A preview of Samsung's first Blu-ray player, and the technology that drives it.
Samsung recently launched their BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc player. We were given a first look and now present a technical overview of Blu-ray technology.
The Player
The BD-P1000 has officially hit the marketplace. The unit will only read Blu-ray discs, however it will write to DVDs. We were told by Samsung to expect to see Blu-ray recorders on the market some time Q2, 2007.
The unit will upscale DVDs to 1080p through interpolation. Since there isn’t as much information present in the signal as there is in a Blu-ray signal, the edges still look a little choppy, and skin tones faded when viewed side by side against a Blu-ray source. The upscaled DVD signal does look better than the standard DVD signal, though.
There’s a memory card reader embedded in the front of the unit which can be used to display image slideshows from memory cards. Two megapixel images can be displayed in their native resolution, and images greater than this are scaled to fit the full resolution of the HD monitor.
When asked about the imminent release of Sony’s PlayStation 3, Samsung responded that early adopters and home theatre buffs would be more interested in a dedicated playback machine. It does, however, expect the PlayStation 3 to establish Blu-ray in the marketplace, along with multiple movie houses that are backing the technology.
The Technology
A 1080 HDTV signal runs at a resolution of 1920 x 1080, which is roughly the equivalent of 16mm film. For comparison, 35mm film is projected in cinemas, and its resolution is roughly 3840 x 2160, depending on the type of film and shooting methods used. Quarter this and reduce the image to the size of your display to get an idea of the level of detail encoded in a HD signal.
Having this kind of resolution to play with is not a guarantee of beautiful pictures. Thanks to the increased detail, other factors that take place during the making of the film have a greater bearing on picture quality than did previously. For instance, makeup techniques and props need to be more detailed, and when watching SWAT on Blu-ray we noticed a pistol misfire and jam while the actor kept on shooting.
More importantly for existing titles, the film transfer process has to be more stringent to compensate for the film grain, background noise and grime on the original film negative. With sub-standard grading and colour timing, these problems can and do start doing injustice to the recordings.
For instance, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ has already been authored to Blu-ray, but the quality of the transfer is a real letdown. There’s a lot of noise in the background, and the grain of the film is clearly visible. We wouldn’t be surprised to see a remaster once the platform has a larger installed user base.
These caveats are applicable to any HD format, so you will run into the same problems on HD-DVD, Blu-ray and even HDTV transmissions.
Progressive scan is another improvement that you notice during fast motion, high detail scenes. Although HD-DVD can support this feature, the first generation players will only display an interlaced image. This may eventually be increased to 1080p with a firmware update, and all second generation HD-DVD players should support the resolution.
Unlike traditional DVDs, Blu-ray can support uncompressed audio. We heard a distinct and discernable difference between the two audio standards, even on the fairly low end sound system that we auditioned. Gunshots and explosions had more presence.
Region coding is still present in Blue-ray, however there are now only three regions, A, B and C. For reference, Australia is region B, which includes Europe. It also seems that our Blu-ray cases are thicker than the American cases by about 3 millimetres.
It’s still yet to be seen which format will win the coveted space in your home entertainment setup. However, we can state with certainty that the difference between high definition and standard definition are night and day.