Category Archives: Equipment

If your Samsung BDP-1600 Blu-ray player is networked, upgrade it

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

I plugged in a Samsung BDP-1600 Blu-ray player this evening, whereupon it automatically asked if it could upgrade itself from version 1.0x firmware to 2.04. As is my practice, I told it to go ahead and went and did something … Continue reading →

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Old Blu-ray Players

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Over the last three years I have developed a number of standard measurements and tests that I conduct on Blu-ray players, and now I have a spreadsheet with the details for more than twenty players recorded. This includes such things … Continue reading →

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Back from Hamamatsu

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

I was in Japan last week as a guest of Yamaha Music. Had a great time. Ate dinner at the restaurant which inspired Tarantino for the restaurant fight in Kill Bill Part 1. Saw some interesting products. Yamaha has a … Continue reading →

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Oppo Rules

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

My review of the Oppo Digital BDP-83 Blu-ray player appears in the newly released issue of Sound and Image magazine. Let me cut to the chase: this is the best Blu-ray player I have yet tested, and I have tested … Continue reading →

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BD-Live advances – a Possible Killer App?

Posted on August 13, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Yesterday I went to Sydney, courtesy of Sony, to see its new line of Blu-ray players and some of the stuff it’s doing with Blu-ray discs. First, the players. There are three models: the BDP-S360, BDP-S560 and the BDP-S760. They … Continue reading →

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Firmware updates

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

I go out to my office this morning, planning to finish off my combo review of the two new Panasonic Blu-ray players, the DMP-BD60 and the DMP-BD80. I switch on the system. The BD60 is plugged in at the moment. … Continue reading →

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Blu-ray video inputs and outputs

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Blu-ray players have to cope with many more signal standards than DVD. On the audio side, the latter deal with PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS and (for non-US players) MPEG2, whereas Blu-ray players must deal with all of those, plus two … Continue reading →

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‘600hz sub fielding’

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

A member the public has written to one of my editors asking, in short, what is ‘600Hz sub fielding’? The editor passed it on to me, and my initial thought was: ‘I have no idea’. Fortunately our correspondent quoted some … Continue reading →

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Disclosures and subjectivity

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

This morning my attention was drawn to my disclosures page on this site (click on ‘Disclosures’ above). Having more or less forgotten about it, I went and had a read. Two things struck me. First, it was woefully out of … Continue reading →

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Firmware

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

My five-way Blu-ray player comparison review is out in the new issue (Feb/March 2009) of Sound and Image magazine. The review covers lower cost players: the LG BD300, the Panasonic DMP-BD35, the Samsung BD-P1500, the Sharp BD-HP21X and the Sony … Continue reading →

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