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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Best Blu-Ray players when it comes to load times?
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 10-13-2009 11:03 AM
The PS3 is extremely quick on loading discs, so I'm definitely spoiled there! Coming from the first-gen Toshiba HD DVD player with its "you can feel yourself aging" startup and load times, it was a very welcome change.
I do believe some of the latest generation Blu-ray players have improved their boot and load times, because so many people complained about those attributes in the early models. A recent review of the Oppo BDP-83 at Audioholics says this:
quote:
Hit the Eject button and the player takes 3 seconds to wake up and open the tray. 16 seconds later you are playing your disc. That is performance that exceeds any other player we've tested to-date. This is an exciting new player that, sad to say, finally takes Blu-ray back to the speed and quickness of DVD players we're all used to manhandling.
http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/transports/high-definition-dvd-players-hd-dvd-blu-ray/oppo-bdp-83-universal-blu-ray/comparison-setup
This player is not cheap, but the reviews that I've seen are very good.
CNet mentions this in its review of the LG BD370:
quote:
The BD370 may not have the best video quality in this price range, but it fares better when it comes to load times. It was able to load "Mission: Impossible III" in 14 seconds with the player on, and in 28 seconds with the player off. That's actually better than both the Panasonic DMP-BD60 and Samsung BD-P1600, which took 21 and 16 seconds, respectively, to load the movie with the players on. The BD370 wasn't quite as quick to load movies featuring more extensive menu systems. It took a minute and 26 seconds to get to the actual movie on "Spider-Man 3," for example; that's about as fast as the Panasonic DMP-BD60 and considerably slower than the BD-P1600, which took a minute and 7 seconds.
http://reviews.cnet.com/blu-ray-players-recorders/lg-bd370/4505-9991_7-33485559.html
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 10-13-2009 10:16 PM
Bit depth means a lot. How many uncompressed HD streams are fully 4:4:4?
One of the big problems with big screen blowing up of Blu-ray video (which really means blowing up a highly compressed MPEG-4 AVC or Microsoft VC-1 video stream) is the image frames are not discrete. Not only do you have the blocking and banding artifacts that get increasingly worse as the compression level becomes more severe, but those compression artifacts are often sustained and held in place across multiple frames due to inter-frame compression commonly used on any highly compressed digital video bitstream regardless of format, be it AVC, VC1, MPEG-2, Flash Video, whatever.
This is one of the areas where digital cinema definitely one ups Blu-ray. Every frame in a JPEG2000 format virtual print is truly discrete. You're not going to have color blocks, mosquito noise, color bands and other stuff held over from other previous frames -unless someone really screwed up badly in the digital intermediate process and cooked some mistakes into the master itself.
Blu-ray can look fantastic on a big HDTV screen when the AVC or VC1 stream is well encoded. I think Blu-ray is great. It certainly beats the hell out of DVD. Nevertheless, I don't see it as a substitute for other better methods of showing movies on commercial movie screens. Although I don't think 2K d-cinema is better than 4-perf 35mm, I do strongly believe 2K d-cinema is better than Blu-ray.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 10-14-2009 10:22 AM
If you're getting a TV that can do 1080p at 24fps natively, I don't think that there a lot of picture quality differences between the units. If your TV needs the 3:2 conversion done for it, then the hardware is going to perform differently.
Since it sounds like you haven't gotten the new TV yet, make sure that the TV can do 1080p24 and then you'll have less to worry about on the player side.
Do you need discrete analog outputs, or does your receiver have HDMI for audio decoding, so that you can enjoy the lossless audio tracks? If not, you can save quite a bit of money by staying in the basic tier of players, like the Samsung 1600 or LG 370. If you need/want the extra features, the up-level players like the Samsung 3600 and LG 390 have analog outs, built-in memory for BD-Live, and wireless networking built-in.
The PS3 is nice for its speed and its ability to play media from your network and to play games. I'm not a big gamer, but I've found a half-dozen games that I've purchased for my own use and to entertain nieces and nephews. I've used the media player stuff quite a bit because I like to tinker and to create my own HD videos. The lack of an IR remote control is a pain, but it can be gotten around by using an IR adaptor or if you have a Harmony remote, the Harmony adaptor is a pricey but cooler alternative.
The Oppo BD-83 is an enthusiast's machine at a price that will only be attractive to a select crowd. I think it's hard to justify the cost for most people. The higher-end Denon, Pioneer, and other units are just rewarding small incremental improvements for large increases in cost, IMO.
I would head in the direction of the Panasonic, LG, and Samsung units because of their ability to access services like Netflix, Pandora, and Amazon Video on Demand. Even Sony replaced the 360 with the 460, which has access to some of those services built-in.
If the download services don't interest you (I love Pandora, so that has a big appeal to me, but I have it on my Squeezebox), then ignore all that stuff and look for reliability and speed. That's why the Panasonic and LG units would be higher on my list, but the Sony would be something I'd want to check out as well.
If you have a TV that can handle the video tasks well and a receiver that can handle the audio tasks well, the player becomes more of a transport than anything else, and most any player will play movies well (aside from the bargain basement models that I'd never suggest to anyone). If things like wireless network, analog outputs, access to services, media playback, and other features interest you, different models offer a different mix of those features, and which one is best is up to you for what you want.
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