Blu- ray Player Reviews, Blue Ray players, Blu- ray, Sony Blu- ray Players, Blu- ray Profile 2. BD live, Samsung Blu- ray, All Blu- ray players reviewed. What is Blu- ray? The History of the Blu- ray/HD DVD Format War. HDMI and the Art of Copy Protection for Blu- ray. Blu-ray Recorders Blu-ray Recorder reviews, release dates and specs. In the Blu-ray Recorder section you will always find up-to-date information about new and. Muse 6N11 Class A Tube Hybrid Headphone Amplifier. From the time I was a kid I was fascinated with vacuum tubes. Maybe it was the filament glow coming from the. See our list of the best Blu-ray players of 2016, as revealed in the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2016, and based on our expert product reviews. Click the titles below for the most comprehensive reviews of Blu-ray discs online, and watch for new reviews as more Blu-ray discs are released. Play. Station 3 (PS3) as a Blu- ray Player. DTS Master Cinema and Dolby True HD6. What About Deep Color? Why Is There No Blu- ray For Music? Streaming Media Via Blu- ray Players. Shop for Blu-ray players with Richer Sounds for expert advice and unbeatable prices! Home theater AV receiver, speaker, HDTV, television, projector and Blu-ray player reviews, buying guides, and high end audio and consumer electronics news. PRICE $400 AT A GLANCE Plus World’s first UHD Blu-ray player Outstanding overall performance Reasonable price (for a “first”) Minus No auto picture adjustments. Shop for dvd and blu-ray player at Best Buy. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up. What is Blu- ray? Blu- ray is an optical disc format that competes with DVD and uses a blue (actually somewhat purple) laser to capture the information from the disc, which allows for better performance than the red laser used in traditional DVD players. Blu- ray discs have up to 5. HDTV, as well as high- resolution audio via PCM or lossless compression via DTS Master Audio and Dolby True HD. Blu- ray offers a significant upgrade over DVD in terms of picture quality and sound quality, while the players are backwards- compatible with DVD discs, allowing consumers to play their . The Blu- ray group was backed by Sony, Philips, Pioneer, Panasonic, LG, Hitachi, Apple Computer and, ultimately, many others. The competing HD DVD format, packing the more intuitive name (because it has both HD and DVD in it, telling consumers exactly what the players did) was supported by the likes of Microsoft and Toshiba. Studios like Disney, Sony and Fox exclusively offered Blu- ray discs to the public, thus drawing a line in the sand in the format war. HD DVD garnered support from Paramount, Dream. Works and Universal. Warner Bros., with a huge catalogue, sat on the fence. Consumers and early adopters hated the format war from the get- go, as players were relatively expensive ($5. DVD players on the market. Load times for both formats were more than a minute, when comparable (and far less expensive) standard- definition DVD players were nearly instantaneous. Both Blu- ray players and HD DVD players needed frequent firmware updates that in many cases killed off the units. Both players also needed frequent hard restarts, which require the pulling of the plug on the unit; DVD players rarely ever need this to perform flawlessly. What consumers fretted over most was the idea that, in their quest to get 1. HD satellite is 1. In the fourth quarter of 2. HD DVD group was gaining significant marketplace momentum, thanks to the release of very affordable players (some under $1. HD titles, while the Blu- ray group was building somewhat less momentum pushing Sony's Play. Station 3 game consoleas the best, or at least most affordable, Blu- ray player at nearly double the price of the entry- level HD DVD machine. Everything changed on . Warner Bros., which had been releasing titles for both formats in a somewhat unexpected move, decided to support Blu- ray exclusively with their titles. The conjecture at the time was their allegiance was up for auction and that the Blu- ray group bid more than $3. HD DVD group. With the two competing formats sporting million- dollar booths at CES almost directly next to each other, the Blu- ray camp was celebrating as if they'd won the Super Bowl, while the HD DVD booth was a virtual morgue. Toshiba swore they would fight back, but Wal- Mart dropped its support of the format in mid- February, 2. Online disc rental house Netflix announced they also would be dropping HD DVD for Blu- ray. Big box retailer Best Buy announced Blu- ray was their preferred HD disc format and it was all over for HD DVD. Only days later, Toshiba announced they would cease making HD DVD players and the format war ended with the last supporting studios scurrying to convert HD DVD titles to Blu- ray releases. HDMI and the Art of Copy Protection for Blu- ray. Hollywood studios love Blu- ray, not only because it offers them an opportunity to resell their entire vast catalogue of movies to clients on an HD format, but unlike the compact disc for the record labels, Blu- ray's best features are nicely copy- protected when displayed in HD, thanks to HDMI and its much- maligned HDCP copy protection. HDMI makes a digital . This makes it difficult (but not impossible for those with way too much time and skill on their hands) to break the digital lock. On the surface, HDMI sounds like the one- cable dream solution to the audio- video industry's connection needs, neatly paired with the copy protection Hollywood studios demand for their movies in HD, yet all is far from perfect. HDMI and its HDCP copy protection have been horrendously unreliable, to the point where many AV installers and retailers refused to use the connection in the early days of the format. Copy- protected Blu- ray and HD DVD players suffer from copy protection communication issues that left systems crippled, while non- copy- protected sources like HD DVRs worked like a charm. HDMI has updated its software and copy protection to make it current to version 1. However, electronics companies and chip providers struggle to keep up with technological changes, often with the weak link being the receiver/preamp part of the system. Most current displays are HDMI 1. Blu- ray players. Many receivers and AV preamps on the market today offer only one or two HDMI inputs and often they are HDMI 1. Without HDMI connection, the highest- resolution sound from the likes of DTS Master Cinema and Dolby True HD are not released from the disc. Some discs even limit or down- res the video content coming out of the player when not connected via HDMI. Play. Station 3 (PS3) as a Blu- ray Player. Many praise Sony's Play. Station 3 game console as being the best, most reliable Blu- ray player on the market. Unlike early players, Sony's PS3 has passed the test of time, including firmware updates to reliably play a Blu- ray movie and many of its most tricky supplemental features with ease. Sony PS3 is currently one of the least expensive ways to get Blu- ray performance into a home theater or HDTV system. Its game controller navigation is hard for the non- gamer to use in many cases. DTS Master Audio and Dolby True HD. The two lossless compression audio formats available on Blu- ray are DTS Master Audio and Dolby True HD. They are not always available on the same disc, but both represent a very accurate replication of the master audio 7. They run on HDMI cables and require an HDMI receiver with the ability to process the codecs, as well as receive HD video. What About Deep Color? While legal downloads are copy- protected, there are millions of CD titles that are not copy- protected. Blu- ray offers the ability for record labels to resell their best back- catalogue discs in dramatically improved audio formats, like DTS Master Cinema and Dolby True HD, as well as pack HD video footage, high- resolution still images and other impressive supplemental materials, yet all four of the major record labels reject this format. No major studio has followed his lead to date. Audiophile record labels have not quickly adopted Blu- ray for music, despite Blu- ray having upwards of a reported eight percent market penetration in American households. Some boutique record labels like 2. L records from Norway and AIX Records are pushing for music on Blu- ray but with few exceptions - like Rush's Moving Pictures and a few Pink Floyd reissues - mainstream music isn't being released in Blu- ray. Streaming Media Via Blu- ray Players. From day one, Blu- ray players could be more than just units that spun silver- colored discs, as the Sony Playstation 3 taught us.
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