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Written by Chris Heinonen and Adrian Wittenberg
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Tuesday, 26 January 2010 00:00 |
Panasonic has a long tradition of producing well regarded, competitively priced disc players. Many of their DVD players were among the best at producing a 480p image, and at a very reasonable cost. Panasonic was at it again with Blu-ray, being one of the main companies out there with a large line of affordable players for consumers, with some extra features that other companies don't include.
Tags: Blu ray | DVD |
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Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.
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Monday, 25 January 2010 00:00 |
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 OPPO's BDP-83 Universal Blu-ray Player has been very successful, as it is one of only a few players that will ouput all codecs (CD, DVD-A, SACD, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio) in digital format through an HDMI connection. Now, with the Special Edition of this player, analog audio performance is improved significantly, and in fact, performs like players costing much, much more.
Tags: Blu ray | CD Players | DVD |
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Written by Adrian Wittenberg and Gabe Lowe
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Monday, 18 January 2010 00:00 |
It wasn’t but about 18 months ago that Blu-ray players were still considered high end devices, selling mostly to enthusiasts, videophiles, and the like. Recently, the market for these players has really taken off, mostly due to the big box retailers dropping prices to DVD player levels. The fact that one can walk into a Wal-Mart and purchase a Blu-ray player for under $150 makes it somewhat of a commodity item at this point. Why not own one? Blu-ray discs are indeed more expensive (sometimes prohibitively so), but on the rental front, you can get them from Blockbuster or Netflix on the cheap, and enjoy your films in much higher quality.
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Written by Robert Kozel and Adrian Wittenberg
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Monday, 07 September 2009 00:00 |
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 The Sony ES line has always represented the very best of what Sony has to offer. The ES stands for Sony’s Elevated Standard and the BDP-S5000ES is Sony’s premier Blu-ray/DVD player, offering a host of features targeted at the audiophile and videophile who is looking for the very best.
Tags: Benchmark | Blu ray |
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Wednesday, 02 September 2009 00:00 |
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 The NAD T587 represents NAD’s first foray into the Blu-ray arena. NAD started big by building the T587 to the Blu-ray Profile 2.0 spec. The T587 can also handle CD and DVD discs among other formats such as DiVX. It is not a universal player and will not spin DVD Audio or SACD discs. Its circuitry is based on the Broadcom decoder. A nice touch is that the player comes with auxiliary feet that closely resemble Vibrapods. This player is reviewed as one of the Imagine Affordable System components.
Tags: Blu ray |
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Written by Adrian Wittenberg
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Thursday, 25 June 2009 00:00 |
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 There has been a lot of anticipation for OPPO Digital's brand new BDP-83 Blu-ray player. This is in part because OPPO has had an excellent track record for producing top notch affordable DVD players, such as the DV-983H (one of the only players in Secrets's history to score a perfect 100 on Secret's rigorous DVD Benchmark) and in part because the BDP-83 is the first Blu-ray player to hit the market offering the features to make it a truly all-in-one solution media solution for high definition playback. These include the ability to handle SACDs as a bitstream or PCM, and the ability to play DVD-Audio discs. The BDP-83 also decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio internally, giving you the option of using the 7.1 analog pre-outs on the rear panel if you have an older receiver, or use the HDMI output to deliver these high resolution movie soundtracks to your receiver in digital form.
Tags: Blu ray | DVD A | DVD players | HDMI | SACD | Universal Players |
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Written by Chris Heinonen and Adrian Wittenberg
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Monday, 04 May 2009 00:00 |
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 Many people have been waiting for Blu-ray players to hit the magic price point of $200, where people think mass adoption will start to take place and it will slowly overtake DVD as the dominant home video format. However, there’s also another range of players that are starting to come out now, those of reference quality designs with virtually no expense spared. The BDP-09FD from Pioneer is their entry into that arena.
(Check out the video tour of the player's features at the bottom of Page 2.)
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Written by Tyler Stripko and Adrian Wittenberg
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Thursday, 19 March 2009 00:00 |
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 The Denon DVD-1800BD is Denon’s newest and least expensive Blu-ray player. For the $599 MSRP you get a Bonus View (profile 1.1) compliant player with HDMI 1.3a and component video outputs, bit-streaming (not decoding) of all the latest lossless surround formats, a front panel SD card memory slot for the playback of MP3 and JPG files, and full Divx and Windows Media™ Audio playback support.
Tags: Blu ray | DVD players |
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Written by Chris Heinonen and Adrian Wittenberg
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Thursday, 12 February 2009 00:00 |
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 The Pioneer BDP-51FD is currently the only non-Elite Blu-ray player that Pioneer offers, but it is far from a budget model. Pioneer has a well deserved reputation for offering high quality DVD players in the past and is certainly trying to continue that tradition with their Blu-ray lineup, even if it means that their lowest end player is priced above that of other manufacturer's models. However, since the release of the BDP-51FD, complaints about its performance has led to multiple firmware updates being released as Pioneer tries to maintain its position as a purveyor of high end electronics. This review examines the player with the latest firmware update applied.
Tags: Blu ray | DVD |
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Written by Richard Stevens and Adrian Wittenberg
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Wednesday, 04 February 2009 16:00 |
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 It may be hard to believe but the BDP-S350 is Sony’s third generation Blu-ray player. It seems like only yesterday Blu-ray players were hitting the market and competition was heating up from rival Toshiba’s HD-DVD format. Now that the smoke has settled from the format war and Blu-ray reigns supreme, manufacturers are producing Blu-ray players at a constant and steady pace.
Tags: Blu ray | DVD players |
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Blu-ray Players
