I`ve now spent some time comparing the few films which I have on Blu-ray and DVD. These were Robocop, Blade Runner and Live and Let Die along with The Matrix and Stealth which I have already mentioned in an earlier post. If I had to choose five movies to base a comparison of the G98 and LX52 I doubt that it would be these but, in the event, the experience was interesting and quite an eye opener.

Before discussing the differences in sound quality, I should say that the remote for the LX52 is of the highest quality. The pause button is not at the most logical place and it took some time for me to get used to finding it in the dark. As you probably already know, with Blu-rays the menu is normally made available by pressing the ‘Popup Menu` button the remote. The menu then literally pops up from the bottom of the screen and you choose a scene or one of the special features whilst the film is still playing. Not all Blu-rays have this feature though.

I suppose that, in normal use, I would not be using the pause button so often. However, when synchronizing the two players, the pause button is really helpful. Thinking about it, the only time I normally use the pause button is when my wife bursts in half way during a film to tell me something really important which could not possibly wait until the end of the film. This normally has something to do with remembering to turn of the dishwasher when the film has finished.

It seems that Blu-ray players have become just as well known for their improved sound and picture quality as they have for how quickly, or slowly, they load the disks. The LX52 is terribly slow in this respect. It takes almost twenty seconds after turning on the player before it reacts to pressing the open button so that a disc can be inserted. The time from loading the disk to actually watching the film can be quite shocking given that we are all used to DVDs.

However, what no one in the hi-fi press seems to mention is that there is actually a waiting time when watching DVDs. There is the annoying opening logo sequence, copyright notice, useless animated menus and then we actually get to press enter so that the movie will play. With Blu-rays the load time is slow but then with most of the disks I have, the film normally just starts playing without all the preamble. This means that although it took a whole two minutes before Live and Let Die actually started (with one press of enter to get past the menu), the DVD still took 1 minute and 10 seconds. Other load times in Blu-ray were 50 seconds for Blade Runner and 57 seconds for Robocop. Normally, I put the disc in the player first and, by the time I have closed the curtains, turned on the television (65” JVC rear projection D-ILA which is totally awesome) and settled down, most of the start-up time has already passed.

Whilst it has evolved somewhat over the years, I think that is it important to appreciate that my system was originally based around a ‘traditional` hi-fi setup quite a few years before DVD had even been released. So CD was the primary high-quality source and old fashioned video was used for AV. The Naim kit handled hi-fi superbly and a Meridian 565 along with the DSP centre and rear speakers were added for AV duties. With their design philosophies so different, I was always surprised how well the Naim and Meridian kit sounded together and this is even more so today.

The reason for my preamble about my AV system is so that I can explain that, whist DVD can sound superb, in my humble opinion, there is always something missing when compared to a CD. This can be taken literally as there really is quite a lot missing with compressed audio. I always felt that, no matter how good the kit, when watching a film or TV, the sound coming from the Naim SBL speakers (which are very capable) was simply not in the same league as when playing a CD from the Naim CD player. This has nothing to do with Meridian vs. Naim as both manufacturers are at the top of their respective game. It has everything to do with the inherent limitations of compressed audio sounding 'musical' on my system.

So, first of all I played Robocop. Whilst the picture quality is better, it is not a significant jump and I would have thought those clever engineers could have improved the picture to a significantly greater extent. The sound, on the other hand, is an improvement. Assuming that you have seen the film lots of times, the meeting in the Board Room near the beginning of the film contains some clapping from some shoe licking executives. The clapping was definitely more detailed and ED209 sounded more menacing and lifelike with a deeper and slightly more controlled bass coming from the subwoofer. When the unfortunate executive was shot by ED209 it was possible to hear the women crying in the background slightly more clearly than on DVD. Charming.

More generally, the soundstage seemed wider and the SBL main speakers were certainly more musical in the way they presented the music. This is what these speakers were designed to do and I was surprised how they achieved this from a non-CD source. The sound was more detailed and more transparent, meaning that the speakers did a much better job of seeming to disappear and just fill the soundstage with music.

More than anything else, this came down to two factors, the first was that the bit rate was much higher and the second was due to Meridian`s brilliant engineering. The digital to analogue decoders on the G68J are truly excellent as they are able to retain all the detail and emotion of the sound. It seems to me that they were designed (quite a few years ago) to provide a quality of sound which exceeded the AV sources available at the time. It just goes to show how good Meridian's products are.

Next was Blade Runner. Whilst I`m mainly writing about differences in sound quality, I have the say that visually the difference was quite considerable. Unlike with the Matrix where there was a difference but was nothing much to get all that excited about, Blade Runner was a different story. Even with the all new version of the DVD, visually, the Blu-ray just blew it away. The improvement in clarity was amazing.

Anyway, on to the sound. As with Robocop, the sound was more musical. Not a whole new experience but certainly more musical. I have to wonder though how many systems will really benefit from the improvement in sound quality and, possibly more importantly in a world full of MP3 players, how many people really care about this type of improvement.

If they had never invented Blu-ray, I really would not have minded as DVD can sound so good. However, the emotion of the music really came through when the Replicant was shot whilst smashing her way though all that glass. Rather than just being another piece of background music, it was possible to appreciate the creative effort which had gone into playing the music by the musicians. Also, the sound of the glass smashing was a lot more detailed. There were times where the rear speakers seemed as though they were further away which was probably to do with the wider stereo field being generated from the rear speakers. From a sound perspective, I don`t want to get carried away with all this though, it really isn`t a whole new experience. It is just, in most cases, better then before.

It`s not a fair comparison to compare the sound track of Live and Let Die, which is my only Bond film on Blu-ray, with the DVD. Whilst the DVD was the all singing and all dancing special edition, the Dolby Digital track was actually used to encode a mono soundtrack. One the other hand, the Blu-ray has a True DTS-HD Master Audio track. So, in this case the considerable improvement from Blu-ray was because the DVD soundtrack was so poor. In any event, the Blu-ray sounded superb and was, I am sure, in a completely different league to when the film was shown in the cinema.

Stealth was far better on Blu-ray in every respect. The sub, for example, really had an opportunity to shine with a deeper and more controlled bass. However, this was partly because the DVD could have been so much better and partly because the Blu-ray was probably the best I have yet to hear. It really was that good.

Whilst the film itself is no classic, it is one you should have in your collection if only to blow your friends away when they scoff at Blu-ray and start telling you that download speeds are increasing all the time.

So, going back to The Matrix. Once again, the music is more `musical` and the front soundstage more transparent. When the sprinklers went off, it felt as is each and every drop of water could be heared. The bass was certainly deeper and slightly more controlled (not that it was anything less than exceptionally well controlled by the G98). However, the G98 showed the LX52 a thing or two with the sequence where Neo dodges bullets from one of the Agents as the whole set rotated. The steering from the DVD was perfect but the Blu-ray sounded a bit muddled. Equally, the G98 sounded much more realistic and controlled when listening as the blades of the helicopter passed overhead.

So all in all, despite The Matrix, the combination of the LX52 and HD621 did manage to edge past the G98. Visually, there really is no substitute for 1080p no matter what you might read about upsampling. I would have thought that virtually all HD televisions over 32” will yield an improvement in picture quality that anyone would appreciate. Even my wife noticed the difference.

Improvements in sound however are not so obvious and require quite a high end system to hear the difference. On the whole, these improvements are more subtle (unless the DVD soundtrack was actually mono) but they are there and, given that this is a Meridian chat site, you will probably notice the difference.