matome

So I wanted to pick up another Blu-ray player. My first choice was the Playstation 3 for portability ease, but of course none of my preorders panned out and I don't wait in lines or bother with Ebay. Now that the Sony is out I tried to find an early one to see, but no one had them on display yet. In the end I just picked up the Panny BD10 locally from .

I currently have hooked both the Panny and Sammy A/V up to my Denon 4806 receiver and out to my Samsung 6167 1080i DLP set via Monster HDMI all around. They both have the most recent firmware installed.

After playing around with both of them here are my thoughts:

Picture Quality: Did some comparison tests with X3, Black Hawk Down & RV. The Panny gets the edge here, with a slightly sharper and cleaner picture. I noticed this especially in X3 on the vertical lines on Wolverine's shirt when he's talking to Rogue about leaving. DNR settings were off on both players and the Panny's picture controls were all left at default positions. I use a Denon 2910 for my regular DVD upconversions and viewing, so I don't use my BD players for that, but if someone wants me to I'll try and compare them.
Winner: Panny

Audio Quality: Couldn't tell any difference on the current PCM, DD or DTS tracks. Of course the Panasonic is the only player out that has 7.1 analog outs. Also, as indicated by Panasonic, it will decode future advanced audio codecs.
Winner: Panny

Build/Appearance: Panny wins in the looks department for sure, with it's black mirror face and one power button hidden in the bottom left corner. Then again, I hate doors so that's a minus for me. The blue light can be dimmed or turned off completely, unlike the Samsung. The info panel can be dimmed, but not turned off completely (same with my other Panasonic DVD stuff, annoying) so that's the only thing that lights up when I'm watching a movie. Build quality appears to be about the same with similar weights and dimensions, gold-plated connections, etc. I do like the Samsung's piano finish and on-screen menu looks though.
Winner: Panny

Boot-up & access times: Using a stopwatch timed from having the disc in the open tray and pushing play until the disc begins playing on the screen:
Samsung: 19 seconds
Panasonic: 28 seconds
The Sammy seems to respond a little faster when pressing the FF/REW buttons as well.
Winner: Sammy

Noise: Fans on both players were inaudible. The Samsung is dead silent during disc play at all times. Surprisingly, you can hear the Panny's drive slightly as the head moves during disc scanning at initial boot-up. Much less so if the front panel is closed, but it's still there. Once playing, it's silent, though.
Winner: Sammy

Remote Control: I use a universal remote with my system, but if I didn't I would have given the win to Panny just because of the jog wheel on it. Then again it has a flip-up door which I hate so, those points are lost.

Winner: Tie

Features: This is where the Sammy really gets it's ass kicked. The Panny has full picture and DNR controls as well as presets, if you want to play around with those (I don't use them). There are full level and delay controls over Speaker Settings, unlike the Sammy where it has to be controlled from the receiver. It also allows for seperate Digital Out settings for DD, DD+ and DTS. My favorite feature over the Sammy is that the Panny detects multi-channel PCM tracks and will output it automatically, unlike the Sammy where you have to go into the setup menu to change the audio settings to "PCM" to hear the PCM uncompressed tracks. Also On screen displays are much more informative and interactive. The Panasonic Time Slip feature is great for jumping around the disc quickly and HDMI EZSync for equipment that has that feature. Multiple remote control codes were also a lifesaver for me since I also have a Panny 5-disc changer and DVD recorder in my system as well.

On the Samsung side, it has the built-in card reader (whihc I actually used once in a while), a more informative front panel display (can be dimmed but not turned off) and bookmark feature.

Winner: Panny


Overall, whether you want to spend the extra money for the Panny may boil down to your system setup, more than PQ quality. I think Samsung did a hell of a job with those FW updates, particularly in regards to PQ and boot times.

I am keeping both of these players, and will temporarily keep them hooked up to the same system while I'm going through some renovations, so if anybody has any questions I will be happy to try and answer them.

ianholm

Well, the Panasonic definitely sounds nice, but I'm very happy with the Samsung. Kinda surprised at the load times

I see you have Speed, did you try it on the Samsung and the Pannsonic. I couldn't get it to load on mine.

Mr. Cinema

Fox has a replacement program set up for Speed. It's an error on their part and not the player.

ianholm

Ah, thanks. I just saw your note in the other thread.

DthRdrX

Nice write-up!

I wish you had access to the Sony as well. I saw it today at Best Buy and it is the sweetest looking player so far. I'm just concerned about buying a Gen 1 product that has been delayed to the point where we might start seeing new Gen 2 stuff soon.

matome

I was looking for the Sony because I was curious about the 1080p/24hz stuff. Then I remembered that I just bought my Sammy 1080i DLP and Denon 4806 last Christmas, so I probably won't be upgrading to the 1080p version of those for a couple of years, so the 24hz stuff wouldn't matter. I purposely did not buy the "new" 1080p sets last year because I had just snagged an XBOX360 and was reading crap on AVS about audio lag for HD video gaming, due to the TV resolution downrez processing (I wasn't considering getting into hi-def discs either back then).

Yeah, I never got around to watching it. I threw it in the Sammy last night and it played fine until around the 1h15m mark when Keanu is on the little cart going under the bus. It started freezing around there and then wouldn't play anymore. Threw it in the Panny and had no problems.

RockStrongo

Is your sammy dlp 1080i or 1080p?? I didnt know they made a 1080i tv...I thought they were 720p or 1080p only. Just curious.

matome

It's 720P native, but supports 1080i as well. The 1080p native sets were the --68 series.

RockStrongo

If its native rez is 720p then it downconverts 1080i to 720p. For any 1080i signal, your not seeing 1080i, your seeing 720p. Just to let you know.

matome

Well, I have my Denon 2910 and Blu-rays set to 1080i out and the TV's display shows output at 1920x1080I/60hz and when I switch them to 720p it shows it at 1280x720P/(something). I will double check when I get home. Switching to 720p makes the players' menus much bigger as well for some reason.

RockStrongo

Yeah, you have it set up right.

IMO, you should have the tv do the downconversion of the 1080i/p signal instead of the DVD/BD player or even an HD receiver. Some people would argue that you should set it to the native rez of the set (if no passthrough option). I just disagree in my experience (based on my Sammy 720p and 1080p sets).

When you see the info on the tv, I believe it is the source resolution. Mine does the same thing.

But, if your tv's native resolution is 1280x720, then there is no way for it to display 1080 lines of resolution. It MUST downconvert the signal to 720 lines.

ChrisHicks

are you still going to get a PS3 if you come across one? I would love to see the PS3 tossed into this comparison.

matome

Probably not, at this point. I actually wanted the PS3 more for the BD player than gaming, as I'm pretty burned out on the 360 (trying to hump over the 10000 gamer point mark ).

I originally had my Denon DVD upconverting to 720p since that was the native, and it was fine. Then when I got the BD player I was reading everyone saying you HAVE to output it at 1080i. So I did it across the board and I really didn't see any difference (other then the menu size changing). The Panny has an Auto HDMI function where it supposedly picks the best resolution for your TV, and it picks the 1080i setting. I don't know if that's because I have it hooked up through the Denon 4806 AVR. Now I see why there could be lag when downcoverting video games from 1080p.

The Bus

matome: Maybe a friend can bring their PS3 over?

The Panasonic sounds nice. If I was in the market for a BD player, I wouldn't mind paying extra for the Panny. Thanks for the write-up!

Josh Z

For the Blu-ray player, 1080i output is best since the disc's content is natively 1920x1080 pixels.

For regular DVDs, however, you should set the Denon player to 720p. The way you have it now, your DVD signal is going through the following steps:

480i->480p->1080i->720p.

By adding in the extra 1080i step, you're performing too many scaling operations, which can introduce the risk of mathematical errors in the interpolation process. It's best to scale directly from the disc's native resolution to the resolution of the screen in as few steps as possible.

Spiky

It was the A1 HDDVD player that 'had' to be 1080i output since its 720p output was bad. Maybe that's what you are remembering, matome.

Josh Z, I thought the Denon would do 480i->1080i->720p in that case. Still too much processing when not necessary. I was just wondering.

matome

That's very possible. I will set back my DVD back to 720p. Thanks for the info, guys.

RockStrongo

This is correct. I forgot he had a regular dvd player. Avoiding downscaling is optimal.

Josh Z

A 480i picture has to be deinterlaced before it can be scaled. These are separate steps. The scaling process is based on whole frames, not individual fields. So to get from 480i to 1080i, the picture is deinterlaced, scaled, and re-interlaced.

ianholm

I missed that one. That's about the only issue I have with the Samsung.

matome

Discovered another feature the Panny has over the Sammy, which is the ability to turn off the pop-up menu sounds (which are distracting IMO). Also watched a regular DVD on the Panny and the PQ was comparable to my Denon, except the Panny has a short layer-change delay where the Denon has none.

On another note, I was supposed to get a free copy of Eight Below and mail-ins for two other free discs that were not in the box when I picked it up last Friday at Value Electronics. Called Robert the next day and he said he would get back to me on Monday but never did. Gave him a few days, sent him email, called again and left message, still no response. I'm a little disappointed here.

Josh Z

Robert has his hands full with fulfilling HD-A2 orders. Give him a couple of days. I'm sure he'll get back to you.

matome

Got an email from Robert today, so hopefully all will be resolved soon