Blu-Ray Player - Recommendations?

[Marts]

Looking at getting the missus a BR player for Xmas. It will be a stop-gap one
til we can afford a decent Panasonic BR recorder unit (around $1,500 street
price).

Any recommendations?

In particular it would need to be able to play titles sourced from the US, say,
Amazon, for example.

[Arthur Marsh]

Post by Marts
Looking at getting the missus a BR player for Xmas. It will be a stop-gap one
til we can afford a decent Panasonic BR recorder unit (around $1,500 street
price).
Any recommendations?
In particular it would need to be able to play titles sourced from the US, say,
Amazon, for example.

My local hi-fi store, www.blackwoodsound.com.au had a Pioneer blu-ray
player for about $600. I tried it with a region 2 regular DVD and a
blu-ray disc from Japan (same blu-ray region as Australia).

Both played very well.

After having some cheap DVD players I also bought a couple of low-end
Pioneer DVD players. One had noticeable tingling when you put your hand
near it so I had it checked and the power supply was replaced free under
warranty. There was a fairly obscure menu/control option (documented in
the manual) to select to enable it to output in the format of the DVD so
that an NTSC disk would display in colour on an old television using
analogue inputs, but once done quality has been excellent.

Arthur.

[Marts]

Arthur Marsh wrote...

Post by Arthur Marsh
My local hi-fi store, www.blackwoodsound.com.au had a Pioneer blu-ray
player for about $600. I tried it with a region 2 regular DVD and a
blu-ray disc from Japan (same blu-ray region as Australia).
Both played very well.

Ended up getting a Panasonic BR player (BD60 or 80) from The Good Guys. Cost
around $240.

So far, all I've played in it is a BR title, Shawshank Redemption, and a couple
of DVDs which are NTSC, sourced from the US, but not sure if they're region
encoded. One of them was the latest Indy Jones movie.

Missus is getting a BR box set of the series Mad Men from the US Amazon site.
Unfortunately she forgot to remove all of the BR titles from her wish list so
one of the daughters has sent her that.

We'll see if the thing's locked to Aus regions. But I'm told that Aus and the UK
share the same region, which makes sense unlike DVD region coding. And Amazon UK
seems to have a fair few titles at reasonable prices.

I scoured Big W, Target, Kmart and Sanity stores for BR titles on Xmas Eve. Only
one that was worth buying was the Shawshank one. All up each store carries
around 100 titles (yes, I counted them).

Pretty woeful, really, given that it was Xmas and so on. You'd reckon that they
would've started to stock up on them.

Anyway, difficult to tell if 1080p via HDMI to a Panasonic full HD display is
that much better than a DVD being played in a DVD player. But then, when we were
trying it out Xmas morning, the window being us was a bit glary on the screen.

Will have a look at it tonight, see if ambient light made it look like crap.

[HaZ]

Man, if you cant tell the diff between BD and DVD then id get your eye's
checked. Difference is night and day to me and the missus. Having said that,
not all titles are created equally.

Certainly pays to check out reviews and see if the authoring has been done
right making it a worthwhile upgrade.

As for where to buy, you will find that 90% of titles are region free so
buying from OS is fairly safe. There are a number of sites that will advise
when the title has been tested and rated region free. www.blu-ray.com being
one pus it has a good price tracker. Otherwise try Amazon UK and you cant go
wrong as they share our region. In most cases if you buy in bulk you will do
much better price wise than buying locally.

Post by Marts
Arthur Marsh wrote...

Post by Arthur Marsh
My local hi-fi store, www.blackwoodsound.com.au had a Pioneer blu-ray
player for about $600. I tried it with a region 2 regular DVD and a
blu-ray disc from Japan (same blu-ray region as Australia).
Both played very well.

Ended up getting a Panasonic BR player (BD60 or 80) from The Good Guys. Cost
around $240.
So far, all I've played in it is a BR title, Shawshank Redemption, and a couple
of DVDs which are NTSC, sourced from the US, but not sure if they're region
encoded. One of them was the latest Indy Jones movie.
Missus is getting a BR box set of the series Mad Men from the US Amazon site.
Unfortunately she forgot to remove all of the BR titles from her wish list so
one of the daughters has sent her that.
We'll see if the thing's locked to Aus regions. But I'm told that Aus and the UK
share the same region, which makes sense unlike DVD region coding. And Amazon UK
seems to have a fair few titles at reasonable prices.
I scoured Big W, Target, Kmart and Sanity stores for BR titles on Xmas Eve. Only
one that was worth buying was the Shawshank one. All up each store carries
around 100 titles (yes, I counted them).
Pretty woeful, really, given that it was Xmas and so on. You'd reckon that they
would've started to stock up on them.
Anyway, difficult to tell if 1080p via HDMI to a Panasonic full HD display is
that much better than a DVD being played in a DVD player. But then, when we were
trying it out Xmas morning, the window being us was a bit glary on the screen.
Will have a look at it tonight, see if ambient light made it look like crap.

[anthony]

I have a Kogan Blu ray player which is fully region-free (just have to
change regions using a code on the remote-control). It's the second
Kogan I've had and I'm really pleased with it (I left the first as
part of a home-cinema system which buyers of my old home bought as
part of the house purchase).
Be careful in testing a Blu ray player with Region A discs to see if
it's region-free because very many Region A discs are in fact, without
stating so, compatible with Regions A, B and C. Warner Blu rays from
the States are for the most part region-free, I've found. I think in
fact most discs are slowly, very quietly, being made region-free.
There are still many which aren't. Surprisingly, most Criterion discs
seem to be region-tied. Surprisingly, because so many of their DVDs
were region-free.
Anyway, the Kogan (which was selling on the Kogan site for about $230
last time I looked) is definitely able to handle all regions, and it
does a good job upscaling DVDs as well. My previous model did have
some trouble playing certain DVDs which I had burnt myself, which was
a tad annoying. I haven't tested the new model for that yet.
Anthony