Sony player live at Sony Style

[phloyd]

I took some time to drop by the Sony Style store in San Jose since I suspected that the Sony player would be active there.

It indeed was and I enjoyed checking it out for a while.

They were playing a demo that had a bunch of trailers and for the most part it was ok. They were using the 60" SXRD as the display.

The music videos were kinda noisy - though being shot in low light that is not too surprising.

The movie trailers looked a lot better. Ultraviolet looked nice but quite fake - I would tend to catagorise that one as CGI and so not really a fair judge of image quality.

The one that struck me was Underworld 2 - it looked really nice. It was like a difference of night and day compared to the Samsung player playing Fifth Element in Fry's. I was very impressed with it all round.

Of course, that begs the question - what does the Sony player look like playing Fifth Element?

Perhaps I can 'befriend' the Sony guys and get them to pop out that demo and put 5th in some time when they are not so busy.

In any case, I think that there is a very good chance that BD discs will look significantly better on the Sony player.

All I want from a player is to gimme the picture as encoded on the disc without messing with it. It seems that the Toshiba HD DVD player does this and the Samsung BD does not.

Perhaps the Sony does - let's hope so.

[Psiweaver]

Was it all short fast loops or where some of the loops being played longer than just a trailer. I find that trailers don't give you the best idea of picture quality or really let you experience what a true experience will be like. You should try and convince them to let you pop in a normal blu-ray movie and see how it is.

[phloyd]

The trailers are around 3 minutes long probably.

I agree that the do not necessarily represent what the movies will look like. But they are plenty long enough to get a feel for what the player looks like.

I do hope to get them to try out one or two of my BD discs. I bet they have no idea about the bad press

[Longshot]

Was this the actual player or the prototype?

[Psiweaver]

I'm sure it was the actual player. They tend not to put prototypes on display at the Sony Style stores. My guess is that its an early player and that they are producing enough right now to build up stock levels so that they don't have like 15 or 20 for the country to release.

[phloyd]

I also heard recently that the bitrate on the demo disc is very high. That might account for the quality this is there but perhaps lacking on the released discs.

The player looks like a production unit. I imagine early production runs.

[Longshot]

Originally Posted by phloyd

I also heard recently that the bitrate on the demo disc is very high. That might account for the quality this is there but perhaps lacking on the released discs.

The player looks like a production unit. I imagine early production runs.

Interesting. In the Sony Style in Tysons Corner Va. the player was definitely a prototype but this was in May. Still I would be surprised if this was an actual production unit as launch is still almost three months away.

[suprmallet]

Originally Posted by phloyd

Of course, that begs the question - what does the Sony player look like playing Fifth Element?

Considering Sony is rumored to be re-releasing this due to the poor image quality, I would say, it would still look awful.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by suprmallet

Considering Sony is rumored to be re-releasing this due to the poor image quality, I would say, it would still look awful.

Exactly.

It doesn't matter how awesome the hardware is if you're going to feed it less than stellar source material.

I really hope that Sound and Vision story about FE being redone is true, and frankly, FE is not the only disc that deserves one.

[Psiweaver]

I don't know if HOFD would really benefit much in terms of a rerlease as far as just about every version of the film i've seen hasn't looked that good but oh boy the sound is sooo wonderful.

[takezo]

Originally Posted by phloyd

I took some time to drop by the Sony Style store in San Jose since I suspected that the Sony player would be active there.

It indeed was and I enjoyed checking it out for a while.

They were playing a demo that had a bunch of trailers and for the most part it was ok. They were using the 60" SXRD as the display.

The music videos were kinda noisy - though being shot in low light that is not too surprising.

The movie trailers looked a lot better. Ultraviolet looked nice but quite fake - I would tend to catagorise that one as CGI and so not really a fair judge of image quality.

The one that struck me was Underworld 2 - it looked really nice. It was like a difference of night and day compared to the Samsung player playing Fifth Element in Fry's. I was very impressed with it all round.

Of course, that begs the question - what does the Sony player look like playing Fifth Element?

Perhaps I can 'befriend' the Sony guys and get them to pop out that demo and put 5th in some time when they are not so busy.

In any case, I think that there is a very good chance that BD discs will look significantly better on the Sony player.

All I want from a player is to gimme the picture as encoded on the disc without messing with it. It seems that the Toshiba HD DVD player does this and the Samsung BD does not.

Perhaps the Sony does - let's hope so.

Somtimes it's the setup too. I saw a Blu-ray demo at Comp USA, but however the seats were way too cose to the 40+ inch screen. Oviously sitting at the seat made pixelization more noticable. I steped back about 7 feet away from TV, which I believe is best veiwing distance fro a TV that size, the picture was incredibly clean.

There is alos tha fact that most sores setup HDTVs to Burn mode (Dynamic). Meaning contrast is 100 up. yet 100% contrast does not make things look better. I tested with a n HDTV at Circuit City which was playing pretty good HDTV content. Just buy using the remote and lowering contrast, I noticed a better picture, the contrast was too high resulted in jagged edges and profounded pixelization. I increased detail by increasing sharpness which was 0 before. I finally increased color saturation as the default setting of 50 was too flat. The new setting of 60 made the picture look more vibrant and life like. In less than 5 minutes, i made that TV the best looking TV in the store.

[Psiweaver]

and 30 seconds after you were gone it was changed back to dynamic.

[JTK]

I'm blatantly stealing this pic from a post at another forum.

The pics we've seen before are prototypes. This is different. Possibly the final, or at least closer to it:

In any event, I think it looks really nice. I hope it runs well!

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by JTK

You Will Be Mine....I Will Own you.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

You Will Be Mine....I Will Own you.

In November, when I walk into that store, I want to see that, the Panny, and the Pioneer Elite running next to each other.

That's the day I feel pain.

[Psiweaver]

Heh. I don't know of too many stores that will have all 3 running. We'll have a pioneer elite running on either the pro-fd1 1080p plasma or running on our vx-2i runco 3 chip dlp projector.