Samsung Ships the First Blu-Ray Player

DigitalDame2 writes "PCMag.com reports that beginning June 25th, consumers will be able to purchase the first Blu-Ray player: the Samsung BD-P1000. The BD-P1000 is twice the price of the HD-A1 ($999.99 list), but supports full 1080p playback, something the first generation of HD-DVD players do not. It also up-converts conventional DVDs to 1080p to improve video quality and comes with HDMI, Component, S-video, and composite outputs. The BD-P1000 will be sold at more than 200 retail locations, including Best Buy, Tweeter, and Circuit City, and 10 Blu-Ray titles will be available as well."

Early Adoptor? Not this time.

[ackthpt]

Gosh! Only $999.99 list (or as we learned from The Price Is Right, the price you ask if you never plan to actually sell any, except to the most gullible or desperate, actual price will probably be about $700) I can wait.

When VCRs came out I bought a rather nice one for ~900$US. When CD's came out I bought a nifty CD player for about 700$US. I was a little more patient with DVDs but eventually got a DVD drive for a home computer and then a portable player (computer ~70$US, Portabl ~1000$US) As I'm pretty well past the point of being impressed with Eye Candy in cinema, I'll probably only get a Blu-Ray when there's significant offerings and most of the newer films I must have are only available via that channel.

Samsung pppbpbpbbbbttt

[the eric conspiracy]

If it is like other Samsung video players the attention to details like black level etc. won't be that great. I'd wait on this one unless you have money to burn.

1080p?

[sam1am]

Anyone know if that is 1080p/60 or just 1080p/24? Didn't see this specified on Samsung's website or in the user manual.

I'll take tpb's files labelled "HR-HDTV" thank you

[plasmacutter]

let's do the economics:

$999.99 for the player
$40? for the disks

only a few titles
LOTS of drm infesting it and making it not play full res

or i can just:

take the pc i already have.
open up a browser to TPB or Tspy
search "HR-HDTV"
torrent DL
watch full res HDTV quality encodes for $0-$25 (have to have dvd-r's right?)
and as a bonus, the last 720p movie i saw on xvid took up 3 gigs... you don't need blue-ray or hd-dvd.

thanks hollywood for drawing out the r&d and forcing the added costs of tons and tons of DRM! yet another reason to engage in piracy!

hmmm . . .

[Maradine]

It also up-converts conventional DVDs to 1080p to improve video quality and comes with HDMI, Component, S-video, and composite outputs.

You know, I've always wondered about this, so someone help me out here. Let's say I have a 1080p HDTV. As it's a discrete pixel device, not a CRT, it's got one native resolution, right? And when I plug my 480i/p DVD player into it to watch a movie, the TV is upsampling the signal to use all of the pixels on the display, right? So why is this a feature on the player? How does it improve image quality? Is it using a blingy-er algorithm than the TV would be using? Marketing fluff?

1080p eh?

[skyman8081]

Now how about a proper 1080p TV then? There are HDTV's that have a 1080p display, but don't take 1080p inputs, and TVs that take 1080p but downscale it to 720p. Make up your mind!

Composite outputs?

[fbg111]

Why composite? Seems like a complete waste of money. First, anyone able to afford $999 for a BD player, or whatever reduced but still expensive price this thing will cost until PS3 arrives, will not be watching it on a TV so cheap/antiquated that its best input is composite. Second, I'm not a videophile/home theater buff, but I can clearly remember the vast difference in image quality on my Xbox and PS2 when going from composite to component and composite to s-video, respectively. Seems like composite on a BD player negates the primary selling point of the BD player in the first place - image quality. The only reason I can think of for including composite is that composite is now so cheap that its inclusion has a negligible effect on the unit's manufacturing cost, in which case, why not? Anyone know?

You actually can improve the "perceived" quality.

[voxel]

I don't know if they do it on this player or not, but there is some easy-setup software you can do on your PC to check it out for yourself.

Use ffdshow (google for it). It is a DirectX filter (correct me if im wrong), in which youc an apply many effects to an image.

The trick is to scale the DVD 720x480 up to 1080p (or whatever you want) then apply a LANCOZ sharpening filter on ONLY the luma channel. *NOTE: I think I got that right, lancoz on luma channel, its been a while forgive me if im spelling something wrong.

There are actually lots of articles on the net (again google), that talk about this technique.

So I tried it for myself. Low and behold, the image really DOES look better. It amazingly adds "perceived" detail.

The trick again is sharpening only one channel in the image (luma/chroma/something else... (im no expert)).

Who are they marketing to?

[BumpyCarrot]

Surely all possible early adopters have already ruined their eyesight like the rest of us tech-heads? I can't tell the difference between DivX/XviD and DVD unless someone bypasses my eyes altogether, and I wear weak lenses.