Looking for blu-ray player?
Well it’s partially official that Blu-Ray has won the big High-Def battle! Most major companies are now with blu-ray and with the announcement of Wal-Mart and Target going to blu-ray and Toshiba dropping its HDDVD line then that’s kind of the nail in the coffin!
So now that the battle is over you might be asking yourself what player is a good player?
Well there’s quite the range out there as for prices from $300 to $1000 and there is a couple higher than that but come on…why bother?
Sony and Samsung have two that go for $300 (from sams club) and they are not that bad. If you are looking for your basic blu-ray player then those two are your best bet. So why do others cost more? Well to put it simply features range from internet connectivity for extra content, compatability with other equipment, and one of the key factors has to do with the audio encoders, you’ve heard and probably seen “THX” in the theatres well now the latest in digital technology is Dolby Digital DTS, or Dolby TrueHD, or Dolby NEO Digital DTS, DTS HD Master Audio, and so on…basically the highest form of sound encoding out right now (for consumer) is Dolby TrueHD, therefore if a blu-ray player has the capabilities of decoding different types of digital sound, the better!
There are other “bells and whistles” that the $1000 ones come with but the average Joe, like me, wouldn’t care about those. I do care about the sound quality and trying to get the highest quality out of it. The problem with Dolby TrueHD sound is the receiver you would need to handle Dolby TrueHD starts at $900 and that’s just the receiver no speakers. Therefore unless you have a lot of money saved up for this, do you need something that had Dolby TrueHD?
Well you might say I could see myself getting a nice receiver in the future. This is my recommendation then, cause this is what I did, get a Playstation 3. (HUH?!?) Yup you heard me get a PS3.
The PS3 is not only a gaming console it is also a blu-ray player and guess what at a starting cost of $400 it can decode all the digital audio you would want and it will up-convert old DVDs to 1080. Plus you can play games such as guitar hero and rock band and so on. All of their games are on Blu-Ray discs and all of them are at least 720p resolution. You might be completely against gaming consoles but for all the features this comes with it’s quite the deal at $400. It also has a down converter built in, so lets say you want to get a few components but can’t afford a HD TV yet, then the PS3 comes equipped to play on any TV!
I’m not a spokes person for Sony or anything for that matter about 3 months ago I did a bunch of research and debated over which player to get. At the time I didn’t care about the gaming since I’m a PC guy, so I asked my beautiful wife Val what should we get? Her awesome response was…
“I want to play guitar hero!”
