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Product Survey: Blu-ray Players
Despite the growing popularity of High Definition TVs, very few people own equipment that produces good enough pictures to make the most of these advanced screens.
Depending on the availability of HD broadcasts, a Blu-ray DVD player is sometimes the only available input capable of showing HD pictures worthy of the name.
Depending on the availability of HD broadcasts, a Blu-ray DVD player is sometimes the only available input capable of showing HD pictures worthy of the name.
Vincent Lheur
Updated: 2008-12-10
Updated: 2008-12-10
Formats, Formats, Formats ...
The plethora of different formats available can be confusing, but they are always expressed in terms of the number of horizontal lines that make up the picture. The number of lines is given, followed by the letter p, and the higher the number, the better the picture quality.
- SD (Standard Definition) was used for years and is found on almost all older TVs. It runs at 576p on PAL and 480p and NTSC.
- SD (Standard Definition) was used for years and is found on almost all older TVs. It runs at 576p on PAL and 480p and NTSC.
- HD (High Definition) comes in two flavours:
• HD Ready with 720p
• Full HD with 1080p
Movies available on Blu-ray discs are always encoded at Full HD 1080p, the best resolution available today, and Blu-ray players can be set up to send a signal which matches the resolution available on your TV.
You will be able to show a 1080p movie on a 720p TV, but as well as the loss in resolution, you'll also suffer from a drop in quality by letting the TV do the transcoding, rather than the Blu-ray player.
Having taken the plunge, though, many consumers find the choice of HD content frustratingly limited.
Many satellite and cable channels are still only broadcast in Standard Definition (SD), or the lower 'HD Ready' format, and while movies available over video-on-demand services might be billed as HD, the amount of compression required to beam them into your home means they're often worse quality than a regular DVD when they arrive.
Elsewhere in the world, while some viewers are looking forward to the start of free-to-air terrestrial broadcasting in HD, others still don't have it in SD.
The upshot of all of these compromises is that a lot of people find themselves lumbered with a very expensive piece of kit that they can't get the most out of.
HD Players to the rescue
Don't ditch your HD TV just yet: HD DVD players offer the best way of enjoying all that lovely HD.
Movies stored on Blu-ray discs are in the 1080p format, and are therefore compatible with intermediate resolutions (576p, 720p or 1080p itself).
Getting the best results requires configuring your Blu-ray player to match the native resolution of your TV.
Upscaling the image--converting it to the appropriate size for the screen it is to be shown on--is always much better when done at the source of the signal rather than later on by the TV, which is a cause of constant irritation when watching 'regular' DVDs.
Limitations
While Blu-ray discs do give excellent pictures--it's very hard to go back to regular DVDs after you've used one--no dedicated players are compatible with DivX just yet.
If you have a lot of movies like that, you'll either have to keep your dedicated player or try one of the new breed of TVs--like the Samsung LE46A856--which decode movies from your external hard drive.
Our Tests
We'll be looking at how Blu-ray players handle both upscaling from regular DVDs and playing Blu-ray discs.
As with our reviews of other products, we'll also report on everyday features like how easy the controls are and whether the remote is any good so you can get an idea of whether or not this product is a good bet for you!
