|
|
What played out over the next three weeks was a high-tech mystery worthy of Hollywood — and, this time, that's not just a figure of speech. This one has it all, folks: corporate intrigue, electronic sleuthing, and a runaway script that even a giant movie studio couldn't quite get its hands around. In the end, Sound & Vision auditioned two BD-P1000s: the model currently in stores and homes that has been written about elsewhere, and a revised unit soon to be released, carrying a small but controversial alteration — a player that we exclusively obtained for this report. So, join us now as we take you step by step through our Great Blu-ray Adventure. But please, buckle up: As format launches go, this was one heck of a wild ride.
PLUGS & MARRIAGE To assess the Samsung's picture, I married it to various 1080p (the highest resolution available) HDTVs, including a pair of HP DLPs at 65 and 58 inches, a new Sony 60-inch SXRD LCoS, and a Westinghouse 42-inch LCD panel. The Samsung puts out a 1080p video signal, theoretically the best choice if your TV can accept that resolution, since both Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs carry their video as 1080p. However, Samsung confirmed for us that the BD-P1000 converts video from the disc to 1080i before converting it back to 1080p for output. The same conversion is performed whether you use 1080p from the player or output 1080i and let the display convert the signal to 1080p internally.
I carefully compared the 1080p and 1080i output from the unit's HDMI connector and detected no difference — none. Eventually, we settled on 1080i, which, unlike 1080p, was compatible with our Yamaha HDMI switching receiver.
I also compared the component-video output versus the HDMI output, as well as the player's 720p conversion off the 1080p discs. The first result followed our experience with Toshiba's HD DVD player: High-def component video was a touch softer than HDMI, a difference easily attributable to the TVs. Meanwhile, a 720p HDTV signal from the Samsung, as viewed on our 1080p reference sets, had slightly less detail than a 1080i or 1080p signal, but was very close — unlike the Toshiba, the BD-P1000 did a decent downconversion.
Likewise, it proved an excellent upconverter of regular DVDs, which it can reproduce via HDMI in 720p, 1080i or 1080p signal format. These don't look even remotely as good as true high-definition Blu-ray Discs, but on high-quality DVDs the performance compared favorably to the upconverted image from our $3,500 Denon reference player, a real feat.
For sound, you'll ideally want a surround processor or receiver that can recognize the multichannel PCM (pulse-code modulation) signal that comes off the HDMI output along with the digital video signal. The Sony-issued Blu-ray Discs carry an uncompressed linear PCM (LPCM) soundtrack that can be pumped right from the disc into your audio system with no conversion if you have the right gear — it's as close to the original digital master as it gets. We used a Yamaha RX-V2600 receiver as our system's multichannel PCM processor, and, for a little extra kick, fed its three front-channel preamp outputs to a trio of Krell monoblock power amplifiers. These electronics fed a Revel Concerta 5.1 channel speaker system. We were ready to go. But where were we going?
|
|
 |
The images also failed to display the eye-popping contrast and range of light that was evident with our HD DVD player. Perhaps most disturbing, though, was that many scenes — sometimes whole discs — randomly exhibited a subtle video noise in portions of the picture. The player wasn't noisy overall: Its static setup menus looked clean as a whistle, as did the FBI warnings on the discs. And when we tapped into the hidden high-def test patterns on the Sony Blu-ray titles (dial 7669 from the main menu) or the THX patterns on Lionsgate's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, they looked crisp and smooth.
Instead, this effect seemed related to the movie content — in particular, the inherent film grain. Our first instinct was to wonder if the grain was simply being revealed for the first time by the transparency of the Blu-ray format. But we'd experienced the lifting of that veil with HD DVD, which maintains a solid, film-like quality while exposing the character of the grain.
The same did not hold true for the Samsung. For example, some dark scenes or objects within scenes that would normally exhibit more grain in the movie theater were notably noisy on our HDTVs, such as in a scene from Hitch in which Alex (Will Smith) tries unsuccessfully to hail a cab at night under Big Apple streetlights. Yet, dark scenes in films such as Underworld: Evolution — a vampire/werewolf saga shot almost entirely in shadows and dim interiors — could look excellent.
|
Second Opinion: Blu's Clues
|
| I'd been eagerly looking forward to the arrival of a Blu-ray Disc player at Sound & Vision since — well, ever since the rival HD DVD format launched last April. But our first round of Blu-ray movie watching ended with executive editor Rob Sabin and I walking away disappointed and confused. After Samsung supplied with us a revised player with its noise reduction turned off, we spent considerable time doing A/B comparisons of discs on both machines. All in all, it was too many hours logged in the dark, but ultimately well worth it since the new player gave us a more transparent take on the current crop of Blu-ray discs. — by Al Griffin Read More... |
The end result is that the Blu-ray images, disc to disc and even scene to scene, were all over the place quality-wise and generally lacked that solidity that has been the hallmark of HD DVD. It called to mind the detailed but somewhat flattened look of movies broadcast in HD, although it was free of the compression-related mosquito noise (halo-like ripples around objects) common to broadcasts. I just couldn't get past the fact that it still looked like video.
On top of that, parts of some discs had been transferred from less than pristine film assets, exhibiting the kind of dirt and scratches seen in a worn print. Sony has now committed to rereleasing The Fifth Element for just this reason.
|
|
|
The Short Form |
|
| $999 / 17 x 12.8 x 3 IN / 9.3 LBS / samsung.com / 800-726-7864 | |
|
Plus
|
|
| •Excellent upconversion of regular DVDs •Mostly glitch-free operation •Nice industrial design |
|
|
Minus
|
|
| •Inconsistent picture quality from Blu-ray Discs •Challenging remote control •No Internet port for future interactive discs |
|
|
Key Features
|
|
| •Plays high definition Blu-ray Discs •1080p output capability •Upconverts regular DVD to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p video format •Memory card slots for playing photos or music •Outputs HDMI, component video, S-video, composite video, SPDIF digital audio (optical and coax), 5.1-channel analog audio, 2-channel analog audio •Price $999 |
|
|
In-Depth:Features & Hook-up
|
|
| If you've read our review of the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player - the world's first - you know what we thought of the picture and sound quality with the first batch of Blu-ray discs. But there's a lot more to this box than what comes out of it. Here's a run-down on some key features and few details you should know about hooking it up. — by Rob Sabin Read More... |
According to executives at both companies, Samsung engineers worked with Sony Pictures for several days, eventually identifying a video-scaling chip in the BD-P1000 that, for better or worse, was affecting picture quality. This chip has an optional video-noise reduction circuit that had been programmed at the factory to default to full-on. "It was an engineering decision to set the chip for a high level of noise reduction," explained Samsung senior marketing VP Jim Sanduski, who suggested that those looking at the prototypes felt it was a better choice to smooth out the picture somewhat than to expose all the inherent grain in the source material. Admittedly, Sanduski noted, that's a subjective call for each viewer. "On the plus side, the aggressive noise reduction takes out film grain, but the downside is that the picture can look softer," he said.
Sony's tests — which compared digital masters to the outputs of a stock Samsung player and one with its noise reduction turned off — also suggested that this processing might have contributed to those crawlies Al and I were seeing. "Film grain, when it goes through noise reduction, doesn't look like grain anymore," Eklund explained. "It reduces it, but also causes it to take on a somewhat mottled look."
Unfortunately, the Samsung player had no menu option to adjust or defeat this feature. So, in a startling move, Samsung announced just a month after the BD-P1000 went on sale that it would modify future production of the unit to either turn off the noise reduction or allow users to defeat it themselves. Though the details weren't settled as we finalized this story, Samsung executives said new units made as of August would reflect these changes. They also confirmed that players already in people's homes will be upgradeable to the new version via a disc-based firmware update. No timing was given for that.
A couple of days after Samsung announced its upgrade, engineers from Korea delivered to our lab a modified BD-P1000 with its video-noise reduction turned off, allowing us to be the first to test this reworked sample.
So — drumroll, please — what difference did we see? You can get more from Al in "Blu's Clues," but the short answer is: not too much. Indeed, we struggled for 3 hours, in the presence of Samsung's engineers, to spot any obvious distinction between the original and modified players. It was only after the engineers had left and we spent several more hours A/B-ing a range of titles that we began to get a handle on some subtle but promising improvements. (For another take on the Samsung's image quality prior to the update, see Josef Krebs' review of four Blu-ray titles.)
|
|
SOUND OF SCIENCE If the Samsung's picture was somewhat inconsistent, its sound had us cheering full-time. All of the Sony titles in our test batch contained both a Dolby Digital 5.1 track and the aforementioned uncompressed LPCM track. Using the Audio button on the remote, I easily switched between the two to compare them. On a movie like xXx, for example, with its hard-driving techno-music score, the Dolby Digital sounded pretty good: clean, open, dynamic, with a decent amount of deep, tight bass. But when I flipped in the LPCM track, the Krell amps came alive and did the happy dance. After matching volume, the LPCM obviously had more of everything — more openness, more clarity, more high-end extension, better dynamics, and deeper, fuller bass. And that followed for every other title I tried. This is hands down the best sound we've ever heard from a home video format, and I'd guess it will be matched only by a lossless compression scheme like Dolby TrueHD.
THE SMALL STUFF I'd be remiss if I didn't comment on the BD-P1000's stunning industrial design. This is really one beautiful player, with a clean, sculpted front panel and a solid feel; build quality is excellent, and the gloss black cover distinctive. You'd be proud to have it sitting out in the open.
Although it wasn't without occassional hiccups, the BD-P1000 also worked well in day-to-day operation — a refreshing change from the slow, glitchy performance of the first HD DVD player. Power-up and disc-boot times were faster by about a third, though still longer than for a standard DVD player. Transport commands executed smoothly, and, unlike with HD DVD, the onscreen indicators for fast-forward and rewind modes were fully functional.
The remote, unfortunately, is a pain. Though pretty to look at, it suffers from tiny and indistinct buttons placed too closely, and is nearly impossible to use in the dark given its lack of a backlight — a real bummer for a $1,000 player.
|
|
BOTTOM LINE From our perspective, the big Blu-ray mystery continues. Even without the noise-reduction fix, some Blu-ray Discs look great — the smoothness and saturated comic-book colors of the highly-stylized, computer-generated world in Sony's UltraViolet were stunning, for example, and the movie exhibited little of that bothersome noise. Yet, this and other titles never quite matched the quality or impact of HD DVD, which consistently delivers a picture with superb clarity, minus the objectionable grain, and a wider range of contrast that makes highlights pop in a lifelike way that Blu-ray on the Samsung BD-P1000 does not.
None of us can say right now why these two formats look so different. Some pundits are citing the different compression technologies or the space limitations on single-layer Blu-ray Discs (a dual-layer option is still in development). Others are questioning the quality of the film originals that are being transferred, which seem to vary in the first batch of Blu-ray titles. Still others are doubting Samsung's execution of the first Blu-ray player.
As far as we're concerned, the jury's still out. We'll be anxious to test players from Sony, Pioneer, and other manufacturers, as well as future Blu-ray titles, to see if images from the two formats don't converge or, at least, become equally impressive in their own rights. In the meantime, though, it would appear that Round One goes to HD DVD.
Second Opinion: Blu's Clues
by Al Griffin|
|
Though the updated player wasn't the panacea we'd been hoping for, it turns out the Blu-ray format has better picture quality potential than our first viewing session led us to believe. For example, a beachfront scene from Lord of War (Lionsgate) where Nicolas Cage's character courts his model bride-to-be showed slightly punchier contrast, better detail, and more vibrant color on the revised BD-P1000. The change could mostly be seen in the creases, textures, and highlights of the actors' white clothing, which looked comparatively flat on the old player. Hitch (Sony) also displayed more detail and "pop" in several scenes, an improvement that lent greater visual depth to Kevin James' comic slob routine on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the difference between the Samsung players was most apparent on xXx (Sony). Played on the old model, a scene where Vin Diesel steals a senator's car looked coarse, grainy, and, for the most part, soft. The same pictures still looked grainy on the new, improved player, but the slight boost in picture detail it provided really helped bring the scene to life.
Although I wasn't thrilled with the inconsistent picture quality we observed on many Blu-ray discs, there were a handful of standouts. Viewed on the revised Samsung, Lord of War looked nice and punchy, with vibrant color and consistently sharp detail. And the grainy texture of the film stock used to shoot the movie — an obtrusive element during our first viewing — appeared better integrated with the picture this time around. This disc sits near the top of the current Blu-ray pile as an indication of what the format can do.
Memento (Sony), a good DVD to begin with, looked that much better on Blu-ray, with strong contrast and a crisp picture despite some occasional background noise. Close-ups of Guy Pearce's heavily tattooed flesh clearly revealed the texture of his skin underneath the ink — an eye-popping example of Blu-ray detail and as sharp an image as I've seen yet on a high-def disc. And Underworld: Evolution (Sony) looked very crisp overall, with solid, noise-free shadows in the movie's many dark scenes. The combination of deep, inky backgrounds and fine detail on the armor of the Death Dealers and Lycans during their battle scenes really gave the picture a three-dimensional effect.
But my enthusiasm for the first round of Blu-ray releases has to end there. Some other discs we watched — including The Fifth Element (Sony), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Lionsgate), and Crash (Lionsgate) — showed plenty of the scene-to-scene variation in picture detail we saw in Hitch and xXx, at times looking only marginally crisper than DVD versions of the same movies. And flat backgrounds in images from each of these titles were often mottled, grainy, and unstable, although the severity of those effects also varied from shot to shot. One or two other movies, such as the so-bad-I'm-embarrassed-to-be-watching-it Basic Instinct 2 (Sony), looked fairly clean overall, but the level of picture sharpness and clarity I've come to expect after watching HD DVD just wasn't there.
It's not likely we'll be able to get to the root of the variable quality of the first Blu-ray releases until we have a different player to check out from another manufacturer — and many more discs to view. Until then, I'd suggest you visit a store and do your own spot-check of Blu-ray and HD DVD before shelling out cash for a player. Toshiba's clunky first-gen models have their own peculiar ergonomic issues, but the picture quality of HD DVD is something to behold — a fact that was dramatically driven home when we finally got the chance to compare it to Blu-ray.
In-Depth: Features & Hook-up
by Rob Sabin
|
|
PACKAGED GOODS
Too bad format wars aren't won in product packaging, or Samsung would have it locked right here. The company clearly spent some money on the presentation for the BD-P1000, which boasts snappy full-color promotional printing on the outer carton, printed Blu-ray logos on the inside of the box, and a user's manual whose cover features heavy stock and the kind of embossed color printing usually reserved for luxury car brochures. It's all very slick.
Fortunately, the words slick — and sleek — also apply to the player itself, which, while featuring a lower profile and less heft than Toshiba's first HD-DVD player, has a sophisticated industrial design and a solid feel. Build quality isn't high-end, but it's excellent, and the polished black cabinet cover is distinctive, even if it does attract fingerprints.
The clean and Spartan front panel has just a power switch, a four-position nav rocker for the transport keys, and a convenient front panel button that toggles the player's output from HDMI to component to composite-/S-video (only one type can be active at a time).
There's also a well-camouflaged door that swings down to reveal a pair of universal memory-card slots. Pop in a card from your high-resolution digital camera, and you can do a high-def slide-show on your big-screen. When I tried this, the BD-P1000 dropped an animated hourglass icon on top of my sister's wire fox terrier and kept it there while it was busy loading the next image in the sequence. On the Normal slide-show speed, Max was on screen for three seconds, followed by 10 seconds of Max partially obliterated by the hourglass, until the same sequence repeated for the next image. This essentially nullifies the feature.
On the back panel — the real business end of these things — you'll find connectors for the previously mentioned video outputs, as well as the audio outs: RCA jacks for 5.1-channel analog, plus coax and optical SPDIF outputs for feeding a digital bitstream to the typical audio/video receiver or processor. As with the HD DVD players, there's a relatively quiet ventilation fan back there. Unlike Toshiba's HD DVD players, however, the BD-P1000 has no Ethernet jack for a broadband Internet connection - a notable omission that will prevent the BD-P1000 from tapping the online interactivity that will eventually be built into Blu-ray titles.
|
|
Another notable omission, but one the Samsung shares somewhat with the existing HD DVD models, is an inability to fully exploit the advanced 7.1-channel audio formats - Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD — that will also be on future Blu-ray and HD DVD titles. The HDMI 1.3 connector standard, which was just recently finalized, is said to allow transmission of these signals, but we won't likely see it in high-def players till early next year. Meanwhile, the Samsung BD-P1000 is a 5.1-channel affair at most and is said to support only the "core" Dolby Digital or DTS bitstream contained within these soundtracks — not their enhancements.
To put it bluntly, I wasn't crazy about the BD-P1000's remote. Pretty to look at and comfortable in the palm with its narrow girth, it nonetheless suffers from too many tiny and indistinct buttons placed too close together, particularly the ever-important Play, Stop, and Chapter Advance/Back buttons. Samsung also put the volume and channel up/down buttons for a TV right in the middle of the remote, smack between the menu navigation cluster and those critical transport keys. Consequently, you have to slide the remote up or down in your hand or else contort your thumb to gain access to both groupings. Add to all this the lack of a backlight — a real disappointment on a $1,000 cutting-edge player. Consider a universal remote if you plan on living with one of these players long-term.
PLUGGED AND POWERED
High definition disc players, we're learning, are pretty complicated beasts. Setting up Samsung's Blu-ray player for best performance is neither for the weak of heart nor the untechnical of mind, but it proved simpler than for Toshiba's HD-AX1. If you're using an HDMI connection to your TV, the player actually makes it very easy. A handshake protocol built into the HDMI interface called Extended Display Identification Data, or EDID, enables the BD-P1000 to learn the connected TV's maximum resolution, at which point it automatically sets itself to that resolution and activates the HDMI output. This works well in theory, but we did occasionally find that as we switched about on our TV inputs or reset the player outputs in some way it would default to undesirable resolutions, such as 720p on our 1080p TV or even 480p at one point. Yikes! Fortunately, you can see your resolution setting clearly via the front panel display (or on the screen at 480p) and change resolution in the BD-P1000's setup menu as needed.
EDID also complicated use of the player's 1080p output option. We had four 1080p-compliant displays on hand, all of which should have worked nicely with this output. But this signal is available only via HDMI, and the EDID information must be communicated before the BD-P1000 will send any HDTV signal to any display via HDMI. If the Samsung doesn't think your TV can handle a particular HDTV format, it defaults to the next-best and grays out the higher-resolution format on its setup menu, preventing you from selecting it manually.
That's unfortunate for owners of the popular Westinghouse LVM-42w2, a 42-inch 1080p LCD panel that's said to accept 1080p signals. Because of an apparent lack of EDID compliance, the Samsung will send it only 1080i.
No such problem with a pair of HP 1080p DLP rear projectors or a new Sony SXRD rear projector, all of which immediately triggered 1080p output from the BD-P1000 when connected directly to the player. But when we tried connecting these sets through an HDMI-capable A/V receiver — mandatory for pulling the uncompressed LPCM soundtracks off the discs without resorting to the BD-P1000's 5.1-channel analog outputs — the player choked. Though we haven't confirmed it, we suspect our Yamaha RX-V2600 receiver won't pass a 1080p signal. But there was no way to force-feed 1080p into the Yamaha or the Westinghouse to test.
|
|
Fortunately, nothing much was lost this time. Our comparison tests showed that there was no discernable advantage for the 1080p output versus 1080i anyway. And although I covered this briefly in the main review, it's worth exploring in more detail here given that this is cited by Samsung and in many reviews so far as a key advantage.
The idea here is that the BD-P1000 can somehow benefit from a 1080p TV with a native 1080p input, as opposed to one whose highest input resolution is 1080i, which it deinterlaces to feed its 1080p display. Blu-ray and HD DVD discs are all encoded in 1080p, and Samsung's is the first high-def disc player that can actually deliver a 1080p video output. In theory, this cuts out a couple of steps of video processing, which could perhaps yield a modest picture improvement in some instances. (Film-originated material has a native frame rate of 24 frames per second, and a good, properly functioning deinterlacer should be able to reconstruct 1080p perfectly from a 1080i signal for any source with an original frame rate of 30 fps or lower. Any misstep by the deinterlacer will create at least fleetingly visible artifacts when there is motion between frames, however.)
But Samsung confirms that the BD-P100 doesn't pull 1080p off the disc and send it directly to the output. (We're not sure why, but it may have to do with limitations of some of the player's internal video processing chips.) Besides the necessary frame-rate conversion, from the 24 fps of film to the 60 fps of standard video displays, the BD-P1000 converts the disc's 1080p to 1080i as an interim step, then converts it back to 1080p for output. So to an even greater than normal extent, it should not much matter whether a 1080p display receives a 1080i or a 1080p signal from this player, provided the set has a good deinterlacer. We certainly did not notice any difference between 1080i and 1080p feeds from the BD-P1000 to our 1080p-compliant reference TVs.
SOUND MATTERS
As mentioned earlier, the best way to get audio out of the player is via its HDMI output, which carries sound alongside the video. You can select either uncompressed PCM (pulse-code modulation) or "Bitstream" digital audio, the latter being standard Dolby Digital or DTS. If you select Bitstream on the audio menu and use the HDMI output for audio, it's the same to your receiver as taking the signal off the player's coaxial or optical audio output. But if you have an HDMI A/V receiver that recognizes a multichannel PCM signal and can properly steer it to the receiver's amplifiers, you'll have the option of tapping the uncompressed linear PCM (LPCM) 5.1-channel soundtracks that Sony Pictures has included on its Blu-ray titles.
If your receiver doesn't have an HDMI input that can accept multichannel PCM, you can still listen to LPCM soundtracks via the BD-P1000's 5.1-channel analog outputs, though the player has limited options for bass management compared with a receiver. And in any event, the Dolby Digital tracks sounded very good; on some Sony discs, they could even be better than the Dolby Digital track issued on the regular DVD. Sony encodes DD tracks on Blu-ray at a data rate of either 448 or 640 kilobits per second (kbps) which, depending on the title, may be a higher bit than the original, they told us. (On regular DVD, 5.1-channel Dolby Digital must be encoded at 384 or 448 kbps.) I tried the Dolby Digital soundtracks from both the HDMI output and the optical output and, as one would expect, heard no obvious differences between the two ports.
Read the updated review
HD DVD/Blu-ray Info Center
Back to Homepage
What's New on S&V