PC World
has given a quick hands-on look over the Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray
Disc player. When it comes to design, the Samsung is better built with
a sleek piano-black casing and navigation panel, quite different to the look of the Toshiba's
HD-A1 . The player also has a 10-in-2 memory card reader and a much clearer to read LCD display than the Toshiba. The internals also vary substantially with the Samsung using its own proprietary processor, 64MB of RAM and integrated Blu-ray drive, while the Toshiba on the other hand uses PC components including a Pentium 4 CPU, 1GB of RAM and an IDE HD DVD drive. For future proofing, the Toshiba appears to lead, as it includes two front USB ports and an Ethernet network port, both not present on the Samsung player.
The Samsung player leads with performance when compared with Toshiba's model (using original firmware), however navigation through chapters is still quite sluggish, unlike with playing back DVDs. For those interested in watching a disc in two or more parts, the player remembers its last position when stopped and even when powered off. Playback will resume playback just shortly before the stopping point.
For legacy
standard-definition playback, both players provide roughly the same upscaling
performance apart from a slightly crisper image on the Toshiba. While both
formats do show a clear improvement over standard definition discs, especially when it comes to fine detail, it is very difficult to tell the two high definition formats apart from each other, particularly since it depends on the codec, the bit rate, the player and a wide range of various other variables used in the making of the content for the disc. Finally, when it comes to deciding who will win the war, the writer predicts the content itself, such as how often titles are released for a given format, including their quality will potentially push demand for one format or the other.
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The industrial design of the Samsung is superior to that of the Toshiba HD-A1 and HD-XA1 in several ways. The sleek, piano-black box has a tapered look; a circular, pressure-based front navigation panel; a comfortable, lightweight remote control; a clearly readable front LCD screen; and a ten-in-two card reader for loading photos or MP3s. Inside, the player uses a proprietary Samsung processor and what the company describes as 64MB of system memory. Also, I found its fan and drive motor rather quiet in an environment with low ambient noise. In contrast, the Toshiba HD-A1 and HD-XA1 essentially use PC components inside, including an NEC HD DVD-ROM drive, a Pentium CPU, and 1GB of memory. The less expensive HD-A1 doesn't even hide the fact that it uses a PC drive, while the more refined HD-XA1 does a better job of integrating the drive into the player. Both models' cases are a bit bulky, and the fan noise is more clearly audible in a quiet room (but if you have Pirates of the Caribbean blasting through your five-channel surround-sound system, you won't hear anything amiss). The full article can be read here. |
With the Blu-ray making a fairly decent
start despite its cost and short title range, from what I can see it will
not be until the end of the year before we start seeing a stronger demand
towards one format, especially with the launch of the Playstation
3, Microsoft's HD DVD Xbox 360 add-on and a wider selection of titles coming out on
both formats. Hopefully the players will come down in size as some
consumers may be interested in going for a particular format, but not
willing to have such a bulky item stand out from below their TV!
Source: PC World - DVD Players
