What is the best quality Blue Ray player? Whats the difference between them?

Question

What website can i find out what all the numbers mean about the Player? I don't know what kind to buy.

Answer 1

The PS3 is considered the reference Blu-ray player.

Answer 2

If you like to play games or have kids the ps-3 is the best if you have a tv that has a hdmi input.

Answer 3

Its down to the components inside the player, specifications alone will not give you an idea whether the player is good or not, you need to look for unbiased reviews. Look on HiFi forums.

People who review them look for detail when there's a lot going on in the picture (an action scene) and they look for how it produces colours, what it can decode onboard, if the upscale dvd ect ect..(the list goes on hehe)

Some of the best players on the market at the moment are;

Panasonic DMP-BD35

Panasonic DMP-BD50

Panasonic DMP-BD30

Sony BDP-S350

As you can see, Panasonic are leading the way, all of the above get glowing reviews, fantastic players. There plasma TV's are the best on the market too. And Sony LCD's are fantastic.

More Blu-Ray players are going to be released this Autumn by varying companies. To beat the panasonic's, they're going to have to produce something 'really special' to beat there outstanding quality.

All of the above players are better at producing  images than the PS3, but dont get me wrong, the PS3 is excellent at playing Blu-Ray.. Its what Im using, otherwise I would of got one of the above stand-alone players.

Hope that helps.

@ TV guy......PS3 'used' to be the reference blu-ray player, its now been superceded.

Answer 4

For price, performance and features, the PS3 can't be beat.  Even if you totally ignore its gaming aspect, and only use it as a blu-ray player, which many people do, the PS3 ranks at least as well as the high-end players with the differences requiring a lab full of test equipment to discern.

The PS3's hardware was intended for gaming, but this also means it has plenty of horsepower for playing blu-ray movies, and their ever-changing standards.  In addition, the PS3 supports both HDMI 1.3a and the new Blu-ray 2.0 Profile.  This means the PS3 loads movies and menus faster, can handle newer features with no problem, supports Sony's "deep color" feature (if your TV supports this) and is easily updated over the internet.

The PS3 starts at $400 - which makes it amongst the cheapest blu-ray players out there as well.

Yeah, you could spend $700, $1000, even $2000+ on a blu-ray player...but again, unless you have a laboratory full of reference benchmarking equipment, I challenge you (or anyone else!) to be able to tell the difference between different players when using the same TV, same cables, and same movie.  All blu-ray players can output up to 1080p via HDMI cable, can upscale regular DVDs, support surround sound up to 7.1, and even those that aren't Profile 2.0 will still be able to play the movie just fine - just some of the special features may not work.