joshd2012

Well, there wasn't a thread for this, so here we go.

As many of you know, I was waiting for the PS3 to be my player. This was mainly for the HDMI v1.3 support. Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 has taught many retailers a lesson they won't soon forget - if you over-promise units and don't get those consoles out, you will have a lot of angry customers on hand. For that reason, many places won't be doing pre-orders for the PS3, and even those who do will require massive bundles. If I have to spend $1000 to get a PS3 (with games and controllers of course), I might as well just buy a player.

So I have.

I talked with Sony today and they confirmed that the machine will decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio internally. While its not HDMI v1.3, I'll be happy enough with it right now. Plus, look at this thing:



Too sexy! But I must!

I'll be sure to provide a review once I get it. The rumor is that this unit is being produced by Pioneer and will be a clone of their Elite model (as they both fail to support Red Book). But as long as the performance is the same, I won't miss the ethernet connection.

Noonan

So it hasn't be released but won't have HDMI 1.3 when it does? That's odd. Do you know why they're releasing it without it?

It is a good looking player though. Since either format doesn't interest me too much right now I'll be sticking with the PS3 for my player. I got 1 of 8 presales at the Gamestop near me yesterday.

joshd2012

The release is "on or around October 25th", so it could be delayed again. HDMI v1.3 should be in full swing early next year, with players out soon after. The PS3 really has limited v1.3 support, and reportedly won't support them at launch. Firmware later will "activate" the hardware to become 1.3 compliant. Even then it won't feature everything specified in the spec.

The Bus

So how can the PS3 be 1.3 compliant if it's really not? I see it as a black and white issue. Either it is 1.3, or it's not. There's no 1.299.

joshd2012

No idea. These are all just rumors at this point. Until it is released, we just won't know.

Mr. Cinema

I have no chance of getting a PS3 at launch as I'm not camping out anywhere. This looks like a nice, albeit overpriced (imo) player. I hope it does come out on 10/25 so I can find out if it is better than the Sammy in terms of video quality. I think I would still pay $500 for a new Sammy on ebay as opposed to a $1000 for this Sony. Since Pioneer is likely making it, it should be a solid unit.

darkside

Now you are talking. HDMI 1.3 is really not going to be a big deal as long as the player does the decoding for you. This is definitely the player I would want if I was getting a BD player. The Pioneer Elite is nice, but if this is pretty much the same player I would save the $500 and get the Sony instead.

digitalfreaknyc

Some insiders are saying that the Pioneer is the only one that will make a difference. The Sony will be the same as the Panasonic and Samsung.

Nice to know Josh actually picked up a player, though.

Would suck if he's even slightly disappointed with the quality.

flashburn

Congrats on jumping into an HD disc format Josh!

namja

If you don't mind, where did you buy it from? How much did you have to fork over?

matome

Congrats Josh, just don't make me too mad that I didn't wait the extra few weeks to get a different player

RoboDad

Looks like it came from Sears:

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/produ...id=05757436000

However, it also sounds like it is still very questionable whether the player will decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to PCM, or whether it can only extract the core (lossy) audio from those streams.

digitalfreaknyc

You know the ol' Sony saying:

It ain't out yet so it ain't definite.

Josh Z

Very little likelihood that the player can decode any of the advanced audio formats. JoshD posted the text of his chat with the Sony customer service rep on AVS and it's pretty clear that the guy didn't understand what he was asking.

joshd2012

Typing up an email now to Sony. Hopefully I will have an answer tomorrow sometime to confirm or deny. I was on the phone, but staying on hold was burning up my minutes. I'll be sure to post what I find. At this point, I got the sale price and plenty of time to figure it out.

valkyrie

It's pretty, but I just don't see it looking all that good on a component rack. I mean there's silver components, black components, and now...blue?

I dunno. I guess I like the clearner looks of the Samsung, Toshiba, and Panasonic models better.

Bcolon

Link? You always seem to post info about "insiders", but never give us a link so that we can read it for ourselves or tell us who the insiders are.

Supermallet

How could the Sony not be the same as the Pioneer since it has the same insides as the Pioneer?

Josh Z

We don't know that for a fact yet. We do know that the Sony BDP-S1 is OEM'ed from another manufacturer, heavily hinted to be Pioneer. However, that doesn't mean that the guts of this player are identical to Pioneer's own player. Pioneer could have developed this separately just for Sony.

Supermallet

Okay, good point.

chente

I really like the look of the blue on these players.

Supermallet

I like the blue as well, but tell me that's a prototype pictured. What's with the "We're stealing this font from an Apple II" on the left side where it says "Blu-Ray Disc"?

DthRdrX

They're not stealing it. That's Apple's contribution to Blu-Ray so far.

Supermallet

Well played sir, well played! *golf clap*

Supermallet

I read josh's thread about this player over on AVS, and I'm convinced the DolbyTrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding is only for the lossy core on each codec. Another pass for me.