LG BH100 Combo Player Quick Review - Page 3

My 1st post and I am a newbie. I get no HDMI audio or video through a Denon AVR 2807, although HDMI worked fine with my DVD 2910. HDMI direct to my Sharp 52D62U works fine, but only at 1080i. My gut is this thing is a piece of junk, but I would appreciate any suggestions.

This player does not need a Lumagen to look great but if you have additional sources like cable or dvd that could benefit from a scaler and your display did not support 24p natively the Lumagen would be a good tool to convert the 24p to 60p.

I got mine the other day, and it is not a piece of junk! Pic quality is great ! so far only watched one blu-ray(house of flying daggers) but about 3 times setting up my lumagen to get the perfect set up for my Marquee 8000 on a 159 inch diagnol screen @ 1080 p out of the lumagen but only 1080i out of component to the HDQ. Waiting for Moome to make more hdmi cards for the 8000. Even though 1080p is high band width for this marquee the pic was alot nicer than regular dvd at 800p from the HDQ. Next i'll see what the upscaling to 1080i does for dvd compared to outputting 480i and letting the lumagen do the processing.
I used the 5.1 analoge outs and the coax to see the diffence in audio. this fed my Adcom 830 processor. For me the decoding of the player was top notch! Better than the dd and dts out of the adcom! Dialog was alot cleaner and base was tighter, more controlled.
So do I yhink this is a piece of junk? not at this point...i'll have to spend some more quality time with it, and other titles i'm more familiar with.


Athansios

Love this new crt addiction i have !! :-)

I think without HDMI it could be classified as "junk"------ I mean come on, They should put "NO HDMI" right on the box as far as I'm concerned. How could LG drop the ball like this?------

I'm sure a firmware update will solve that problem.

Hopefully this post from the other thread will reduce the confusion over supported audio with this player.

Is this with both Blu-ray AND HD-DVD discs or SD-DVD discs? The LG seems to be modeled after the Samsung and Phillips BD players which won't output audio from DTS discs (SD-DVD and BD) in LPCM mode. Does the LG have the ability to set digital output to LPCM or Bitstream like the Samsung & Philips? If so do you get the same results in both PCM and Bitstream settings?

I think chucken may have gotten booted for a while. Someone baited him and he bit. I have this player. I'm still in shock myself that it doesn't play audio period through the hdmi port------Not on any format. It does have the ability to set to LPCM or bitstream-----but yes, you do get the same results on HD material----- (optical or coaxial)----- If you look at that chart it seems that you should be able to get audio through hdmi when set to bitstream, but it doesn't work. You can set your amp to hdmi passthrough and use coaxial, optical, or analog, but the minute you switch the amp back from hdmi passthrough to "amp" well the picture freezes and no picture or sound will come through the hdmi. Hope "that" clears things up a bit.

Dude----- What that chart says and what the player actually "does" are two different things. If you actually had one of these players and knew what you were talking about, (instead of assuming that the chart is right) you would know that chucken was right. You need to spend more time reading and learning, and less time attacking posters. Nuff said.

I do have one of these players but I do not have a prepro that accepts hdmi audio. The original review that started this thread reported 2 channel PCM over hdmi and that agrees with the chart in the LG manual. I am here to read and learn. Chucken was posting the same information over and over here and in multiple threads so I asked him to direct his anger toward LG. His post is valid that he is unable to get audio over hdmi and I have no problem with anyone reporting their issues with any product.

If you need audio over hdmi this player is not for you. If you need audio from optical, coax, or analog this player is 90% supported for audio with only Dolby TruHD missing.

Thanks Jeff, That certainly makes sense, but doesn't work with the Denon AVR 2807 and still no 1080p directly to the Sharp via HDMI. Mine is going back. Purchased from BB online, they said I can return it to a local store, a long wait, or return it at my expense, or take a hike. I will dispute the charges through the credit card Co. I have avoided BB for years and now will forever, (LG as well).

I took my LG back this morning and had them credit back my $$$ to my card then drove over to Tweeter and picked up the Panny for 999.99-----THIS THING ROCKS!!!-----The HDMI audio is superb!----When playing the flick "Crank" I even noticed all 7.1 channels were lit up on the front of my HDMI receiver. I also noticed the thing plays all movies with no hitches or lockups. Very Kool player!

Let us (me) know what you think as you get more familiar with it.

I'm sure that new owners must be busy just going back and forth between HD DVD and BD discs, but has anybody tried a good old fashion DVD? How about a simple good, bad or ugly first impression?

I,ve tried the PS3, (good, but no ir control)-----I've brought home the Sony and took it back after a week, (picture freezes and no future codec updates promised). And of course you know about the LG, (which has no HDMI audio)---This Panasonic simply is the best I've tried so far. I have played about 10 different Blu-ray discs and so far perfect!-----The PQ is great and the audio is really, really good!. The remote control functions operate smoothly and it loads pretty fast-----You'd have to pry this thing from my dead clenched hands!-----

It upscales pretty well, and the PQ wasn't bad, but with no HDMI it's a no go for me. I imagine LG will come out with a second gen unit that will improve on it's short comings. No HDMI was just stupid on their part.

I did read some information in another thread posted by jeffshome and at least according to him ithe BH100 is slightly better than his Sony DVP-NS700P. The HDMI is a non-issue for me. For once, being limited to component analog is not a problem:-)

Everything in the industry is going HDMI, so it would be wise to future proof your home theater. I would not think of buying "anything" without HDMI abilities.

I don't mean to sound negative, but I've kinda given up on keeping up with HDMI. Even if I got the latest HDMI compliant component today, it would be obsolete in one year. I plan on using my receiver for another 3 years and future receivers will also support analog inputs. It sounds like the BH100 is about as advanced as any player on the market for display support with 1080p 24fps. Again, I will skip over a 1080p 0fps only display:-(

I can tell you all my equipment is HDMI-----Projectors, receivers, Tivo's, HD-DVD players. Mega changers, and I've had almost all of them for a year or more, and I can gaurantee you they will not be obsolete for a long time----HDMI (unlike DVI and component) is here to stay-----There will be versions of it, (1.0, 1.1, 1.2A, 1.3 etc) but they are pretty much compatible with each other for the basic functions. I wouldn't be so sure component will be here at all in the not so far future. HDMI is awesome, one wire for audio and video----couldn't be sweeter!.

Component will be legacy and probably supported for a long time. However, even with the current batch of HD players, upscaling is supported only on HDMI on some of the players. Eventually, HD players/ discs will be downrez'ed over component, all part of Hollywoods paranoi. We are being forced into HDMI.

My understanding is that the major HDMI deficiency with the BH100 was around audio not video (unless you happen to have a 1080p display:-(). Has there been any talk about Hollywood preventing analog audio output with ICT type flags?

I've never seen such a proposal. Others?

True-----But kinda sad that we have to "force" people into a superior technology. I am glad that HDMI is here.

IIRC the problems reported by DocDvd were that the player was not properly decoding the audio bitstreams to multistream LPCM on HDMI. It had nothing to do with HDMI itself. Multichannel LPCM and 1080p output of 10bit YCbCr 4:2:2 can carry hidef DVD farther than what we have today. This is all supported at HDMI 1.1. Not sure how may audio channels of LPCM - at least 6. Sending the new audio bitstreams via HDMI will require HDMI 1.3.

Preventing analog audio output will never happen, there's no reason to do it. It's also very unlikely that analog video output will be forced to down rez.

larry

It's already happened-----Toshiba has omitted analogs on their HD-A2 Player. This is just a sign of things to come-----and I'm glad.

Ever? In the immediate future for HD I would agree. This is a case where the format war is a good thing since it keeps studios like Sony (see link ) from down rezing for fear of losing to HD DVD. But the ICT flag is there. Any studio at any time can elect to turn it on. However, since we are still early in the adoption phase for Hi Def players, it is unlikely to be used anytime soon so actually I agree with you, for now. Two to three years from now? Hmmm....

Will this pass DD/DTS 5.1 over HDMI?

Miata, I agree with you,


First off, the play back or regular dvd's is great. I have watched a few and have been very pleased with the players own scaling to 1080i(using the component outs no hdmi on my Marquee 8000 yet) and having the lumagen HDQ pass through although with the lumagen doing the scaling and the LG outputting 480i looked noticeably better. The fith element looked as good witht he lumagen doing the scaling compared to the Blu ray disc through the lumagen at 1080i( i hear the transfer of the 5th E on blu-ray is not that great and i agree).
Stargate looked great on BD!!!! And the analog out puts for the audio was very involving and had great clarity. Apperently the internal audio decoding is top notch! This was fed into my Adcom 830's analog inputs and i went back and forth between the coax out of the LG. both had great sound.

My suggestion Miata is to go out a audition one for your self. if you dont like it take it back liek other on this thread have...for me i love it and will keep it! Just waiting for Moome to make some more hdmi cards for my Marquee 8000 so i can see what 1080p can do! butt he component out is also very good.


Athansios


Love this new crt addiction i have!

No.