OFFICIAL "HELP ME CHOOSE A PLAYER" THREAD: Can't decide? Start HERE. - Page 455

Anyone please? Looking for an older reliable cheap model.

I'd suggest searching for a mint condition Sony S350 or S550. I have one of each and they have been fine.
$40 might be a bit low for one in mint condition, but I expect you can get a S350 within $50 or so if you search and are patient.

Looking for a blu-ray player that handles blu-rays well, loads are not slow and has WIFI with a great app suite/internet services.

Update I went with the Panny bdt220 to see how that does, a little bigger footprint than I wanted but it sounds like a good overall blu-ray player/streamer.
Edited by Briant73 - 6/19/12 at 7:00am

Right now with an instant rebate the 220CP (A 220 with a bundled HDMI cable) is $109 after a $20 instant rebate.

The unit does not show on costco.com but the Brandon (Tampa Bay, FL) area Costco has plenty in store. I'm pretty sure this is not just a local deal.

I have had LG BD530: fast, excellent PQ and DVD upscaling (Mediatek chipset) and no streaming (like you, my TV does the streaming stuff).

It was cheap too but, alas, not reliable. It crapped out after a year or so of use. Checking Amazon feedbacks, it seems to be a 50/50 proposition of getting a reliable one. Did I mention cheap? You can get one off eBay for $15-25. It may be worth the gamble. I am actually thinking about getting another one despite being burned once already.

Thanks Apostate for the info!

Hi there,

I'm trying to recommend a current player to a friend. I have an Oppo 83 at home, but he's looking for something under $150.

How about the Panny 220 and the Sony 590 (most popular models around here) in regards to other video formats playback from, say USB? Like AVCHD, MP4, XviD, DivX, DivX Plus HD, MKV?

Do they also support subtitle files (SRT) for these formats?

Thanks!

I'm looking for a 3DBluRay DL BD-R player. Can anyone give me a lead on on? Idk how compatibility matters but I have a 1912-avr and a un55d7000.

How much do you want to spend?

I'm in the same boat. I'm looking for a 3D Blue ray after just purchasing an Onkyo 818 and Epson 3010. Wondering what is the current leader for around $200.? I'm wanting to keep the best sound processing option to feed the Onkyo hooked to 7.2 higher end Klipsch system. The Pasonic 220 looks good but will it have the best sound processing?

Thanks!
Edited by alexfjr - 6/21/12 at 12:38pm

Alex, the Onkyo is going to be doing its sound processing from the sound fed to it by an HDMI connection, so the only thing that you'll need is a good HDMI sound signal from the bluray player. The movies that you get will have either lossy (some sound fidelity is lost from the original) DTS, DD, etc. or lossless (identical to the original) LPCM, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD-MA. If you want the best sound, you want lossless.

Any bluray player that can deliver lossless will get you the best sound. The lossy signal is no slouch either, but with a good setup, you want the best sound. The good thing is that now, all bluray players that I know of will deliver lossless sound if it's available. Either way, the choice of bluray player is not going to be as important for HDMI sound, since your receiver is capable of decoding lossless sound, you want it done there, not in the bluray player.

In the case of other receivers, that don't have the ability to decode the lossless (and some of the lossy) formats, or that don't have HDMI connections, the decoding at the bluray player is important, especially if the bluray to receiver connection is done through analog connections instead of HDMI. That's not the case with yours, so as far as sound goes, I think most players will be fine. The 220 in particular will be fine for this, it supports all of the sound formats.

Thanks for the informative and fast response Hernanu! I'm so buy building out the theater room that I haven't had much time to research all the options. From the responses in this thread, the Panasonic 220 appears to be a great choice.

I was wondering what were the benefit(s) in getting a more expensive bluray compared to an entry level player like a PS3 for an example, I understand that some of the more expansive BD player offer 7.1 output with high quality DAC’s but in a situation where the audio will be bitstreamed to the receiver is there any impact on the quality of the video on 1080p material.

I have an a Lumagen Radiance scaler so better scaling is not really a driver since I will send everything in native resolution and let the radiance do the scaling if needed, so my question is when comparing bluray 1080p video, is there any noticeable difference between a cheap & expensive player.

My current setup is PS3-->Lumagen Radiance-->Sony VW-1000-->Screen Innovation Black Diamond Zero Edge 144’

If there’s any difference what are the current popular options?

Thanks

Integrated BD Player/Receiver Units with Speaker Outputs

I tried talking about this in the HTiB section, but I got no reply. I am aware that if the player breaks, I lose everything. Also, if I decide to upgrade in a year or two, it will be a little more expensive to replace everything. However, because the audio is going from the disc drive directly to the audio section, couldn't this totally do away with jitter?

The units which fulfil my BD/SACD needs just so happen to be included with systems put out by Pioneer of Europe (the BCS-121/222/323/424/525/626/727). The Yamaha 610 fulfils all my requirements, except it doesn't support SACD playback. I don't think the Philips do so either. I don't think the Sonys use the MediaTek chipset. Is anyone aware of a US model with SACD/DVD-A support which uses the MediaTek chipset, and features customizable speaker sizes and speaker types (center, surround, and surround back)??

There won't be any noticeable difference. How do you get the PS3 to output native 480i though? Usually you are forced into a high end player to get source direct (480i) output. My problem with using a PS3 for discs is that it requires an IR adapter of some kind to work with a universal remote, it's slow, noisy and uses a lot more energy than a regular disc player. I find a stand-alone player a whole lot faster and more convenient, although the BD PQ is about the same. Plus stand-alone players generally have a lot more streaming apps.

Sony and Panasonic seem to be the top choices these days. I personally prefer Sony due to more apps, better Netflix and better DLNA. However, Panasonic supports FLAC and Sony doesn't. Neither have source direct AFAIK. Possibly the Sony 790 does, but you'll need to confirm.

When they're working correctly, modern Blu-ray players all provide the same HD digitial resolution. Given the rapid advances in other features (like the various network streaming options), it makes sense to base your player choice on the other features that you want.

The catch is that not all of them work correctly when their settings are left with their default values. For example, this year's Sony players (BDP-S390/590/790) have a bug when the default RGB output encoding is used. The resulting color gamut is slightly reduced. Fortunately, they also allow YUV 4:2:2 and YUV 4:4:4 encodings to be selected, both of which are fine. (Sony has acknowledged the bug, and it is expected to be fixed in a future firmware update.)

Despite these issues, the Sony 390 (2D) and 590 (3D) players seem to be the most popular here, along with the Panasonic DMP-BDT220.
Sony's 790 and the comparable Panasonic 500 incorporate many additional upscaling (and other) features which are unnecessary if you're using an external scalar.

OPPO uses Mediatek and supports SACD and DVD-A. I'm not sure what you mean by customizable speaker type. You want to reassign the physical outputs to be something else?

-Bill

I have some Amazon credit and was thinking of maybe getting a 3D Blu-ray player, but don't want to spend a whole lot. Are there any recommendations on what would be a good one to go with among the currently available models? I would love to keep it as close to $100 as possible, but maybe a little higher. I don't care about the Internet apps and stuff like that. I would be more concerned with disc playback of DVDs and Blu-ray and 3D.

Panasonic BDT220 or Sony BDP-s390 would be your two best and most reliable choices.

S~

Thanks, the Sony isn't 3D is it? Is the s590 good?

I have the Sony 790 and the Panasonic 320. For BD/DVD, I like the Panasonics. For streaming I like the 790. My preferences.

S~

Correct, the 390 isn't 3D, the 590 is and can be had for $10 more than the 390 right now. I have both the 590 and 790 and except for the dual HDMI and more tweaking options on the 709, I like them both. BTW, I don't use any of the tweaks on the 790, just the dual HDMI,

is there any player that can be soft-moded to be zone free like some DVD player or hard modding is still the only option?

Is the LG BD670 any good? It's only $90 and has some good features but I'm not sure. The Sony and Panasonics have some bad reviews on Amazon also, so I don't know if the LG is really bad compared to them or not. I just thought I'd throw the LG in there for consideration because of the price and the fact that I have an LG TV. Any thoughts? The most important thing to me is the ease and speed of loading and playing discs and being able to jump around to different parts of a movie easily, through entering a time to go to for instance.

Check the owner's threads. I've seen and heard about problems with the LG. I had a friend return his. Whether or not they were fixed, I don't know. Some have had wireless connection problems with the Panasonic. I haven't. My Panasonics have always played everything I've thrown at them. My 790 does stream better though, and offers DD 5.1 audio for Amazon which the Panasonics don't at this time.

S~

Thanks, I'll have to check out the particular threads for those models as well. It does sound like the Panasonic is the best in your opinion for my needs.

How's the Pioneer BDP-140 Blu-ray player compared to the Sony and Panny? I am looking for it to be a good 3d player. I was thinking of going HDMI into a Panasonic 60gt50 and then going optical into an older pre-3d Pioneer receiver to get the audio.
Any suggestions or advice would be great.

Can't help you with the Pioneer but you will only get stereo out of the TV from whatever player you wind up with. The TV only provides DD 5.1 out when using it's internal tuner.

The Pioneer BDP-140 has a digital optical audio output and re-encodes to DTS, so if you connect the player's optical output to the receiver, it's not limited to stereo PCM. That configuration can't provide lossless audio (but I doubt you'd hear the difference) or more than 5.1 channels (but very few discs have 8 channels of audio). Upgrading the receiver to one which supports HDMI V1.4a would be needed to get both 3D and lossless audio over HDMI.

The player should be fine for both 2D and 3D Blu-ray discs. Featurewise, it looks to have more than the Sony S590 but fewer than the S790.

Does your Pioneer receiver have HDMI? If so, you can get one with two outs and run one to the TV for video and the second to the receiver for audio. That way you will still get lossless audio.

S~