Samsung BD P2500 or Sony BDP-S550 or Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu Ray

[admin_exported]

Hi

I am in the market for a fairly cheap Blu Ray player and have a shortlist of the above.

My requisites are as good picture and sound quality as possible for Blu Ray AND SD DVDs and analogue output for audio which I believe the above have.

With the Samsungs Reon Chip the SD playback of DVD sounds promising but how does BR playback compared to the other 2 please?

Is the DVD playback good on the others?

Have shortlisted these as I have seen the Pioneer for 170 and the Sony for 170 and the Samsung BD P2500 for 100! All very much a bargain!

Any help is appreciated.

Plus why do I need profile 2 and BD live? Isn't BD live costly and does it detect you hacking it to make it region free. (then it snitches on you to Sammy lol).

Many thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

Forgot to mention as it may matter but will be played on my new Samsung 40 LCD.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've had the BDP-S550 for almost a year now and have been very impressed with it thus far. I've got it going into a 40 inch Sony KDL-40V5500, and I use the on board decoding and analogue out for HD audio into my amp and it sounds great, and the picture quality, compared with the few other players (unfortunately not the others you list i'm afraid) I've seen is superb. The player itself is really nice to use, especially with the addition of Sony's xmb menus, which make using it a pleasure. Standard def DVD playback and scaling is also very good, depending on the quality of the disc (stuff like Star Wars Episode 3, which was shot HD) looks pretty close to Blu -Ray quality, though no DVD will look as good obviously, especially once you're used to Blu-ray quality.

For £170, I think it'd be a bargain, I payed £279 for mine! One word of warning with all the above players is making sure your amp can take multichannel audio properly, as the LFE (bass) channel on the Blu-Rays is recorded 10dbs lower than the rest, and if your amp doesn't boost that channel/you can make alterations to the levels manually, you might have trouble. I had a bit of trouble at first with mine, but after some fiddling with settings and levels on both the amp and the player, I got it to work, so just be aware of that cos it caused me no end of grief!

Finally, profile 2 is essential, as some newer discs require it to play/access special features, it enables you to keep the firmware of the player up to date, as profile 2 players have to have an Ethernet port, and BD Live can give you some cool features and be worth it for some discs. To my knowledge, they can't detect you hacking it to make it region free, so that shouldn't be an issue, I was told by a sales assistant once that its actually legal to perform to mod, but illegal to sell a player that is modded, though I'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong!

Hope that helps with your decision, its a great player in my opinion

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Todds.

The Sony was the one I had my eye on all along but these came up as possibilities whilst browsing.

You have pretty much sold me on the Sony from your experience and help write off the Pioneer as it has no connectivity I am aware of.

I am just waiting to see if anyone can compare the pic and sound from the Sony to the Samsung. If it is not noticably better than the Samsung I shall get that as it is 70 pound cheaper and can go on something else. Plus the Reon chip in the Samsung (on paper at least) promises excellent SD upscaling.

Let the best one win!

Thanks again, max.

 

[Anonymous]

Getting more confused now.

Threw the Pioneer BDP 320 into the mix too. WHF says it has no multi channel analogue outs but I have seen a pic of a 320 rear panel with 7.1 outputs on it.
http://www.avrev.com/images/stories/equipvideoplayers/pioneer-bdp320/BDP-320_REAR.jpg
This sounds like an excellent player too but I need those analogue outs, can someone clear this point up please?

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry about this...

Tried to delete the last message as I now know that 7.1 is standard on the USA version not the UK version of the BDP-320! Typical!

Anyone have any feedback on the Samsung BDP 2500?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi

Apologies for dragging this out, will delete once it allows me to.

I need to know which to plump for basically which has the best pic and sound. If the Samsung is nearly as good I will get that.

Which out of the main 2 Pioneer or Sony would be best for BR discs and SD.

The urgency is that there is only a very limited amount of Pioneers at that price now. Gone soon!

Thanks.

PS thanks to Todds am pretty sold on the Sony just need an answer re the other 2.