This is a placeholder thread for general Blu-ray news and discussion that don't individually warrant their own threads.

If you do not own, are not in the market for, and have no interest in acquiring an Blu-ray player, don't post. Baiting and argumentative posts will be removed on sight.

An AVS member says his copy of X3 froze at around the 1 hour, 11 minute mark on his Sammy unit. This is the first freezing incident I've read about on a Blu-ray title, so it's something to keep in mind. I think he has the latest firmware. Tried 2 copies and got the same error, so it may be a bad batch. I hope it plays okay.

No problem with mine. Played straight through.

Anyone ever have their Sammy picture "snow" over when switching between component for satellite and HDMI for BD? Last weekend I went from satellite to BD and when it switched to BD, all I got was snow. I unplugged the HDMI cable and plugged it back in and everything was good. It has happened twice. My player has the firmware upgrade.

There's a poster on AVS from Japan who owns a PS3. I think they launched a few days ago. He says you are able to check the bitrate on titles, which I think is great. Kingdom of Heaven ranged from 18 mbps and peaked at around 30 mbps. He said it was MPEG-2, even though some thought it would be encoded with AVC. But that's the Japan disc, so it may be AVC here.

Oh, it appears Black Hawk Down's PCM track is a hit with AVS members. I think I enjoy Blu-ray's audio the most and HD DVD's video the most. I wish I could combine the two.

I've listened to DD+ and TrueHD on the A1 and can't tell a difference. According to my ears, a PCM track sounds better than DD+.

I looked at the Best Buy ad and no surprise they have alot of Blu-ray titles advertised to coincide with the PS3 release. Too bad X3's price of $22.99 is the only bargain, but there's alot of Blu in there.

Are you running the HDMI direct to the TV or through a receiver? I rarely switch between inputs when I'm watching something, but I just tried it both ways and didn't have any issues. If it happens again I would try pushing the input button on the face of the player instead of pulling the HDMI to see if that clears it.

I gladly paid the full price for X3, but now I'm wondering if I'll have an issue getting a price adjustment, since technically the title wasn't really released when I bought it. I usually wouldn't bother waiting in the CS line for $2-5 bucks, but for $12 I would.

The HDMI cables runs from the player to my projector. No problems so far this weekend and I did alot of scene to scene comparisons on Gone in 60 seconds switching between component (DVD) and HDMI (BD).

A member over at blu-ray.com said that the back of the KoH case says "MPEG-2 at 24Mbps". This is just slightly higher than D-Theater, but of course, D-Theater was CBR and this title is VBR, so it should look absolutely stunning.

How do PAL discs work on BD? I'm thinking of importing some from UK. Curious about the pitch differences and NTSC issue. I only run my non-R1 DVD's on my HTPC through WinDVD7 which has a pitch corrector, since I can't stand the speedup.

Are you talking about PAL DVDs? The American Blu-ray players are region-restricted and incompatible with PAL DVDs.

If you're talking about Blu-ray discs from Europe, there's no such thing as PAL or NTSC in the HD world. However, Blu-ray is region-coded and European discs won't play on an American machine.

Just to add on to JoshZ.... HD is called ATSC, different from both NTSC and PAL. Or SECAM, for that matter.

bcolon,
Welcome to HDMI. This is why custom installers hate it.

Yep, I was talking about the Blu-Ray. Posters over at AVS have played The Exorcism of Emily Rose on their FW-updated US Samsung's even though it's marked as Region B. I was mostly worried about the speedup stuff, but if it's not an issue now, I will order it and Hostel from Amazon UK.

ATSC is just a broadcast standard, though.

It seems certain studios are not region coding their catalogue BD titles, but are coding their new releases.

Well, I'll find out for sure by the end of the week, hopefully. Hostel & Emily Rose are listed as All Region at Amazon.

True, but part of the standard also specifies allowable resolution/frame rate pairs for HD transmission.

Of course, the 1080p24 resolution used for HD DVD and Blu-ray is outside that standard, and technically, so are players and TVs that can handle 1080p60 transmission. But they are still derived from the standard, after a fashion.

Yeah, Adam, I know. We just really don't have an overall name like PAL for this. ATSC is as close as we can come, and saying "HD" is too generic.

Why is "HD" too generic? I'd think ATSC is too generic, since it covers non-HD resolutions as well. It's also a bit inaccurate too, since ATSC doesn't cover Blu-Ray's preferred resolution/framerate of 1080p24

HD is too generic because it covers everything from 720p through 1080p.

So do ATSC and BD (well, ATSC stops at 1080i). In fact, both cover 480i as well.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/...7390411880.htm

You're just being petty, Jay. ATSC has a definition (which does happen to include 1080p24, even in the early papers), HD doesn't. That is my point. HD is overused in the market and hardly means anything anymore. J6P thinks his Oppo gives him HD and that he can play BDs on it. And you know this, so stop with the debate tactics. We're trying to clean up the mess in these new threads.

BTW:
"as close as we can come" is the same as "a bit inaccurate too".

Well, blow me down, you're right that ATSC supports 1080p24.
http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html

However, I disagree that ATSC is a more accurate term for describing BD's output than HD, or that HD doesn't have a definition. HD's used to describe a resolution of 720p through 1080p. ATSC's used for digital signals from 480i through 1080p.