BluRay / PS3 pros and cons

[skoff]

So I am in the process of sorting out getting the full HD experience at home and BluRay will be a pretty big part of that. Does anybody have any words of wisdom. As I understand it the PS3 is a good option as it is SW upgradeable, but do the dedicated players (not the silly-money ones) have any other advantages over the PS3?

I have a BluRay and HDMI output on my laptop, but there is a voice in the back of my head that says I might struggle getting an audio output to my non HDMI AV receiver.

Finally the prices of BluRay players are really variable, are the expensive ones significantly better than the cheaper units, are you paying for better picture quality or just more features?

[Plotloss]

PS3 has optical output, I believe.

The PS3 BD player is perfectly good but in comparative performance against something like the Pioneer BDP-LX51 it does falter, somewhat.

[dan101smith]

I've only ever watched Blu-ray on my PS3. Where would I see an improvement in quality by switching to a dedicated player?

[trooperiziz]

I had the same thoughts and I went with a Panasonic BD35 instead of the PS3 in the end, for a few reasons:

1. The dedicated BR player was £100 cheaper and I don't need the PS3 for gaming or media streaming.
2. My amp accepts true HD bitstream (and whatever the other one is) over HDMI, so to make things easier I wanted a machine that could bitstream that via the HDMI connection.
3. A dedicated player is a bit less fiddly in the UI stakes.

A fair number of players can have their firmware updated over the internet these days, so I don't think the arguement of the PS3 as being software updateable holds water anymore.

[JustinP1]

dan101smith said:

I've only ever watched Blu-ray on my PS3. Where would I see an improvement in quality by switching to a dedicated player?

I am a bit of an AV junkie. My setup (which I am lucky as I use for work) is about £30,000 worth in total, of which the PS3 is used for blu-ray.

As with all of this stuff the law of diminishing returns applies, to the point where you really have to argue whether spending the extra is worth the difference.

I am more than happy with PS3 blu-ray performance in a big 7.1 surround setup and a 63" plasma. That has an optical audio out for my AV amp.

I am not going to upgrade to another blu-ray player until the picture quality is significantly better than my PS3. At a guess I would probably have to spend £800 or more to do this, and even then the differences would be small. At the moment, those benefits aren't worth £800 to me.

[mackie1]

I went the PS3 route as I really fancied the media streaming aspect of it. A dedicated bluray player may be slightly better but I'm very happy with the results I get. I have an HDMI amp which doesn't support the HD DD/DTS formats so the PS3's ability to send PCM over HDMI was a winner too (although I'm sure other players can do this too).

[dazren]

I spoke to DeR and bought a Sony 350 bluray two weeks ago. Fitted it up to my 9 month old 50" pioneer via HDMI and used the bluray output settings he recommeded and the picture has been superb. On some films there are scenes where it's almost as if 2D is going half way to 3D if that makes sense (action films with people jumping through windows etc).

Originally I was going to get a pioneer bluray player, but on the basis I wouldn't have it wired up to a proper surround sound system there seemed little point going for the expensive player. I'm pleased with the cheaper Sony 350, seems to do the job well, cheaper than a PS3 too (I don't play video games so it would be wasted).

[Mr_Yogi]

I use a PS3 and while it's very good, it does make some fan noise, espeically if it's hot. So that would be one reason to consider a stand alone machine, providing you don't play video games or want the media streaming functionality of the PS3. Of course it's not a problem if you have the surround sound L O U D

I do however have an early 60GB PS3, so the newer models (with the smaller chips) may be quieter...

Edited by Mr_Yogi on Wednesday 21st January 14:21

[trooperiziz]

dazren said:

I spoke to DeR and bought a Sony 350 bluray two weeks ago. Fitted it up to my 9 month old 50" pioneer via HDMI and used the bluray output settings he recommeded and the picture has been superb. On some films there are scenes where it's almost as if 2D is going half way to 3D if that makes sense (action films with people jumping through windows etc).

Originally I was going to get a pioneer bluray player, but on the basis I wouldn't have it wired up to a proper surround sound system there seemed little point going for the expensive player. I'm pleased with the cheaper Sony 350, seems to do the job well, cheaper than a PS3 too (I don't play video games so it would be wasted).

I bought my parents a Sony 350 for xmas, and it does seem a lovely little player. I was either going to get one of those or the Panasonic BD35, the Panny won because i'm planning on going 7.1 in the near future and I already had a Panny TV, so the viera link might come in useful.

[Mr_Yogi]

Just thought of another plus for the PS3 over the cheaper dedicated players, which is the DVD upscaling is very good

[mackie1]

Mr_Yogi said:

Just thought of another plus for the PS3 over the cheaper dedicated players, which is the DVD upscaling is very good

It is, but it's not multi-region and the upscaling can make noise noisier. I opted for an Oppo 981 for DVD duties since we have quite a lot of R1 titles.

[trooperiziz]

Mr_Yogi said:

Just thought of another plus for the PS3 over the cheaper dedicated players, which is the DVD upscaling is very good

But then so is the upscaling on a Sony 350 or Panasonic BD35...

[JustinP1]

I think pretty much the consensus is that if you have no interest in PS3 games or streaming other files, then there are better blu-ray players out there.

I have yet to see an argument to extol the virtues of a standalone player if you already have or will buy a PS3. Unless of course money is no object.

I had the PS3 going in 7.1 for a music blu-ray at the weekend and it sounded awesome.

I have ummed and ahhed over the possible benefits of TrueHD or the DTS equivalent over the standard, and I seriously doubt that in a blind test anyone apart from serious buffs will tell the difference.

I would go so far as saying that if you are listening on anything less than £10,000 worth of surround setup it would be impossible to reproduce any extra benefit that the 'high definition' audio standards can produce over the DD and DTS current standards.

And that kind of makes the 'anything better than PS3' argument academic!

[Red Firecracker]

Mr_Yogi said:

I do however have an early 60GB PS3, so the newer models (with the smaller chips) may be quieter...

I had exactly that problem with my launch day PS3, the fan noise was atrocious.

I sold it just before Christmas for over 300 quid and replaced it with a new 80Gb that is silent. The small profit and 12 month warranty was quite nice as well. I don't play PS2 games anymore so don't miss that functionality.

[trooperiziz]

JustinP1 said:

I have ummed and ahhed over the possible benefits of TrueHD or the DTS equivalent over the standard, and I seriously doubt that in a blind test anyone apart from serious buffs will tell the difference.

I would go so far as saying that if you are listening on anything less than £10,000 worth of surround setup it would be impossible to reproduce any extra benefit that the 'high definition' audio standards can produce over the DD and DTS current standards.

Well, I can certainly tell a difference between True HD and basic DD, but I have no idea if it sounds better!

I also had difficulty when looking at various TVs, sure they all looked different but which one was 'better' was a confusion

[mackie1]

JustinP1 said:

I have ummed and ahhed over the possible benefits of TrueHD or the DTS equivalent over the standard, and I seriously doubt that in a blind test anyone apart from serious buffs will tell the difference.

I would go so far as saying that if you are listening on anything less than £10,000 worth of surround setup it would be impossible to reproduce any extra benefit that the 'high definition' audio standards can produce over the DD and DTS current standards.

And that kind of makes the 'anything better than PS3' argument academic!

The PS3 does support TrueHD and DTS-MA though. The bit-rates for normal AC3 or DTS tend to be fairly low on commonly available material (i.e. less than the level required to be imperceptible). I can certainly tell the difference on my fairly low-end kit.

[Mr_Yogi]

mackie1 said:

JustinP1 said:

I have ummed and ahhed over the possible benefits of TrueHD or the DTS equivalent over the standard, and I seriously doubt that in a blind test anyone apart from serious buffs will tell the difference.

I would go so far as saying that if you are listening on anything less than £10,000 worth of surround setup it would be impossible to reproduce any extra benefit that the 'high definition' audio standards can produce over the DD and DTS current standards.

And that kind of makes the 'anything better than PS3' argument academic!

The PS3 does support TrueHD and DTS-MA though. The bit-rates for normal AC3 or DTS tend to be fairly low on commonly available material (i.e. less than the level required to be imperceptible). I can certainly tell the difference on my fairly low-end kit.

Blurays with DTS-MA soundtracks will pass DTS Core at 1.5MB/s via optical which is far superior to most DVD's which are around 600KB/s for DTS and 400KB/S for Dolby Digital.

Dolby Digital on Bluray is about 600KB/s, but some of the Samsung players can re-encode the Dolby TrueHD to a DTS Core stream at 1.5MB/s over optical.

[skoff]

Well I am not sure I want yet another games console under the TV, so I think I will probably go dedicated BD. The audio issues are not really a concern at the moment as I don't intend to upgrade the rest of my surround sound system from DD, so anything that can output a DD signal across a optical cable or coax is ok for me.

It sounds like picture quality doesn't vary that much so I will probably go for a lower end player and wait for a reasonably priced writer to become available.

[JustinP1]

mackie1 said:

JustinP1 said:

I have ummed and ahhed over the possible benefits of TrueHD or the DTS equivalent over the standard, and I seriously doubt that in a blind test anyone apart from serious buffs will tell the difference.

I would go so far as saying that if you are listening on anything less than £10,000 worth of surround setup it would be impossible to reproduce any extra benefit that the 'high definition' audio standards can produce over the DD and DTS current standards.

And that kind of makes the 'anything better than PS3' argument academic!

The PS3 does support TrueHD and DTS-MA though. The bit-rates for normal AC3 or DTS tend to be fairly low on commonly available material (i.e. less than the level required to be imperceptible). I can certainly tell the difference on my fairly low-end kit.

Telling the difference between streams is not too hard as they would most likely come out at differing volume levels. Those are very difficult to match, as even a 0.1 decibel difference is enough to be able to hear a difference, and of course the louder of the two will sound punchier, more pronounced, more open etc.

In a proper, volume matched *blind* A,B and then X test, I still maintain that very few people will be able to tell the difference between anything above 24 bit, 48k - and that is on a 'money no object' system.

There are in fact may audio engineers who can state technical reasons why 48k sounds subjectively better than 96k and even 196k - but thats another thread!

[Mr_Yogi]

Some of you may find THIS article on the differences between the lossless and lossy formats interesting