Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've been using this for 2 weeks now, and it's my first blu-ray player (no PS3). The good stuff: Excellent look, not too loud, amazing picture and sound. Working ethernet and USB port. (I haven't had to download any firmware or code updates, but I'm sure it'll work fine.)
Operations: No fan noise, no noise while playing, but during menu & loading, you hear some track-seeking which is audible at 10'... nothing offensive, though. I just noticed last night, after my 5th blu-ray a little flicker in in the bottom center of the screen during the credits of Juno... not sure if it's a bad disc or a player having a problem. It was repeatable, and the disc seemed clean. Lastly, the load time, eject time, etc seems just fine. Not instant or as fast a nice DVD player, but not noticably slow. I've heard alot about slow disc-loading, and if it is a problem on other players - it's not a problem on this one. Lastly, sometimes when you click on a menu instead of pausing, the screen with show a "progress-bar" for 2-4 seconds while the next manu loads, which isn't completely kosher, but doesn't bother me.
The so-so stuff: I'm giving this 5-stars because it's near-perfect at what it's designed to do for it's price, but it's not perfect. One reason to get a mid- to lower-cost player is to (duh) save money... if you're someone who has an older receiver that doesn't decode the two new DD and DTS formats, and (probably) doesn't decode multi-channel PCM, this player isn't for you. It only has stereo-out analog RCA plugs, not 5.1 or 7.1 analog outputs.
That means you can't bypass your receivers pre-amp to play the newer audio formats and let the blu-ray player decode them. My old Receiver (which I used the player with for a week) only decoded DD 5.1 (no DTS, and only 2-channel PCM to 48khz). This player lets you send a PCM stream to your receiver from an internally decoded DTS 5.1 signal, but this didn't work for me... as my player can't receive 5.1 PCM streams, it only saw it as 2-channel. At least the player lets you downsample 96khz PCM to 48khz, so that I at least got sound (Golden Compass only has DTS 5.1 or DTS HD Master).
With my new receiver, all formats work perfectly, all bitstreamed.
Some people perhaps are holding off for new receivers because they don't want to connect through the player's analog RCA 5.1/7.1 connectors - but this is probably mis-information. What you want to avoid is taking digital sound, converting it to analog, then back to digital, then back to analog... don't worry - you wouldn't be doing this. Basically you would be doing all your processing in the player digitally, then once it is sent out through the pre-outs to the receiver you'd bypass the receiver's processing and it would go straight to the amplifier (which is of course analog anyway).
So my conclusion for thos people with older (but good) receivers - this blu-ray player won't save you any money. The best savings would be to pay a little more for a player with 5.1 analog outputs and continue to use your existing receiver.
-Kevin Moore
Natick, MA
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