Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Cheap simple bluray?

That's what I was thinking too. There are professional reviews of the higher spec machines but no one bothers with the cheapest ones. I guess they assume that they sell themselves on price. The Amazon reviews seem favourable for all of them.

As for "better in what way?", see my original post.

If the spinner and processing for sound and image is the same architecture in each then I'd buy the cheap one.

To that I'd add 'and power supply'. It's very hard to say without an actual side by side comparison though, without that, or actually opening them up and/or pulling apart the firmware/software code (even if you understood it) it's only an assumption that the cheaper models are the same as the dearer ones apart from features...

Hi,

The Sony BDP-S4100 was the winner in a test in the What HiFi Jan issue. Second place went to the Pioneer BDP-160.

Brian

Cough, splutter. Surely you're not giving credence to "that" magazine?

One thought, Richer sounds regularly sell of BD players at "clearance" prices. I picked up a Pioneer BDP140 a couple of years ago for all of �50. It can't stream (but then I had major issues with buffering of the streaming with a Sony that I tried), but works fine and even has SACD capability.

So if you have a HD621, possible to get your system to playback SACDs without having to find a BD player with decent analogue outputs.

If you are wanting to use the Sony as an iPlayer device, may be worth holding off at present.

Both my Sony TV and Bluray player are not working with iPlayer - all other online services including BBC News Channel are working. My Panasonic TV works just fine.

Investigating this further, looks like many Sony devices have been failing with BBC iPlayer over last few days. The URL that Sony are using appears to be the problem.

Hopefully BBC can fix at their end, but if not/unwilling, then its down to Sony to update their boxes.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out and if Sony do need to push an update, what will happen with their legacy devices.

Not worried about iPlayer. Virgin Cable does all I need in that department.

Just checked and iPlayer is working again on both my Sony devices.

Got my dad a Panasonic DMP-BDT500 for Xmas/Birthday as a replacement for the Sony S5100 which had to be returned for his birthday. This allowed me to do a comparison, since both machines were set up and played for a couple of days.

The Panasonic is genuinely leagues ahead to my eyes and ears, and is a brilliant player. The picture is exemplary, with excellent definition, natural colour tone and flawless motion handling. The sound is meaty and musical, yet refined enough not to be irritating (and I'm easily irritated by hi-fi).

Good media handling and reasonably responsive. Even has a dedicated Netflix button and Netflix picture quality in Super HD is excellent. Has lots of tweaking and adjustments for those who wish to play, and mostly in a useful way, the lip sync adjustment is very useful, and there are user preference profiles in case different people have different sound/picture prefs.

The remote is also brilliant and the touch pad actually works.

Which of these players do well with PAL DVD?

I short listed both Sony and Panasonic. It all came down to feature set and integration with my Sony TV - hence why I went for a Sony S470. I don't think there is much difference in picture/sound quality between these manufacturers and the mainstream models in their range except for that in different features. Build quality is generally lacking and picture/sound quality adequate. Stick em on a shelf and don't touch them except for loading a disc and you won't notice build quality. Don't watch them on a projector and you won't notice picture quality. Don't use them for a prime CD source and you won't notice sound quality.