Is PS3 Still The Best Blu-ray Player??

[scweb13]

Originally Posted by ajvdbg

Yup, anyone who claims the BD PQ on the OPPO is better than the PS3 is blowing smoke...

Just like anyone who thinks the PS3 is better than the OPPO?

[ajvdbg]

Originally Posted by scweb13

Just like anyone who thinks the PS3 is better than the OPPO?

yup...

[Kryptonic]

Originally Posted by tilallr1

Ok, first of all, the slim DOES have a fan. Maybe yours wasn't working properly, which is why the unit was overheating. Not sure, but the slim runs cooler than the fat version. Again, not sure why you had problems but that wasn't normal operation.

Where is the fan? I wasn't able to locate it on the unit I had, nor did I see where a fan would fit.

Second, and let me be perfectly clear here, the Oppo is NOT a better Blu-ray player than the PS3. Neither is the PS3 a better Blu-ray player than the Oppo. They are both on PAR for Blu-ray playback.

The Oppo is a better player as far as being a Blu-Ray player. No, the picture quality and audio quality might not be much different, if at all, but that's common among just about every player. But the Oppo, as far as being a dedicated Blu-Ray player is better because it runs cooler and quieter, uses a fraction of the energy, has a plethora of connections, and supports DVD-Audio among other things. Plus, doesn't the BD-83 have slightly faster load times? Not sure on that, but I remember reading that somewhere.

[tilallr1]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

Where is the fan? I wasn't able to locate it on the unit I had, nor did I see where a fan would fit.



The Oppo is a better player as far as being a Blu-Ray player. No, the picture quality and audio quality might not be much different, if at all, but that's common among just about every player. But the Oppo, as far as being a dedicated Blu-Ray player is better because it runs cooler and quieter, uses a fraction of the energy, has a plethora of connections, and supports DVD-Audio among other things. Plus, doesn't the BD-83 have slightly faster load times? Not sure on that, but I remember reading that somewhere.

Here is an image of the PS3 slim dissected. You can see the fan towards the right middle. Its pretty large.

Also, regarding the Oppo vs PS3, I was merely commenting on its ability to playback blu-rays. That the PQ and AQ were identical. As for other things, I think they are subjective and completely based on personal preferences. Which is why I didn't mention all the great things that the PS3 does better than the Oppo. Like Streaming, Web Browsing, GAMES!!!

[Kryptonic]

Originally Posted by tilallr1

Here is an image of the PS3 slim dissected. You can see the fan towards the right middle. Its pretty large.

So the fan pushes the air out at the bottom? That doesn't make sense. No wonder it got so hot.

[Grif32]

The PS3 is a great machine at doing everything out there but not the best BD player IMHO. I own the 60G and the 250G Slim but I use my JVC BD player which has faster load times (which most people do not care about) better upscaling SD DVD's as my main BD player now.

Neve had to do one FW update to play a BD disc where as I have had to witht PS3.

Blu-Ray picture is the same. So if we are talking strictly BD player then I don't think the PS3 is king anymore.

Someone mentioned it's getting an update to do 3D.. Yeah that's cool but 99% don't have 3D Tv's and probably wont for a long time so that doesn't matter to me. Don't get me wrong I love my PS3's but other BD players out there will compare or beat the PS3 now as far as a BD player goes.

But the PS3 is the best all around machine out there for the money.

[Grif32]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

So the fan pushes the air out at the bottom? That doesn't make sense. No wonder it got so hot.

Yeah I was surprised how hot my new 250G slim got compared to my 60G which barely gets hot. The new slim throws off some serious heat.

[tilallr1]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

So the fan pushes the air out at the bottom? That doesn't make sense. No wonder it got so hot.

Actually, it pulls air in from the front of the unit and pushes it out the back. Its actually one of the largest fans you'll ever see on any electronic unit this size. You can see a pic of the fan up close:

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayS...-3-Slim/1121/2

The bottom of the case being hot might simply be due to the fact that the heat-sink is in close proximity to it.

Not really a problem as far as I am concerned. Most notebooks or small electronic computers generate similar heat effects with 0 problems.

[Petra_Kalbrain]

The PS3 may not be the best Blu-ray player on the market when it comes to technical output quality, but it is definitely still by and large the best VALUED Blu-ray player on the market.

[Sparky4life]

I think its the best plus PS3 owners don't have to go buy another blu ray player for 3-D movies. We get the firmware update for free!!

[scweb13]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

The PS3 may not be the best Blu-ray player on the market when it comes to technical output quality, but it is definitely still by and large the best VALUED Blu-ray player on the market.

QFT. Yes, that is something about the PS3 that I can always agree with. That and the single best feature of the PS3 is the WiFi.

[MOONPHASE]

I have 2 PS3s(original 60GB, and the slim model PS3), plus a stand-alone and love my PS3s more.

[scweb13]

Originally Posted by MOONPHASE

I have 2 PS3s(original 60GB, and the slim model PS3), plus a stand-alone and love my PS3s more.

Go figure. If my Panny had WiFi, the PS3 would be bannished to the bedroom or the game room.

[slaizer2000]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

The Oppo players now seem to be the best of the lot.

I thought the LExicon one was now the one to have<j'king>

[slaizer2000]

Originally Posted by blurayjunkie

The reason i ask is because my ps3 does not read disc's anymore. and I am in the market for a new blu ray player

The ps3 is no longer the best blu-ray player on the market. There are other newer players that are faster and may have a bit better image quality.

The PS3 however is still the best all round media device which provides more than just a movie playback system. And they have plenty of room to grow on what they can support with it in the future. Also seems to have the best support for having firmware updates ready when newer blu-rays come out that require addiotnal java support. And because of this it seems to be the best future proof blu-ray player out there. 3D support, DVR support in the future are all on the horizon. Granted many may not care for it, but shows the device has the ability to grow with future needs.

[ajvdbg]

Originally Posted by slaizer2000

The ps3 is no longer the best blu-ray player on the market. There are other newer players that are faster and may have a bit better image quality.

The PS3 however is still the best all round media device which provides more than just a movie playback system. And they have plenty of room to grow on what they can support with it in the future. Also seems to have the best support for having firmware updates ready when newer blu-rays come out that require addiotnal java support. And because of this it seems to be the best future proof blu-ray player out there. 3D support, DVR support in the future are all on the horizon. Granted many may not care for it, but shows the device has the ability to grow with future needs.

Your first sentence you state that it is no longer the best. Yet you make a pretty good argument in the second paragraph that it still is, and will continue to be. "Best" depends on the individual user wrt to features etc. Plus there is no evidence that suggests that any other player beats it in BD PQ.

[rollon1980]

I'm sorry to ruin your day, but here's the deal:

I have set up a few home cinemas in my lifetime. Most recently one with a JVC-550 projector (wow, LCOS is the first technology to even better 3-chip DLP projection.) and one with a lower end HD20 from Optoma (DLP).

The contrast difference between the two is vaaaaast, but the Optoma has amazing shadow detail so projecting onto reflective grey cinema paint makes the images glooow (after proper calibration!).

Why do I start with this? First of all, you need to calibrate your display properly for D65 colour and greyscale tracking needs to be smoooooooooth. Why?

Ok, first colour: all these modern codecs (AVC, VC-1, mpeg-2) rely on your eyes shortcoming in seeing detail in colour as well as detail in the grey scale. I can look at an image and tell you how the grey scale is set. Colour is VERY hard for me. It’s the same for you, btw. Just how we were made. ;-) so these codecs compress colour MORE than luminance, but even so not all colours are compressed the same amount and actually REDs will be compressed more than blue (slightly less compression) and green (least compression). Just talk to any of the guys coding for these compression methods. It’s one of the tricks in the book, so to speak. This is why red can appear blocky on some mpeg-2 compressed video. The encoder used this trick to allocate more to the other channels. Yuk. Now if you have any red shift in the image (it being too warm), your eyes may actually perceive that as a drop in resolution! Why? Because your eyes are a lot more sensitive to green and blue detail and when those colours are de-emphasised, you will perceive it as such.

Generally speaking encoders will compress the colour information 4x as much as luminance(related to greyscale). Ok so how can the players compensate for this when playing back? Well, they can either just pass the decoded info to the display and let the display interpolate or it can do the interpolation and display a better variation of colour than was on the disk to begin with. This is where hi-precision colour (10-12bits per channel) comes into play even though the disks are encoded with only 8bits per channel (and even then some channels are compressed more to save bits). Panasonic’s latest Uniphier processor (the higher end 2009 version with adaptive interpolation) does this quite brilliantly even for SD de-interlaced material. Pioneer has been doing this (without putting a marketing term on it) amazingly. Just have ONE look at a pioneer playing back DVDs or Blu ray and you will know what I mean. Player DO differ in how they interpolate the loss in compression in colour and no, the PS3 is not the best. Maybe on your un-calibrated 40”-50” plasma you can’t see because it’s already overblowing colours, pushing towards red in any part of that greyscale but definitely not on a 102” screen after proper calibration. There is a HUUUGE difference between a player using uniphier or pioneer’s own chips and the PS3. The PS3 is simply passing the compressed colour AND on top of that it’s overblowing them to make them have more “pop”. All it does is make the image lose fidelity.

Greyscale: you will see a non-linear greyscale as a crushing of blacks, loss of shadow detail, bleaching of whites, less detail in other parts of the image. Now this is again a huge difference in players. The pioneers and higher end Denons, Marantz and some other brands simply excel at this. Mind you, with Pioneer, they are setting the black level a tad low so you need to increase it a notch not to crush blacks. But once properly calibrated, the image will appear to have more detail, more 3D-like look, etc. The PS3 doesn’t do very well here I’m afraid. The shadow detail is average, the whites are bleached. Looks fine until you see what high-end players are capable of.

I have compared the PS3 with other players on a 102” screen with projectors having AMAZING contrast levels and also with lower-end models. Once properly calibrated, the difference is night and day in colour reproduction and greyscale tracking. The PS3 is a great machine. The audio jitter is amazingly low (for the first generation model. The PS3 slim is a lot worse). But no, it’s a basic blu ray player and there is a big big difference to some dedicated players if your screen allows for it.

I just wanted to clear that up because I’ve seen so much bull from even “experienced” people until I decided to have a look myself.

[MacinMan]

Originally Posted by ajvdbg

Yup, anyone who claims the BD PQ on the OPPO is better than the PS3 is blowing smoke...

How do the pS lovers rank sony's new BDP-S570 it's certainly rated the fastest player has the media bar like the ps 3 is 3d Ready built in wi-fi

The last Game console I owned was an atari 2600 as a Kid the latest one i've used was an SNES so never used a ps 3 but i get the main conversation here is the ps3 vs oppo and other players it seems to me the new players from sony close that gap for a good price range.

P.S. I own a BDP-S570 and think it's a nice solid player with a nice solid set of networking features Plus it works with 80211N in the 5Ghz range e.g. compatible with apple airport.

[DMC86X]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

So the fan pushes the air out at the bottom? That doesn't make sense. No wonder it got so hot.

Of course it doesnt push air out of the bottom. Think about that statement for a second. LOL.

[Buddy Christ]

Originally Posted by rollon1980

I'm sorry to ruin your day, but here's the deal:

Wow, can I have my five minutes back? Though thoroughly thought out and these are your opinions (no actual scientific data), I have to say that most of us do not have 102 inch screens to see the difference. Most people have average HT's. So the answer is: Total value/Quality/Future adaptability, the PS3 is the best Blu-ray player on the market.

As I am also sorry to ruin your day