Early Samsung Blu-ray Players Ship with Chip Mistake

[JTK]

Early Samsung Blu-ray Players Ship with Chip Mistake

So much for Blu-Ray being a disaster, right?

This is an unfortunate story for Samsung, but I think it's good news for the format.

As expected: The trashing of Blu-Ray by HD-DVD fanboys and zealots has been greatly exaggerated. Here's some concrete proof to that effect.

Those of you that demoed the Samsung and had PQ complaints should feel a sense of deja vu right away when you read this article about what this "noise reduction" chip does.

It explains everything as far as I'm concerned.

[Psiweaver]

yeah definately.

[BTBuck1]

Wow, somehow i see fanboys discrediting it, or still bashing. But a good find none the less.
provenflipper had discussed previously to me that he fealt the genesis chip had something to do with it. We had seen the BDP-S1 in action and we weren't seeing the same thing out of the BD-p1000

[Psiweaver]

Yeah this is why you wait for the second wave of players.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

Yeah this is why you wait for the second wave of players.

Or at the very least:

This is a typical example of why, past my LCD PC monitor, I've deliberately steered clear of Samsung products.

They have this same sort of thing going on with their DLPs. They use this proprietary "DNIE" system that, at least on some models, you have no control over.

That DNIE makes a lot of noise and artificial looking characteristics to a picture that I simply do not care for and wouldn't pay two cents towards.

It's like they put "DNIE" in this player.


Here's a real life example:

The Samsung player that my friend owns at his house, on his front projection system, looked appreciably better than the Samsung I saw yesterday at ABC Warehouse.
If I hadn't known any better, I could have sworn it was two entirely different product, but it isn't.

The Samsung there was outputting 1080p straight into one of the newer Samsung DLPs that I'm presuming can accept 1080p. It was one the of typical Blu-Ray demo discs playing and honestly? My upconverting SD DVD player puts out a better picture than what THIS looked like.


So, I certainly don't think this excuses medicore disc transfers and the need to go to the most advanced codecs, BD-50 discs etc. etc., but I DO think it utterly disarms and ends the talk about HD-DVD having already won, and BR's launch is a disaster, and the rest of that nonsense.

[Psiweaver]

Yeah samsung doesn't make great video products other than there tvs. you can always turn dnie off you just have to know how too.

[BTBuck1]

when i used to have samsung ED plasma, DNie benefited it in giving it an almost HD picture. It was also selectable on/off

I've noticed on some newer model LCD's and such that it is not selectable now. it's always on...unless you use the "game-mode" which IMO hampers the brightness severly.

Samsung needs to give it's owners more control over the picture settings IMO.

Would I ever buy a samsung TV again?...most likely

Would I ever By a samsung (anything else)? probably not.

Does Samsung measure up to Sony, Pioneer & Panasonic? (only in some models of their tv's-nothing else) IMO.

[Psiweaver]

Samsung plasmas aren't as good as the Panasonic and Pioneer. Samsung LCD TV's are similar to the sony lcd tvs because there made in the same factory, though the Sony XBR line is way nicer than samsungs nicer line. For tubes Samsung does a pretty decent job and only Toshiba and Sony do a better one in my opinion. For DLP they rule the roost because they have such a close relationship with TI though i haven't seen there newer dlps other than at CC or BBY and so I can't speak that well about them because they are just cranked up in brightness and I can't get an accurate idea of how good they look.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by Psiweaver

Samsung plasmas aren't as good as the Panasonic and Pioneer. Samsung LCD TV's are similar to the sony lcd tvs because there made in the same factory, though the Sony XBR line is way nicer than samsungs nicer line. For tubes Samsung does a pretty decent job and only Toshiba and Sony do a better one in my opinion. For DLP they rule the roost because they have such a close relationship with TI though i haven't seen there newer dlps other than at CC or BBY and so I can't speak that well about them because they are just cranked up in brightness and I can't get an accurate idea of how good they look.

Toshiba "USED" to have a good CRT, do some research, the last couple of years they went downhill BIGTIME (focusing all their resources on DLP i guess). I have the sony kv30hs420 in my office now because i had originally bought the Toshiba 30" widescreen, i returned 4 of them before deciding it would be worth the extra money to get a good set. The colors where WAY OFF, the Geometry was god aweful, there wasn't a straight line anywhere on the thing, and one of the units I had, looked to have had a dead pixel (if you can imagine that on a crt) yeah...thats what i said...WTF???

After buying it and doing a lil homework, epinions, avsforum, hdtvoice.com it looked like everyone was having problems with Tosh crt tv's at the time.
I had bought it because the price, the smaller footprint for a small stand i wanted to use, but like i said it was so unbareable i just paid the extra $200 and bought a bigger stand and got the Sony, which i couldn't be happier with. Near perfect geometry, spot on color and a high quality set over all. Makes my office look a lil more pimpish =)

[abc]

I think all the lies have to stop, and Blu-ray Consortium needs to really tell the truth about what is really wrong. Samsung first stated that it was a faulty HDMI connector that was causing the video to look worse than my normal dvd player. Well I also have a new Sony VAIO, and the picture is just as bad on that as it is on the Samsung BD-P1000 running it with my Panasonic PT-AE900U, so the lies continue!

abc

[JTK]

Originally Posted by abc

I think all the lies have to stop, and Blu-ray Consortium needs to really tell the truth about what is really wrong. Samsung first stated that it was a faulty HDMI connector that was causing the video to look worse than my normal dvd player. Well I also have a new Sony VAIO, and the picture is just as bad on that as it is on the Samsung BD-P1000 running it with my Panasonic PT-AE900U, so the lies continue!

abc

And what exactly is "the truth" then?

[abc]

I don't know what is, that is the problem! All I have been doing is reading and I read Samsung said the problem was the HDMI connector. When I contacted support they said to use components instead of the HDMI source and that they would be contacting me and other customers with some options relating to maybe updating the player or returning it for a full refund. The component source does show a slight improvement, but it really is not that much!

One of the upper support technician was also saying that the problem is mostly relating to the MPEG 2 encoding that is being used on all the Blu-ray title releases currently. Once the encoding has been changed to MPEG-4 and VC-1, then the video format should be just as good as HD-DVD, but it not going to happen until early or spring of next year. The reason why is that there is already a closed list of Blu-ray titles (186) that will only be released through Dec 2006, all of them will be MPEG 2 encoded and that is a big problem for the Blu-ray system. Source video's are not up to Blu-ray standards. So why are they releasing them?

abc

[JTK]

Originally Posted by abc

I don't know what is, that is the problem! All I have been doing is reading and I read Samsung said the problem was the HDMI connector. When I contacted support they said to use components instead of the HDMI source and that they would be contacting me and other customers with some options relating to maybe updating the player or returning it for a full refund. The component source does show a slight improvement, but it really is not that much!

Yes, it's pretty strange. I think a lot of that specific issue had to do with people's individual displays more than anything else.

It kind of surprised me how many times I did read the "component > HDMI" comment in regards to the Samsung, though.

Not really sure if there's much to it or not.

One of the upper support technician was also saying that the problem is mostly relating to the MPEG 2 encoding that is being used on all the Blu-ray title releases currently. Once the encoding has been changed to MPEG-4 and VC-1, then the video format should be just as good as HD-DVD, but it not going to happen until early or spring of next year.

I hope you are mistaken.


Can you tell me where/how you got that information?

The reason why is that there is already a closed list of Blu-ray titles (186) that will only be released through Dec 2006, all of them will be MPEG 2 encoded and that is a big problem for the Blu-ray system. Source video's are not up to Blu-ray standards. So why are they releasing them?

abc

Good question.

MPEG2 can be implemented well. Ask D-VHS owners about that.

Thus far, we've seen some discs where the implemenation has...left something to be desired.

If you combine THAT factor with this Samsung chip issue? That's how you can get to people being VERY unimpressed with what Blu-Ray currently offers, and who can blame them?


I PRAY that they wise up in time for the major hardware releases due in October, namely the Sony player and the Pioneer Elite player.

At that point, I think hardware concerns will become relatively moot.

But the software concerns will not be...not if they continue to churn out suspect transfers.

The Samsung chip issue is only PART of the current problem, not all of it. Same goes with everything else you specified.

[Psiweaver]

yeah the sammy chip isn't the whole problem but it certainly contributes and when you combine that with other things it leads to the problem we have now.

[zombie]

Disabling the Genesis chip’s noise reduction improved sharpness significantly and reduced the occasional temporal artifacts that were sometimes evident in dark, solid backgrounds on the unmodified player

We started with HD DVDs, including clips from “Blazing Saddles”, “Apollo 13″, and “Phantom of the Opera”. All were spectacular, sharp as a razor with detail to spare. Then we switched over to Blu-ray, playing clips from “The Fifth Element” and “Terminator 2.” Aside from “The Fifth Element”’s obvious dirt and scratches, both titles looked decidedly soft compared to the HD DVDs. The THX logo on “T2″ looked sharper than the movie, which had some significant edge-enhancement as well.

So the Genesis chip is indeed a problem but apparently not the entire problem as Psiweaver just stated. That said, I would still love to rewatch Underworld Evolution on the Sammy with the firmware upgrade to see just how much improvement there is for myself. Anyway you look at it though, it's bad that Sammy's player is more of a problem than some thought but OTOH it's good to know that the discs may not be as bad as just about everyone thought. Very interesting... really want to see what these discs look like with the Genesis chip disabled. Too bad I don't know anyone locally who owns this player.

[JTK]

Originally Posted by nyg

So the Genesis chip is indeed a problem but apparently not the entire problem as Psiweaver just stated. That said, I would still love to rewatch Underworld Evolution on the Sammy with the firmware upgrade to see just how much improvement there is for myself. Anyway you look at it though, it's bad that Sammy's player is more of a problem than some thought but OTOH it's good to know that the discs may not be as bad as just about everyone thought. Very interesting... really want to see what these discs look like with the Genesis chip disabled. Too bad I don't know anyone locally who owns this player.

I really hope firmware is all it takes for Samsung to fix this problem.

[cws2882]

im still waiting for 2 layer 50G disks and some studios to start using better compression for audio and video. Al least Warner is starting to see the light and is now using Dobly Digital Plus instead of uncompressed PCM on their blu-ray releases.

[BTBuck1]

Originally Posted by cws2882

im still waiting for 2 layer 50G disks and some studios to start using better compression for audio and video. Al least Warner is starting to see the light and is now using Dobly Digital Plus instead of uncompressed PCM on their blu-ray releases.

I'll take uncompressed PCM all day long, so long as it isnt messing with the picture quality. (50gb should suffice)

[cws2882]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

I'll take uncompressed PCM all day long, so long as it isnt messing with the picture quality. (50gb should suffice)

I would rather see 50gb with dolby true hd or dts hd at high bit rates or at 24 bits. If you use a lossless compression algorithm, then you can start with higher quality and compress it to something the same size of a low quality uncompressed pcm.

The specs for pcm, dobly and dts are the MAX allowed, but they are scaleable to downgrade the audio so that it can fit on a disk.

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by cws2882

If you use a lossless compression algorithm...

I agree that with today's technologies using any completely uncompressed data stream on a Blu-ray disk is foolish. At the very least some form of lossless compression should be used.