The Latest Blu Review Honolulu HI

Back when the HD format war was raging, I wrote a few columns about thetechnical pitfalls that you might encounter when configuringearly-generation players. Now that Blu-ray has emerged victorious, itseems like an appropriate time to revisit the state of Blu-ray players,focusing on the features that are essential to their performance. WhileI wouldnt go so far as to say these features are mandatory for everyBlu-ray player you install, youd have a hard time convincing metheyre not. Here are the top three, not necessarily in order.

1. BD-Live (Blu-ray Profile 2)
As of this writing, Blu-ray is just now getting online. The PlayStation3 became the first BD-Live player just two days ago. While Livefunctionality, which includes access to web-enabled special features,is not required to enjoy feature presentations, the Blu-ray experienceis not complete without it. Your forward-thinking clients willundoubtedly miss it when they attempt to surf the web-enabled featureson upcoming Blu-ray releases. The big three Blu-ray studios (FOX,Disney, and Sony) have already announced their first Live-enabledtitles, and more are sure to follow.

Unfortunately, your options for Live players are currently limited tothe PS3 (software version 2.20 or higher). If the PS3 absolutely willnot do, youll just have to wait. Panasonic has announced the DMP-BD50(release date TBA), and Sony will be offering the BDP-S350 (Summer2008) and BDP-S550 (Fall 2008). Now would be a good time to pick up adealership for these lines, if you dont have one already.

As a side note for anyone who is curious, BD-Live includes all thefeatures supported by the other Blu-ray profiles: Grace Period Profileand Final Standard Profile (a.k.a. BonusView). These features includePicture-in-Picture, Audio Mixing, Local/Persistent Storage, and VirtualFile System. In addition, BD-Live mandates greater local storagecapacity and a network connection for Internet access. BD-Live playershave it all.

2. True 1080p Video Output
Without naming names, I must say that early Blu-ray players were subtlymisleading in their declarations of 1080p video output. While theywould technically do it, the way they did it left something to bedesired. The native 1080p content on the disc was actually decoded as1080i and then de-interlaced back into 1080p. This relied on the playerto accurately reconstruct the contents original frames, which somemodels did not do correctly. As a result, common practice was to output1080i from these players and let an external video processor performthe conversion back to 1080p.

There are two right ways to output 1080p. The first is to decode the1080p content on the disc in native form (no interlaced conversion) andsend it at its native frame rate. For nearly every movie released onBlu-ray, the native frame rate will be 24 frames per second (a.k.a 24fps, 24p, or 24 Hz).

Click here to read the rest of the article from Residential Systems