Quote:
Originally Posted by No6PackJoe
All joking aside, I will be first in line to get a Panny BD-50, I have a ps3 but I don't play games on it or for that matter surf the net, my wife bought it for me as a cheap blu-ray player, so it's only used as a blu-ray player.
Cons-
- you have to buy Blu-ray remote so add $50 bucks
- generates a lot of heat
- mine is noisy
Pros
- potential for more audio ( CPU is under utilized )
- potential for better upscaling ( CPU is under utilized )
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Yeah, I think the Panny BD50 will be the player to beat, only contender that looks competitive is the Sony BDP-S550 but that won't be out until fall. OTOH, in my specific situation I might actually end up getting the Sony BDP-S350 if it matches the BD50 in the speed department as the 350's "Source Direct" mode will allow me to use the Reon chip in my a/v processor for upscaling DVDs without a hassle (panasonic you'd need to mess with the setup menu every time, even then not sure 480i over HDMI is possible). Since I have a TrueHD/DTS-HDMA decoder, the internal decoders aren't quite as important - though if the 350's method for enabling subaudio is as cumbersome as a typical BD player I might even stick it out for the S550 to have the decoders for PiP extras. Right now I have a pretty nice setup with my PC running to the TV, so I'm not exactly hurting... Just would be nice to get rid of those extra cables.
While the PS3 is a good value, IMO there is something to the simplicity of a standalone software/hardware interface that feels better when watching movies. Another nice aspect of the BD standalones is that they are hardware SoC solutions, which though less flexible are in general more reliable than software solutions like the PS3 (or the Toshiba HD DVD players, for that matter, which were also general processing software solutions).