Introduction to Blu Ray/ Samsung BD-P1000 - Blu-ray Forum

Applefiend · 08-07-2006, 10:55 AM

Here's a review of BD and the Samsung player I wrote for a PS3 site. Enjoy, and see if you can spot any deliberate mistakes. *cough*

Samsung BD-P1000 DVD Player Review and BD Introduction

Introduction
The following is a personal review of Blu Ray and the first available player.

I’ve gone through a lot of video formats over the years:

VHS Video tapes, Laser Discs, ten years ago DVD, and now the latest format has turned up, Blu Ray high definition disc. Along the way a few doomed formats such as Phillips Video 2000, Video CD and the rest. After playing with a Blu Ray player for a couple of weeks, I think Blu Ray might be one of the formats to survive, but why even bother with a new format?

Why Blu Ray?

DVD was a great format when it was introduced in 1996, but it was one intended for standard definition TV sets, the only ones available. Seeing a movie broadcast in high definition with faultless sound through one of the new HD broadcast channels, or at your local cinema, it’s not that great knowing you can only take home a version of it intended for old TV sets. Also the copy protection on DVDs has long, long been cracked wide open. Anyone can make a copy of a friends DVD, recompress it and save it to a CD as a DIVX, or copy Playstation or XBox games based around the DVD format. Any DVD can be simply downloaded and burnt, whether it’s a movie or console game.

It’s time for a new format, and a consortium of consumer electronics companies lead by Sony have produced it in Blu Ray. Blu Ray updates the aging DVD technology bringing high definition and huge amounts of storage. Now you can buy copies of movies that rival the quality of the ones at your local cinema, and watch them without teenagers talking on their mobile phones!

The New technologies in that make up Blu Ray

The Blue laser
A standard DVD stores 4.7GB per layer, 8.5 on a dual layer disk. Blu Ray uses a shorter wavelength laser diode than DVD (405mn compared to 650 on DVD). This allows Blu Ray to store 25GB per layer, with the maximum on players available today being 2 layers, 50GB in total. TDK have 200GB disks with 33GB per layer, but don’t expect any home video players to use these disks in the foreseeable future.

Java
DVD disks contain a simple menu system, in contrast Blu Ray has a real programming language, a variation of Java by Sun Microsystems called BD-J. It would be perfectly possible to build a Myst style video game for Blu Ray players, or include mini games with your movie. Sounds and pictures can be linked to menu actions allowing for a much richer user experiance.

Simple Region Coding
DVD has six region codes, and the choice of region codes seems pretty odd. Australia and New Zealand share a region code with South America, but not Europe.

BD Region coding divides the world into three regions:

Region A – Comprising the old NTSC regions mostly)
The Americas(North and South), Japan, East Asia except China

Region B – Mostly the old PAL regions
Europe and Africa

Region C
China, Russia, rest of the world

Hard coat technology
In some ways the BD consortium cheated and put the information on BD disks closer to the surface than DVD disks to get more data capacity. This means scratching early BD disks was real easy, making them unusable, and they had to be placed in protective caddies. TDK came to the rescue with “Durabis” a coating technology that makes BDs as tough as DVDs again. You can take a wire brush to a Blu Ray Disk and it’ll still play. All BD movies have this coating.

New codecs
MPEG2, the standard used by DVD is a great standard, but is some 14 years old now, and was intended for systems with processing power of that time. 14 years is a long time, that’s before the Playstation 1, never mind 2. The latest and greatest codecs to emerge are MPEG-4 H264, and VC-1. The new codecs are so powerful and efficient they can produce output every similar to DVD out of a standard 682MB CD-ROM. Combined with the 50GB storage of a Blu Ray, crystal clear output at very high resolution and frame rate is possible.

MPEG2 H264 is already in use and can be seen at the Apple Quicktime trailers site: http://www.apple.com/trailers/ , and is supported by mobile phones, Sony's own PSP, and Apple's Video iPod.

VC-1 is a codec with 15 companies technology behind it, although it is generally wrongly considered an invention of Microsoft. Microsoft are very behind the codec, it's used in their Windows Media Player, and XBox 360 video game console as it's primary video playback codec.

Both codecs are superb, although MPEG-4 H264 is considered more demanding to decode.

There is also support for lossless audio codecs, with audio quality higher than that used for big budget hollywood movies.

Higher bitrates
Feeding these codecs is the highest bitrates in the industry. Higher than Redbook CD Audio, DVD, or indeed the rival HD DVD format..With the best codecs and the best bitrates, Blu Ray has the potential for the highest image quality around.

HDMI
DVD Players typically used analogue outputs to transfer video and audio to your TV set. So your video starts off being digital, gets converted to analogue, then back to digital, introducing noise. Blu Ray players and the more advanced upconverting DVD players use an interface called HDMI. The data comes off the disk in digital, straight into your TV. It produces much better quality images than component, absolutely pin sharp images where you can see every pixel. Audio is also sent with the picture over hdmi.

The hdmi currently used to players is soon to be replaced with hdmi 1.3, with double the data rate of the previous version. Obviously to use this, both your player and TV need to support hdmi 1.3.

HDCP
And now… The bad news. Since you’re getting a pure, uncompressed copy of the video and audio over HDMI, there’s nothing to stop you capturing that data and making your own copy. That’s where HDCP comes in. Try to play a Blu Ray disk through a TV that doesn’t support HDCP(Through HDMI or DVI-D), you get to see a second of the movie, than a long pause filled with random data, then another second of video. So if you’ve bought a TV with hdmi in preparation for Blu Ray and don’t have HDCP, you’ve probably wasted your money.

Other technologies and advantages
Blu Ray has a more advanced adaptive encryption that won’t be so easily cracked like the CSS used in DVD, digital watermarking, and a mandatory copy system. You register each copy of the disk you make. You probably won’t care about that stuff. What you should care is with the highest standard of copy protection in the industry,much higher than HD DVD, so more companies are willing to let their precious film quality content out on Blu Ray.

JVC have produced a triple later Blu Ray disk with one layer that has standard DVD content that can be read by a normal DVD player. So you go down the video store, they only need to stock one disk, not two. Pop it into a Blu ray player, you get great HD video, pop it into a DVD player, standard definition quality.

There’s also an evil bit which will downgrade all content over non encrypted interfaces (HDCP) to just above DVD quality, the ICT bit. It’s left up to content providers to set this bit on their Blu Ray disks and so far nobody has set it. If it was set I for one wouldn’t have bought a Blu Ray player.

New TV Standards
DVDs played in 480i/480p standard. 720x480 for NTSC video. Blu Ray plays up to 1080p, and 720p, 1080i along the way. 1080p means 1920x1080 pixels of information in progressive scan(non interlaced), at a variety of frame frames from 24 to 60 and even 120. Directors like George Lucas record their movies in this resolution for broadcast in cinemas specially equipped with 1080p projectors, according to Wikipedia. You get a 1080p native screen in your home, you’ve got real home cinema.

Progressive scan is different to interlaced scan, i.e. 1080i. In interlace modes the image switches between odd and even lines between frames to give an impression of movement between frames.

Support

There’s been many new video formats in the past that have flopped, from D-VHS to Betamax. Why should you risk buying a Blu Ray player? Industry support. Blu Ray has most of the PC Industry behind it (Apple, HP, Sony, Dell), most of the movie industry(Sony Pictures, MGM, Lionsgate, Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney), and most of the Consumer Electronics industry (Pioneer, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Phillips, Sharp, LG, Mitsubishi have all announced and shown players).

And the next release of the world’s most popular games console, Playstation, comes with a Blu Ray drive. By March 2007 Sony expects to ship 6 Million Playstation 3 units, all blu ray players.

There is a rival format, HD DVD, the prime backers being Microsoft, Toshiba and Universal Pictures.

Applefiend · 08-07-2006, 11:01 AM

Enough theory

So we know Blu Ray technology is great, the best storage, codecs, and support. What about real disks and real players? In June 2006 Samsung produced the world’s first Blu Ray Disk Player, the BD-P1000, and Sony, MGM and Lionsgate produced the first Blu Ray disks. I’ve spent the last two weeks messing around with them.

Samsung BD-P1000 Blu Ray Player

The player has an hdmi connector with HDCP always set on,so if you've got an hdmi TV without HDCP you're *** out of luck, component, composite and s-video connectors, and audio out connectors, both analogue and digital.

It can read the following disk types

CD Audio
Blu Ray Disk (ROM, Recordable, and Rewritable, single or dual layer)
DVD (DVD-R and DVD-RW included)
And just about any format of memory card for photos and MP3s. It can play MP3s and show jpegs from disk formats too.

It doesn’t read the following formats you may expect
DIVX disks
Super Video Disks
Video Disks

And you can’t play video from memory cards.

For testing I used an HP monitor with component/DVI-D inputs, and a brand new Sony Bravia 32 inch tv with hdmi/hdcp. The Sony V Seres Bravia is well recommended by the way.

The system takes a little while longer than a normal DVD player to boot up, but it’s not too bad.

Playing a standard DVD works just like any other DVD player, and over component the movie will play in standard definition as you’d expect. The picture out component is pretty good, much better than the PS2 I used for comparison. If have a TV set with hdmi/DVI-D with HDCP copy protection, you can play your DVDs crystal clear. This really makes your creaky old DVDs look great, although nothing like a Blu Ray disk. The performance playing standard DVDs is good and snappy. Unless I've missed a button somewhere, the resolution seems to be DVD resolution, no upconverting is happening.

In standard DVD mode it has all the functions you’d expect, A-B repeat, angle, subtitle and the rest. It is all pretty basic though, I couldn’t find a way to find out how much of the movie was left for example. It’s a pretty basic DVD player. My seven year old Pioneer player has many more features for example. If you do have the magic HDMI/DVI-D and HDCP combination you’ll be getting a lot of use out of the Samsung just playing normal DVDs.

Here's the remote of my antique Pioneer DVD in comparison to my new Samsung remote.

Basic is the word.

But enough of standard definition, let’s go, as the advertising says, beyond high definition.

Well, not as far as you might like. The Samsung can output 1080p, but only really upconverts that from 1080i, this has been confirmed by Samsung. If you have a 1080p TV, the Samsung isn’t the player for you. For the rest of us with 1080i and 720p screens, the Samsung will do just fine.

Once you pop in the disk you get the usual FBI warnings and logos, then you’ll see the Java busy pointer. Get used to this, you’ll be seeing it every so often.

The first thing you’ll notice is you’ve entered a Java based environment, much like Javascript on a web page. You’ll see text scrolling onscreen, sound effects like sword swishes and gun fire when you select menu options, and overlaid animations. Gunshot spot sound effects get get used a lot for menu selections I notice.

Initially I had two movies to test, House of the Flying Daggers, an epic chinese love story in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Underworld Evolution, a vampire and warewolf hack’n’slash with Kate Beckinsale. Flying Daggers is considered about the worst looking Blu Ray disk, Underworld Evo is considered one of the best. Both are from Sony Pictures.

Sony Pictures are causing a lot of brouhaha on the net by using MPEG2, the same codec used by ordinary standard definition DVDs, for all their Blu Ray titles, instead of the more efficient H264 or VC-1 codecs. There are quite a few theories as to why Sony did something this dumb, but since all current Blu Rays are in MPEG2, it’s difficult to really get an idea what Blu Ray, or indeed the Samsung player is capable of. As for writing, there are no Blu Ray disks that use any codec other than MPEG2.

Playing Flying daggers first, first thing you notice is how terrific uncompressed 5.1 PCM audio is. For a movie that’s about a blind lady assassin, having crystal clear sound really improves the whole experience. The sound with uncompressed PCM audio is terriffic, every single speaker in your home cinema system gets a seperate awesome sound channel. Now let’s see what new buttons we have.

There’s a very cool one called “Scene Search” which allows you to search for sections with a specific actor and the such like. Unfortunately titles don’t have to support this button, and Flying Daggers doesn’t. The button it does support is pop up menu. With one button a menu with all the functions on the main menu is superimposed in front of the movie, so you can switch audio tracks, subtitles and the rest with controls customised for each title. Very nice.

But what about the most important thing, the picture: In Flying Daggers, it’s not that great. The movie has occasional moments of excellence in picture quality, the fight between the two main male characters near the end is one of them, the rest of the time the high resolution only serves to bring out the defects of the source material. This is one of the problems with the new high definition formats. If the original source is grainy, blurry, covered in dirt and imperfections, you’ll see all of them. You sure see all of them in Flying Daggers. Not to say the picture is bad, it’s much higher resolution than a DVD, it just doesn’t have the wow factor you’d expect from a new format, the kind of wow you got when you saw your first DVD after being used to VHS tapes.

It’s a good movie, you’re better off with the Blu Ray version than the DVD version, but it’s nothing that great. The colours do seem very pastel and washed out, and the whole image lacks sharpness.

The movie comes with a making of documentary, and as seems to happen a lot, the main feature is in high def, but the extras are in plain old standard definition. After all that high def MPEG2 video there isn’t much space left on a single layer 25GB Blu Ray for extras, something that seems to be happening is Blu Rays are coming out with less extras than their DVD counterparts. The situation will hopefully change with the introduction of 50GB dual layer disks.

The disk comes with two trailers, Hitch and Resident Evil Apocalypse, both of which have better picture quality than Flying Daggers, Resident Evil especially. The picture quality on the Resident Evil trailer is terrific; I’d put it above the quality of the high definition 1080p trailers you can get from the Apple Quicktime Movie Trailer site.

The Samsung player is escepially guilty of bad picture quality in the first batch of models, mine is from that first batch. It has a scaler chip in it with a feature designed to remove noise. What it actually does is introduce noise. It covers the entire picture in a random pattern across the luminance which is very very noticeable over hdmi connections, and much less noticeable over component. Samsung are promising a patch around September to turn this damn chip off, and if you're in the USA they will replace your player now. Until they do, hdmi is a total wash out. It just looks really bad, on one disk I have, Lord of War, it makes the movie pretty unwatchable. Best to stick to component for now.

We’ve seen the worst, it’s now time to see the best. Underworld Evolution.

Our friend the Java wait pointer appears again, the Sony Pictures Logo, and we’re into the main menu of the movie. The java perforance in Underworld Evo seems pretty slow, This one comes with a trailer for Stealth. Terrible, terrible movie, but probably the best picture quality available on early Blu Ray disks. Close behind is Underworld Evolution.

The picture quality is much better, especially after the washed out pastel horrors of Flying Daggers. The movie begins with a snow scene, and you can see snow flakes, the texture of the snow, imperfections in actors skin, the texture of the metal used in helmets. There is some grain, but it’s much less noticeable. The quality is noticeably better quality than the best quality DVDs I have.

Sadly the “Scene Selection” button still doesn’t work. I wonder if it will ever work.

The sound, again in uncompressed PCM audio, is unbelievably good.

Since then some more disks have arrived. A very good transfer of "The Terminator", much better than the DVD edition. Lord of War, which the Samsung player turned into a staticy mess. Yet to arrive is "Good Night and Good Luck" by Warner, considered the best quality disk available in Blu Ray, so with MPEG2 we got black and white movies down.

The problem seems to be with the first month of Blu Ray movie releases. None of theses movies use the new advanced codecs, H264 and VC-1, nor do they use Dual Layer disks. These movies have definitely been rushed out to get content, any content on Blu Ray. So we have a lot of bad encodes, and bad transfers off bad film stock, with a couple of gems. Let's be clear, a player has to support VC-1 and H264 to be considered a Blu Ray device, it's the content that's at fault.

The situation seems to be improving. Stealth and Training Day recently released seem to have greater picture quality than the first batch of releases, even though they’re still using the same antique MPEG2 codec. The problem seems to arise from some kind of manufacturing shortage of dual layer disks, and Sony’s Blu Ray authoring tools. Warner and Paramount are promising VC-1 disks, so there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Applefiend · 08-07-2006, 11:03 AM

So the verdict is it’s too early to tell. The technology (hdmi, vc-1/h264, high capacity disks 50GB disks) is all there,and it’s good technology, and the Samsung player supports it all, but there’s no disks that use it all yet. There’s a player, but nothing else to compare it to.

The player seems to be there, mostly, the technology is here, the content to exploit it isn’t. There seems to be a rush to get any content out, no matter how bad. Sony are already saying they'll redo the terrible transfer of the Fifth Element.

Blu Ray seems to be losing the high def format battle in the short term due to a lack of high quality content. Stunning quality transfers, remastered, with the latest codecs and 50GB disks don't exist yet. It's rival HD DVD seems to be coming out with some terrific quality content, and a lot of it seems to fit in a single 15GB HD DVD layer. 15GB of VC-1 encoded video easily beats 25GB of MPEG2 encoded data.

I can't in good conscience recomend the Samsung player. Around October 25th Sony are producing their reference Blu Ray disk player, and it's sure to be better than the Samsung, for the same amount of money($999). Round about then expect the Samsung to take a serious price cut, but even then maybe you should consider a Playstation 3 instead. As for content, we're expecting VC-1 based video content by November.

So right now Blu Ray is great on paper, worse in person. By November this should change.

JTK · 08-07-2006, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

So the verdict is it’s too early to tell. The technology (hdmi, vc-1/h264, high capacity disks) is all there,and it’s good technology, and the Samsung player supports it all, but there’s no disks that use it all yet. There’s a player, but nothing else to compare it to. Warner, who are also in the HD DVD camp, seem to be the saviour of Blu Ray, they’re produced 4 high quality Blu Ray disks, and now are promising VC-1 based disks.

The player seems to be there, mostly, the technology is here, the content to exploit it isn’t. There seems to be a rush to get any content out, no matter how bad. Sony are already saying they'll redo the terrible transfer of the Fifth Element.

Blu Ray seems to be losing the high def format battle in the short term due to a lack of high quality content. Stunning quality transfers, remastered, with the latest codecs and 50GB disks don't exist yet. It's rival HD DVD seems to be coming out with some terrific quality content, and a lot of it seems to fit in a single 15GB HD DVD layer. 15GB of VC-1 encoded video easily beats 25GB of MPEG2 encoded data.

I can't in good conscience recomend the Samsung player. Around October 25th Sony are producing their reference Blu Ray disk player, and it's sure to be better than the Samsung, for the same amount of money($999). Round about then expect the Samsung to take a serious price cut. As for content, we're expecting VC-1 based video content by November.

So right now Blu Ray is great on paper, worse in person. By November this should change.

The facts can't be stated more reasonably and objectively than this.

Psiweaver · 08-11-2006, 08:32 PM

Brillant brillant review/post all the above info is very accurate. Thanks for taking the time to go over all of it with us.

Dave · 08-12-2006, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

and 50GB disks don't exist yet.

Could you please see here:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=2135
And also here: http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...ctSKU=BNR50AHE

where we can read: 50GB BD-R Dual Layer Recordable Disc [$47.99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

and a lot of it seems to fit in a single 15GB HD DVD layer.

The smallest movies are 17.6GB, i dont know how you fit them to 14GB media

Applefiend · 08-12-2006, 11:55 AM

You naughty man, yes, you can burn your own...!

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/16blocks.html << An HD-15, buttabing!

phloyd · 08-12-2006, 05:42 PM

I believe that all of the hybrid warner releases are HDDVD 15s currently.

JTK · 08-14-2006, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave

Could you please see here:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=2135
And also here: http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...ctSKU=BNR50AHE

where we can read: 50GB BD-R Dual Layer Recordable Disc [$47.99]

The smallest movies are 17.6GB, i dont know how you fit them to 14GB media

Wake us up when we'll finally see prerecorded material from mainstream studios and sources come out on those BD50 discs.

That's when it will start counting for something.

Dr Kain · 08-17-2006, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

So right now Blu Ray is great on paper, worse in person. By November this should change.

I agree except the Nov thing. We have no proof BR using VC-1 (provided that is true) will be any better then. Just because the PS3 is going to have BR does not make the PS3 good. Hell, from what I've read and talked to people about, only 1 out of every 30 people is dumb... willing to pay for a PS3.

Applefiend · 08-17-2006, 03:46 PM

How does only paying $100 extra(20GB 360 vs 20GB PS3) for the the machine many in the industry see as the most powerful available with 11 years of great video games, BD playback, and the most popular game franchises of all time, make you dumb?

Smart I'd say. You're getting $2000 worth of gaming equipment for $499.

Now paying $150 for a pair of sneakers or a iPod might make you dumb...

marzetta7 · 08-17-2006, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

How does only paying $100 extra(20GB 360 vs 20GB PS3) for the the machine many in the industry see as the most powerful available with 11 years of great video games, BD playback, and the most popular game franchises of all time, make you dumb?

Smart I'd say. You're getting $2000 worth of gaming equipment for $499.

Now paying $150 for a pair of sneakers or a iPod might make you dumb...

Couldn't agree more. The PS3 is an excellent value, giving you the most bang for your buck.

JTK · 08-17-2006, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

Smart I'd say. You're getting $2000 worth of gaming equipment for $499.

I agree with you in principle, although I'm not sure where that $2000 figure comes from.

If that were truly true, then that would mean the PS3 would be a better piece of equipment than ANY of the BD standalone players forthcoming and I simply can't believe that.

Applefiend · 08-17-2006, 06:11 PM

Well price a PC with a fast graphics card, HD, Pentium 4 class CPU, Blu Ray Drive, and wireless etc. If it was a Vaio Sony would charge you a minimum of 2000 bucks for that... And PS3 is a computer, it runs Linux.

They charge you $999 for the Blu Ray Disk player alone.

You got a BD Movie Player, Web Access, 99% Playstation 1 games running, 99% Playstation 2 games running, Playstation 3 games, wifi, bluetooth, a big hard drive, memory card reader, all that good stuff.

It's terrific value. Compare the value to a 60GB iPod at $399. Just for the BD Movie player it's terrific value. Cheapest BD Player out there.

If this guys friends think overwise, I kinda pity them. They should think a bit more and not just jump on every dumb bandwagon.

JTK · 08-17-2006, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

Well price a PC with a fast graphics card, HD, Pentium 4 class CPU, Blu Ray Drive, and wireless etc. If it was a Vaio Sony would charge you a minimum of 2000 bucks for that...

Vaio's are notoriously overpriced.

Talk to me about if I buy the parts and do it myself.

Say if I make a newegg.com run...

Quote:

And PS3 is a computer, it runs Linux.

So? That's nice but it certainly doesn't mean it's worth two grand. You can make a Linux running computer for chump change, quite frankly.

Quote:

They charge you $999 for the Blu Ray Disk player alone.

Way too overpriced, imo, but that's what you pay for bleeding edge.

Like I said in another thread last week: I can build you a pretty damned nice PC outright for a grand (excluding monitor and stuff like that.)

Quote:

You got a BD Movie Player, Web Access, 99% Playstation 1 games running, 99% Playstation 2 games running, Playstation 3 games, wifi, bluetooth, a big hard drive, memory card reader, all that good stuff.

It's terrific value. Compare the value to a 60GB iPod at $399. Just for the BD Movie player it's terrific value. Cheapest BD Player out there.

If this guys friends think overwise, I kinda pity them. They should think a bit more and not just jump on every dumb bandwagon.

I agree with you, I just don't see two grand.

Shadowself · 08-17-2006, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTK

Vaio's are notoriously overpriced.

Talk to me about if I buy the parts and do it myself.

Say if I make a newegg.com run...

Anandtech tried to outdo the middle of the line Mac Pro from Apple recently by cobbling together parts they could purchase -- and they have sources with price advantages 99.99% of us can only dream to ever have. They came up with a figure ($2,390 IIRC) that was about $100 less than Apple's price, but that figure did not include either a chassis/box or a powersupply. Adding these would bring the cost almost identical to Apple's price. (Bye-the-bye, acording to Anand, Dell's equivalent machine was about $800 more than Apple's price, IIRC. And I don't think anyone can honestly say Anand skewed the comparison as Anand has never been pro Apple.)

Now, no one I know would call Apple's machines true gaming rigs. The new machines are fast, but certainly not cutting edge capable gaming rigs. So if Anand cannot put together an Apple equivalent machine for much less than Apple, and it is NOT good enough to be a gaming rig then I doubt many people can put together a great gaming machine for under $2,000.

Every cutting edge gaming rig I have heard of through friends/relatives costs well over $2,000 all in. Besides, what percentage of the game buying/playing population has the expertise to put a gaming rig together from piece parts (and have it work!)? 1%? 0.5%? Most people who want a cutting edge gaming rig either go to a specialty house (Alienware, etc.) or go to a local shop or knowledgable friend to put it together for them. None of these solutions are cheap.

Dr Kain · 08-18-2006, 03:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Applefiend

How does only paying $100 extra(20GB 360 vs 20GB PS3) for the the machine many in the industry see as the most powerful available with 11 years of great video games, BD playback, and the most popular game franchises of all time, make you dumb?

Smart I'd say. You're getting $2000 worth of gaming equipment for $499.

Now paying $150 for a pair of sneakers or a iPod might make you dumb...

Because you are paying $600 for a video game system that is going to have $80 games. YOu can get a Wii and 360 and a game for each instead. Oh, and the fact that every Sony system has been full of bugs at launch and Sony does not do a damn thing about it. PSP, missing pixels, Sony says, "No such thing, stores are not to exchange them."

JTK · 08-18-2006, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Kain

Because you are paying $600 for a video game system that is going to have $80 games. YOu can get a Wii and 360 and a game for each instead.

Wow! The MS PR and propoganda has made its way here!

You've got those talking points down pat!

I guess I don't need to log into AVS today at this rate.

Quote:

Oh, and the fact that every Sony system has been full of bugs at launch and Sony does not do a damn thing about it. PSP, missing pixels, Sony says, "No such thing, stores are not to exchange them."

Once yet again: I have no idea what you're talking about or where you get some of your ideas.

Do you have a link or a reference for that "Sony quote" you came up with?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowself

<snip>

Every cutting edge gaming rig I have heard of through friends/relatives costs well over $2,000 all in. Besides, what percentage of the game buying/playing population has the expertise to put a gaming rig together from piece parts (and have it work!)? 1%? 0.5%? Most people who want a cutting edge gaming rig either go to a specialty house (Alienware, etc.) or go to a local shop or knowledgable friend to put it together for them. None of these solutions are cheap.

True enough, although I will say: If you have two grand and can do it yourself, you're flying with the jets vs. being ripped off by boutique dealers like Alienware and Falcon NW.

^^ These are awesome companies, btw, and they do amazing work. Hell, I'd love to own a high end FNW machine, but that'll set me back at least seven grand.

You know you're always going to be through the nose for a boutique rig.

zombie · 08-18-2006, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Kain

Because you are paying $600 for a video game system that is going to have $80 games.

Do you have a source indicating that the PS3 games will be $80? If not, then please don't spread the b.s. found at AVS here.

JTK · 08-18-2006, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyg

Do you have a source indicating that the PS3 games will be $80? If not, then please don't spread the b.s. found at AVS here.

I think it'll be $60 a pop like Xbox360 games, by and large.

$60 is pushing it anyways. I remember a few years ago, reading things about how game console prices were going to finally DROP...and now the exact opposite has happened.

In case you haven't noticed...PC games are actually $20 a pop cheaper, on average, vs. their console counterparts.

There's some kind of overhead and some other things that factor into the console games and I think it stinks.

I think console gaming is becoming very expensive and I think $60 a pop games hurts the industry.

There just needs to be a better way.

Higher game prices = more picky and finicky purchases (definitely describes me) and/or more rentals and that's it.

Too expensive.

$80 a pop would be suicide. It won't happen.

08-07-2006, 10:55 AM	#1
Applefiend Active Member Member since:Jul 2006	Introduction to Blu Ray/ Samsung BD-P1000 Here's a review of BD and the Samsung player I wrote for a PS3 site. Enjoy, and see if you can spot any deliberate mistakes. cough Samsung BD-P1000 DVD Player Review and BD Introduction Introduction The following is a personal review of Blu Ray and the first available player. I’ve gone through a lot of video formats over the years: VHS Video tapes, Laser Discs, ten years ago DVD, and now the latest format has turned up, Blu Ray high definition disc. Along the way a few doomed formats such as Phillips Video 2000, Video CD and the rest. After playing with a Blu Ray player for a couple of weeks, I think Blu Ray might be one of the formats to survive, but why even bother with a new format? Why Blu Ray? DVD was a great format when it was introduced in 1996, but it was one intended for standard definition TV sets, the only ones available. Seeing a movie broadcast in high definition with faultless sound through one of the new HD broadcast channels, or at your local cinema, it’s not that great knowing you can only take home a version of it intended for old TV sets. Also the copy protection on DVDs has long, long been cracked wide open. Anyone can make a copy of a friends DVD, recompress it and save it to a CD as a DIVX, or copy Playstation or XBox games based around the DVD format. Any DVD can be simply downloaded and burnt, whether it’s a movie or console game. It’s time for a new format, and a consortium of consumer electronics companies lead by Sony have produced it in Blu Ray. Blu Ray updates the aging DVD technology bringing high definition and huge amounts of storage. Now you can buy copies of movies that rival the quality of the ones at your local cinema, and watch them without teenagers talking on their mobile phones! The New technologies in that make up Blu Ray The Blue laser A standard DVD stores 4.7GB per layer, 8.5 on a dual layer disk. Blu Ray uses a shorter wavelength laser diode than DVD (405mn compared to 650 on DVD). This allows Blu Ray to store 25GB per layer, with the maximum on players available today being 2 layers, 50GB in total. TDK have 200GB disks with 33GB per layer, but don’t expect any home video players to use these disks in the foreseeable future. Java DVD disks contain a simple menu system, in contrast Blu Ray has a real programming language, a variation of Java by Sun Microsystems called BD-J. It would be perfectly possible to build a Myst style video game for Blu Ray players, or include mini games with your movie. Sounds and pictures can be linked to menu actions allowing for a much richer user experiance. Simple Region Coding DVD has six region codes, and the choice of region codes seems pretty odd. Australia and New Zealand share a region code with South America, but not Europe. BD Region coding divides the world into three regions: Region A – Comprising the old NTSC regions mostly) The Americas(North and South), Japan, East Asia except China Region B – Mostly the old PAL regions Europe and Africa Region C China, Russia, rest of the world Hard coat technology In some ways the BD consortium cheated and put the information on BD disks closer to the surface than DVD disks to get more data capacity. This means scratching early BD disks was real easy, making them unusable, and they had to be placed in protective caddies. TDK came to the rescue with “Durabis” a coating technology that makes BDs as tough as DVDs again. You can take a wire brush to a Blu Ray Disk and it’ll still play. All BD movies have this coating. New codecs MPEG2, the standard used by DVD is a great standard, but is some 14 years old now, and was intended for systems with processing power of that time. 14 years is a long time, that’s before the Playstation 1, never mind 2. The latest and greatest codecs to emerge are MPEG-4 H264, and VC-1. The new codecs are so powerful and efficient they can produce output every similar to DVD out of a standard 682MB CD-ROM. Combined with the 50GB storage of a Blu Ray, crystal clear output at very high resolution and frame rate is possible. MPEG2 H264 is already in use and can be seen at the Apple Quicktime trailers site: http://www.apple.com/trailers/ , and is supported by mobile phones, Sony's own PSP, and Apple's Video iPod. VC-1 is a codec with 15 companies technology behind it, although it is generally wrongly considered an invention of Microsoft. Microsoft are very behind the codec, it's used in their Windows Media Player, and XBox 360 video game console as it's primary video playback codec. Both codecs are superb, although MPEG-4 H264 is considered more demanding to decode. There is also support for lossless audio codecs, with audio quality higher than that used for big budget hollywood movies. Higher bitrates Feeding these codecs is the highest bitrates in the industry. Higher than Redbook CD Audio, DVD, or indeed the rival HD DVD format..With the best codecs and the best bitrates, Blu Ray has the potential for the highest image quality around. HDMI DVD Players typically used analogue outputs to transfer video and audio to your TV set. So your video starts off being digital, gets converted to analogue, then back to digital, introducing noise. Blu Ray players and the more advanced upconverting DVD players use an interface called HDMI. The data comes off the disk in digital, straight into your TV. It produces much better quality images than component, absolutely pin sharp images where you can see every pixel. Audio is also sent with the picture over hdmi. The hdmi currently used to players is soon to be replaced with hdmi 1.3, with double the data rate of the previous version. Obviously to use this, both your player and TV need to support hdmi 1.3. HDCP And now… The bad news. Since you’re getting a pure, uncompressed copy of the video and audio over HDMI, there’s nothing to stop you capturing that data and making your own copy. That’s where HDCP comes in. Try to play a Blu Ray disk through a TV that doesn’t support HDCP(Through HDMI or DVI-D), you get to see a second of the movie, than a long pause filled with random data, then another second of video. So if you’ve bought a TV with hdmi in preparation for Blu Ray and don’t have HDCP, you’ve probably wasted your money. Other technologies and advantages Blu Ray has a more advanced adaptive encryption that won’t be so easily cracked like the CSS used in DVD, digital watermarking, and a mandatory copy system. You register each copy of the disk you make. You probably won’t care about that stuff. What you should care is with the highest standard of copy protection in the industry,much higher than HD DVD, so more companies are willing to let their precious film quality content out on Blu Ray. JVC have produced a triple later Blu Ray disk with one layer that has standard DVD content that can be read by a normal DVD player. So you go down the video store, they only need to stock one disk, not two. Pop it into a Blu ray player, you get great HD video, pop it into a DVD player, standard definition quality. There’s also an evil bit which will downgrade all content over non encrypted interfaces (HDCP) to just above DVD quality, the ICT bit. It’s left up to content providers to set this bit on their Blu Ray disks and so far nobody has set it. If it was set I for one wouldn’t have bought a Blu Ray player. New TV Standards DVDs played in 480i/480p standard. 720x480 for NTSC video. Blu Ray plays up to 1080p, and 720p, 1080i along the way. 1080p means 1920x1080 pixels of information in progressive scan(non interlaced), at a variety of frame frames from 24 to 60 and even 120. Directors like George Lucas record their movies in this resolution for broadcast in cinemas specially equipped with 1080p projectors, according to Wikipedia. You get a 1080p native screen in your home, you’ve got real home cinema. Progressive scan is different to interlaced scan, i.e. 1080i. In interlace modes the image switches between odd and even lines between frames to give an impression of movement between frames. Support There’s been many new video formats in the past that have flopped, from D-VHS to Betamax. Why should you risk buying a Blu Ray player? Industry support. Blu Ray has most of the PC Industry behind it (Apple, HP, Sony, Dell), most of the movie industry(Sony Pictures, MGM, Lionsgate, Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney), and most of the Consumer Electronics industry (Pioneer, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Phillips, Sharp, LG, Mitsubishi have all announced and shown players). And the next release of the world’s most popular games console, Playstation, comes with a Blu Ray drive. By March 2007 Sony expects to ship 6 Million Playstation 3 units, all blu ray players. There is a rival format, HD DVD, the prime backers being Microsoft, Toshiba and Universal Pictures. Last edited by Applefiend; 08-12-2006 at 02:37 AM.

08-07-2006, 11:01 AM	#2
Applefiend Active Member Member since:Jul 2006	Enough theory So we know Blu Ray technology is great, the best storage, codecs, and support. What about real disks and real players? In June 2006 Samsung produced the world’s first Blu Ray Disk Player, the BD-P1000, and Sony, MGM and Lionsgate produced the first Blu Ray disks. I’ve spent the last two weeks messing around with them. Samsung BD-P1000 Blu Ray Player The player has an hdmi connector with HDCP always set on,so if you've got an hdmi TV without HDCP you're *** out of luck, component, composite and s-video connectors, and audio out connectors, both analogue and digital. It can read the following disk types CD Audio Blu Ray Disk (ROM, Recordable, and Rewritable, single or dual layer) DVD (DVD-R and DVD-RW included) And just about any format of memory card for photos and MP3s. It can play MP3s and show jpegs from disk formats too. It doesn’t read the following formats you may expect DIVX disks Super Video Disks Video Disks And you can’t play video from memory cards. For testing I used an HP monitor with component/DVI-D inputs, and a brand new Sony Bravia 32 inch tv with hdmi/hdcp. The Sony V Seres Bravia is well recommended by the way. The system takes a little while longer than a normal DVD player to boot up, but it’s not too bad. Playing a standard DVD works just like any other DVD player, and over component the movie will play in standard definition as you’d expect. The picture out component is pretty good, much better than the PS2 I used for comparison. If have a TV set with hdmi/DVI-D with HDCP copy protection, you can play your DVDs crystal clear. This really makes your creaky old DVDs look great, although nothing like a Blu Ray disk. The performance playing standard DVDs is good and snappy. Unless I've missed a button somewhere, the resolution seems to be DVD resolution, no upconverting is happening. In standard DVD mode it has all the functions you’d expect, A-B repeat, angle, subtitle and the rest. It is all pretty basic though, I couldn’t find a way to find out how much of the movie was left for example. It’s a pretty basic DVD player. My seven year old Pioneer player has many more features for example. If you do have the magic HDMI/DVI-D and HDCP combination you’ll be getting a lot of use out of the Samsung just playing normal DVDs. Here's the remote of my antique Pioneer DVD in comparison to my new Samsung remote. Basic is the word. But enough of standard definition, let’s go, as the advertising says, beyond high definition. Well, not as far as you might like. The Samsung can output 1080p, but only really upconverts that from 1080i, this has been confirmed by Samsung. If you have a 1080p TV, the Samsung isn’t the player for you. For the rest of us with 1080i and 720p screens, the Samsung will do just fine. Once you pop in the disk you get the usual FBI warnings and logos, then you’ll see the Java busy pointer. Get used to this, you’ll be seeing it every so often. The first thing you’ll notice is you’ve entered a Java based environment, much like Javascript on a web page. You’ll see text scrolling onscreen, sound effects like sword swishes and gun fire when you select menu options, and overlaid animations. Gunshot spot sound effects get get used a lot for menu selections I notice. Initially I had two movies to test, House of the Flying Daggers, an epic chinese love story in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Underworld Evolution, a vampire and warewolf hack’n’slash with Kate Beckinsale. Flying Daggers is considered about the worst looking Blu Ray disk, Underworld Evo is considered one of the best. Both are from Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures are causing a lot of brouhaha on the net by using MPEG2, the same codec used by ordinary standard definition DVDs, for all their Blu Ray titles, instead of the more efficient H264 or VC-1 codecs. There are quite a few theories as to why Sony did something this dumb, but since all current Blu Rays are in MPEG2, it’s difficult to really get an idea what Blu Ray, or indeed the Samsung player is capable of. As for writing, there are no Blu Ray disks that use any codec other than MPEG2. Playing Flying daggers first, first thing you notice is how terrific uncompressed 5.1 PCM audio is. For a movie that’s about a blind lady assassin, having crystal clear sound really improves the whole experience. The sound with uncompressed PCM audio is terriffic, every single speaker in your home cinema system gets a seperate awesome sound channel. Now let’s see what new buttons we have. There’s a very cool one called “Scene Search” which allows you to search for sections with a specific actor and the such like. Unfortunately titles don’t have to support this button, and Flying Daggers doesn’t. The button it does support is pop up menu. With one button a menu with all the functions on the main menu is superimposed in front of the movie, so you can switch audio tracks, subtitles and the rest with controls customised for each title. Very nice. But what about the most important thing, the picture: In Flying Daggers, it’s not that great. The movie has occasional moments of excellence in picture quality, the fight between the two main male characters near the end is one of them, the rest of the time the high resolution only serves to bring out the defects of the source material. This is one of the problems with the new high definition formats. If the original source is grainy, blurry, covered in dirt and imperfections, you’ll see all of them. You sure see all of them in Flying Daggers. Not to say the picture is bad, it’s much higher resolution than a DVD, it just doesn’t have the wow factor you’d expect from a new format, the kind of wow you got when you saw your first DVD after being used to VHS tapes. It’s a good movie, you’re better off with the Blu Ray version than the DVD version, but it’s nothing that great. The colours do seem very pastel and washed out, and the whole image lacks sharpness. The movie comes with a making of documentary, and as seems to happen a lot, the main feature is in high def, but the extras are in plain old standard definition. After all that high def MPEG2 video there isn’t much space left on a single layer 25GB Blu Ray for extras, something that seems to be happening is Blu Rays are coming out with less extras than their DVD counterparts. The situation will hopefully change with the introduction of 50GB dual layer disks. The disk comes with two trailers, Hitch and Resident Evil Apocalypse, both of which have better picture quality than Flying Daggers, Resident Evil especially. The picture quality on the Resident Evil trailer is terrific; I’d put it above the quality of the high definition 1080p trailers you can get from the Apple Quicktime Movie Trailer site. The Samsung player is escepially guilty of bad picture quality in the first batch of models, mine is from that first batch. It has a scaler chip in it with a feature designed to remove noise. What it actually does is introduce noise. It covers the entire picture in a random pattern across the luminance which is very very noticeable over hdmi connections, and much less noticeable over component. Samsung are promising a patch around September to turn this damn chip off, and if you're in the USA they will replace your player now. Until they do, hdmi is a total wash out. It just looks really bad, on one disk I have, Lord of War, it makes the movie pretty unwatchable. Best to stick to component for now. We’ve seen the worst, it’s now time to see the best. Underworld Evolution. Our friend the Java wait pointer appears again, the Sony Pictures Logo, and we’re into the main menu of the movie. The java perforance in Underworld Evo seems pretty slow, This one comes with a trailer for Stealth. Terrible, terrible movie, but probably the best picture quality available on early Blu Ray disks. Close behind is Underworld Evolution. The picture quality is much better, especially after the washed out pastel horrors of Flying Daggers. The movie begins with a snow scene, and you can see snow flakes, the texture of the snow, imperfections in actors skin, the texture of the metal used in helmets. There is some grain, but it’s much less noticeable. The quality is noticeably better quality than the best quality DVDs I have. Sadly the “Scene Selection” button still doesn’t work. I wonder if it will ever work. The sound, again in uncompressed PCM audio, is unbelievably good. Since then some more disks have arrived. A very good transfer of "The Terminator", much better than the DVD edition. Lord of War, which the Samsung player turned into a staticy mess. Yet to arrive is "Good Night and Good Luck" by Warner, considered the best quality disk available in Blu Ray, so with MPEG2 we got black and white movies down. The problem seems to be with the first month of Blu Ray movie releases. None of theses movies use the new advanced codecs, H264 and VC-1, nor do they use Dual Layer disks. These movies have definitely been rushed out to get content, any content on Blu Ray. So we have a lot of bad encodes, and bad transfers off bad film stock, with a couple of gems. Let's be clear, a player has to support VC-1 and H264 to be considered a Blu Ray device, it's the content that's at fault. The situation seems to be improving. Stealth and Training Day recently released seem to have greater picture quality than the first batch of releases, even though they’re still using the same antique MPEG2 codec. The problem seems to arise from some kind of manufacturing shortage of dual layer disks, and Sony’s Blu Ray authoring tools. Warner and Paramount are promising VC-1 disks, so there's light at the end of the tunnel. Last edited by Applefiend; 08-12-2006 at 02:45 AM.

08-07-2006, 11:03 AM	#3
Applefiend Active Member Member since:Jul 2006	So the verdict is it’s too early to tell. The technology (hdmi, vc-1/h264, high capacity disks 50GB disks) is all there,and it’s good technology, and the Samsung player supports it all, but there’s no disks that use it all yet. There’s a player, but nothing else to compare it to. The player seems to be there, mostly, the technology is here, the content to exploit it isn’t. There seems to be a rush to get any content out, no matter how bad. Sony are already saying they'll redo the terrible transfer of the Fifth Element. Blu Ray seems to be losing the high def format battle in the short term due to a lack of high quality content. Stunning quality transfers, remastered, with the latest codecs and 50GB disks don't exist yet. It's rival HD DVD seems to be coming out with some terrific quality content, and a lot of it seems to fit in a single 15GB HD DVD layer. 15GB of VC-1 encoded video easily beats 25GB of MPEG2 encoded data. I can't in good conscience recomend the Samsung player. Around October 25th Sony are producing their reference Blu Ray disk player, and it's sure to be better than the Samsung, for the same amount of money($999). Round about then expect the Samsung to take a serious price cut, but even then maybe you should consider a Playstation 3 instead. As for content, we're expecting VC-1 based video content by November. So right now Blu Ray is great on paper, worse in person. By November this should change. Last edited by Applefiend; 08-12-2006 at 02:47 AM.

08-17-2006, 06:11 PM	#14
Applefiend Active Member Member since:Jul 2006	Well price a PC with a fast graphics card, HD, Pentium 4 class CPU, Blu Ray Drive, and wireless etc. If it was a Vaio Sony would charge you a minimum of 2000 bucks for that... And PS3 is a computer, it runs Linux. They charge you $999 for the Blu Ray Disk player alone. You got a BD Movie Player, Web Access, 99% Playstation 1 games running, 99% Playstation 2 games running, Playstation 3 games, wifi, bluetooth, a big hard drive, memory card reader, all that good stuff. It's terrific value. Compare the value to a 60GB iPod at $399. Just for the BD Movie player it's terrific value. Cheapest BD Player out there. If this guys friends think overwise, I kinda pity them. They should think a bit more and not just jump on every dumb bandwagon. Last edited by Applefiend; 08-17-2006 at 06:17 PM.

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08-11-2006, 08:32 PM	#5
Psiweaver Special Member Member since:Jun 2006 Location:Los Angeles,CA	Brillant brillant review/post all the above info is very accurate. Thanks for taking the time to go over all of it with us.

08-12-2006, 11:55 AM	#7
Applefiend Active Member Member since:Jul 2006	You naughty man, yes, you can burn your own...! http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/16blocks.html << An HD-15, buttabing!

08-12-2006, 05:42 PM	#8
phloyd Blu-ray Guru Member since:Dec 2003 Location:California Trading Score:5	I believe that all of the hybrid warner releases are HDDVD 15s currently.

08-17-2006, 03:46 PM	#11
Applefiend Active Member Member since:Jul 2006	How does only paying $100 extra(20GB 360 vs 20GB PS3) for the the machine many in the industry see as the most powerful available with 11 years of great video games, BD playback, and the most popular game franchises of all time, make you dumb? Smart I'd say. You're getting $2000 worth of gaming equipment for $499. Now paying $150 for a pair of sneakers or a iPod might make you dumb...

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