Dear Experts,
Ok, sorry to bother, but I had some quick questions on buying a blu ray player. I am probably going to buy one in a couple of months. Are they going to come out with better ones? I was going to buy a playstation 3 and enjoyed reading your PS3 review, but I have heard using a gaming system for playing dvds wears on the gaming system more than just playing games. Is that true?
I am looking to pay up to $500-600. What should I look into buying? I am looking for the best picture and sound possible. You said something about the pS3 not playing surround sound. Is that true? Does a regular blu ray player give a better picture and sound than PS3? Thank you very much and hope you can help me. Thanks
-Jon
Answer:
Hello, Jon,
In regards to whether there will be better players, there will always be better players, but if you wait for perfection, you will never get to enjoy anything today. The PS3 is a good choice for a Blu-ray Disc player because it's the most upgradable. It is the only player currently on the market that will support BD-ROM profile 2.0 (a.k.a., "BD Live") via a future firmware upgrade. BD Live support gives a Blu-ray Disc player the ability to download new content, play interactive web-based games, etc. over the Web.
As for "not supporting surround sound," that's not true at all. The PS3 supports surround sound via HDMI or standard S/PDIF digital outputs. What the PS3 currently does not support (and may never support because of its chip-set and architecture) is native bitstream output of the latest lossless surround sound codecs, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. It does support playback of Blu-ray discs in these formats (with surround sound), but it can't pass the native bitstream to a receiver or processor for decoding of the format in the receiver. Probably not a big deal for many people, but the real die-hard audiophiles do care about these things.
By the way, playback of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray Disc movies is no more stressful on the player than game discs so that's not something worth worrying about.
In terms of stand-alone players, I like the Panasonic DMP-BD30, which does support native passthrough of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. It is getting a little hard to find though, probably because it is being replaced with the DMP-BD50 which will support BD-Live 2.0 and will be coming to stores later this spring.
Hope that helps,
-Chris
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