Big Picture Big Sound

If you believe the numbers presented recently by the Blu-ray Disc Association, the format continues to experience a tremendous level of growth. Sales of the Sony PlayStation 3 were certainly a deciding factor in the HD format war, and the little blue guy continues to solider on with more than 25.4 million households reporting that they possess at least one Blu-ray player. There are currently more than 3,500 films available on Blu-ray and with the advent of Blu-ray 3D; there is a new level of interest in the format.

Even with the success of streaming media, Blu-ray looks to be on solid ground. Samsung has been one of the format's biggest supporters with a solid line-up of Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D players, and at their 2011 Product Showcase in New York yesterday, they took the opportunity to introduce seven new players.

Samsung loves Blu-ray 3D so much that they announced an exclusivity deal with Dreamworks for the Megamind Blu-ray 3D release. Panasonic may have Avatar, but Samsung has the new animated release plus How to Train Your Dragon and the complete Shrek series in their 3D stable. One thing that Samsung has done remarkably well is offer Blu-ray players that truly inspire from an industrial design perspective and the 2011 players maintain that edge; starting with the flagship BD-D7500 Blu-ray 3D player ($349.00, March 2011 availability) which is the world's thinnest player - a mere 0.9" in height.

Not only does the BD-D7500 offer superior Blu-ray 3D playback, but its design encourages wall-mounting (it is a side-loading player) and its brushed metal finish matches perfectly with Samsung's 3D SMART TVs. It is a gorgeous player and smooth operator.

The BD-D7500, BD-D7000 ($299.99, April 2011 availability) and BD-D6700 ($299.99, March 2011 availability) incorporate Samsung's new innovative 3D Converter technology to deliver real-time 3D conversion of 2D movies, pictures and streaming video at the push of a button. Samsung's proprietary Hyper Real Engine delivers cleaner, detailed picture quality by ensuring clarity, motion and color performance remain at optimal levels, according to the manufacturer.

The 2011 line offers built-in support for Dolby True HD across the full lineup; DTS-HD is also integrated in the BD-D6500 and higher. This year, the entire portfolio features the new Ultra Fast Play technology, which slashes the boot-up time by a supposed 80 percent to just three seconds (we have some uber slow Blu-rays to see how well this works - stay tuned).

The new players also feature Samsung's Smart Blu-ray technology which offers easy access to web content and services via the Smart Hub, media sharing across devices (Galaxy smart phones and tablets, TVs) with AllShare.

Further simplifying Internet connectivity out of the box, most of the new Smart Blu-ray players, including the BD-D5700, BD-D6500 ($229.99, March 2011 availability), BD-D6700, BD-D7000 and BD-D7500, offer built-in Wi-Fi, while the BD-D5300 ($149.99, March 2011 availability) and BD-D5500 ($179.99, March 2011 availability) include hard-wired network ports with Wi-Fi available via an optional adapter (sold separately).

Samsung also introduced their new HW-D7000 ($599.99, May 2011) 7.1 integrated Blu-ray3D A/V receiver which looked rather cool, as it utilizes a touch panel. It was too loud in the room to really put this receiver to the test, but at 120 watts per channel, it has some guts. We certainly hope to try one in the near future.

For more information:

 

• www.samsung.com