA2A

superleedsdub

I bought that player recently for one of my bedrooms - can get it €10 cheaper in most electrical retailers in Ireland

It comes with some nice features such as a built-in media player and samsung smart Hub. Picture quality could be better but for a blu-ray player/media at that price it`s worth a look at.....

Outkast_IRE

I think you should have a look at the sony blu-ray players in the same price range, i have bought 3 sony players over the last 30 months and all are still working like a dream i reccomend them.

superleedsdub

Panasonic have also produced some highly rated players in the past few years....

andy1249

It comes with some nice features such as a built-in media player and samsung smart Hub. Picture quality could be better but for a blu-ray player/media at that price it`s worth a look at.....

When it comes actual Blu ray playback , picture quality between all BD players is as close to the same as makes no difference at all , this is because of the highly regulated and standardised HDMI interface and the REC 709 video standard.

All a Blu ray player has to do is get the data from the disc to the screen without messing up the data , all of them can do that. And when it comes to 1080p @ 24fps ( i.e. Blu ray content ) all of them do that job exactly the same , or as close to it as makes no difference whatsoever.

Its only when it comes to playing other content , net based content , file based content , DVD's and so on , that there are picture differences between players and that is down to the units firmware and the scaling chipset used.

Outkast_IRE

There are also massive differences in load times, say from the time you put in the disc until it loads, on some of the cheaper players you can literally be sitting there twiddling your thumbs waiting for it.

andy1249

There are also massive differences in load times, say from the time you put in the disc until it loads, on some of the cheaper players you can literally be sitting there twiddling your thumbs waiting for it.

That was mostly back in the day before the completed BD profiles were done.

BD 1.1 could take literally minutes to load , at this time the PS3 was the fastest load time on the market.

But those days are long gone and players with long load times are a thing of the past. Any new player should have no issue in this respect.

Outkast_IRE

andy1249 wrote: »

That was mostly back in the day before the completed BD profiles were done.

BD 1.1 could take literally minutes to load , at this time the PS3 was the fastest load time on the market.

But those days are long gone and players with long load times are a thing of the past. Any new player should have no issue in this respect.

Bought one of the cheap philips ones for €100 about 14 months ago , trust me sit the cheap philips one next to the good sony one and theres a major difference(load times only, no difference in other respects except maybe sony is slightly quieter)

Im sure if the cheap philips ones were available last year theres still players about that have longer load times etc. especially in the cheapest selection where hardware may not of changed much if at all.

coylemj

Long load time can be caused by the player being set to low power when in standby. That option is available on current Sony BD players. A friend of mine was an 'early adopter' of Blu-Ray technology and his Sony BDP-S500 takes about 4 minutes to warm up. UK price was £600 when it was launched!

If you want the machine to spring to life in a couple of seconds it can only be done if it's got most of the s/w permanently sitting in memory and it's always ready to rock and roll. That in turn means that it's using far more electricity than if it was truly switched off and only using a fraction of a watt keeping an eye on the IR sensor for an 'On' command from the remote control.

It's your choice - fast startup comes with a price.

Officer Giggles

I went with the Sony BDP S390. Got it for €100 from Amazon. It has built in WiFi. Nice little machine.

Dazzling D

Always Sony or Panasonic for blu-ray

coylemj

Officer Giggles wrote: »

I went with the Sony BDP S390. Got it for €100 from Amazon. It has built in WiFi. Nice little machine.

Good luck with that, I believe the 2012 models support Netflix, I bought the S480 last year because of the network connectivity but it doesn't support Netflix so I upgraded too soon. So-called Smart TV is a heap of crap, unless you like looking at old TV3 programs.

Strange that the S390 and S590 have Wi-Fi and the S490 does not.

Dazzling D

coylemj wrote: »

Good luck with that, I believe the 2012 models support Netflix, I bought the S480 last year because of the network connectivity but it doesn't support Netflix so I upgraded too soon. So-called Smart TV is a heap of crap, unless you like looking at old TV3 programs.

Strange that the S390 and S590 have Wi-Fi and the S490 does not.

Nah, it makes sense as it's usually bundled with 3D TVs that have wifi built in so you have no need to pay for wifi twice. The S590 or S790 is there for those who need both.

I use the Smart TV part quite a bit - especially for Netflix and YouTube.