Blu-Ray Buyer's Guide

Nathan Taylor | Sep 1, 2008 11:21 AM
What's the best Blu-Ray player on the market? Our quick shopping guide to features to look for, compatiblity issues, connectivity, and our top pick.
The war is over. Blu-ray won, and you can now go out and buy a player with the certainty that you’re not going to invest in a technology that may be obsolete in a year. Well, almost.

One of the big advantages HD DVD had over Blu-ray was that the specification was nailed shut, making buying an HD DVD player rather less confusing than buying a Blu-ray player. All HD DVD players were required to support TrueHD, they were all required to have an Ethernet connection, and there was no region coding.

Not so with Blu-ray. There are four different specs, far fewer mandatory and more optional components and region coding similar to that used in DVD has made a comeback in Blu-ray. With that in mind, we’re here to help you decode all your options.

What do I need first?
There’s really not much point in getting hold of a Blu-ray player if you don’t have a high definition television to view them on, preferably one that’s full HD and supports HDMI connections.

Full HD means that the television can show 1080p video in its native resolution (that is, 1920 by 1080, progressive scan). TV manufacturers have, unfortunately, been very deceptive in the way they advertise HD sets. A great many sets say that they support 1080p, but when you read the fine print the screen is only capable of a lesser resolution such as 1366 x 768. While these sets can take a 1080p input, they can’t actually display them and instead convert them down to a resolution that they can display. A Full HD set, however, doesn’t need to do that and you get to see every pixel of the Blu-ray movie.

A digital AV receiver is also a very good idea, especially if you want to get 5.1 or even 7.1 channel audio. You can, of course, just plug the Blu-ray player into the TV set via HDMI (a cable that carries audio as well as video), or hook up speakers to the analogue outputs of the player, but you’ll typically only get stereo sound that way. A 7.1 channel AV receiver that has an HDMI input and supports Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD is ideal, but a simpler 5.1 channel PCM-capable receiver will also serve you well.

Now with those things out of the way, what should you look for in a Blu-ray player? Here’s a quick list of five things that should be important to you.

1. Support for Blu-ray profile 2 (a.k.a. BD-Live)
One of the arguments for HD DVD winning the format war was that the Blu-ray spec was a shmozzle. Players came out that were incompatible with each other and with certain movies. Some Blu-ray discs implemented copy protections or used Java programming that a number of older (especially non-Sony) players couldn’t handle or handled incorrectly, and because there was no networking requirement on the initial batch of Blu-ray players, they couldn’t easily be updated.

If you get a profile 2 player, most of those problems can be avoided. Profile 2 players have a network connection, so their firmware can be updated. They also tend to be newer, and have had the bugs ironed out.

For the record, there are four official Blu-ray profiles: 1.0 (BD-Video), 1.1 (Bonus View), 2 (BD-Live) and 3 (BD-Audio, for which there are no discs and no players). Here’s how they’re different:

BD-Video: no local storage capacity, optional secondary audio and video decoder
Bonus View: minimum 256MB local storage, mandatory secondary decoders
BD-Live: minimum 1GB local storage, mandatory secondary decoders and Ethernet network connection
BD-Audio: no video support. Audio decoder only.

The local storage and secondary decoders on profiles 1.1 and 2 allow a number of interactive features and picture-in-picture capabilities that you just can’t get on BD-Video discs.

Profile 2 also allows internet functionality (such as downloading the latest previews or live updates to a disc). It’s rather complicated how these interact. In theory you should be able to play a BD-Live profile 2 disc on a BD-Video profile 1 player, but you won’t get all the interactive features available on the disc. You’ll just be able to play the movie.

It’s not always clear, when buying a Blu-ray player, which is which, since vendors don’t always make it explicit which profile their player supports. The key is to look for an Ethernet port on the player. If it has one, there’s a very good chance it will be profile 2. Here’s the thing: at the time of writing this guide, there was only one profile 2 player on the market: the PlayStation 3 (which became profile 2 only in March after a firmware update). Most stand-alone players are either 1.0 or 1.1 right now. We definitely wouldn’t recommend a 1.0 player unless it’s upgradeable.

2. The right region code
Much like DVDs, Blu-ray is region coded. Unlike DVDs, most of the players available right now actually implement that region coding, though that seems to be changing. It’s pretty easy to pick up a multi-region DVD player, but when you buy a Blu-ray player, you need to get a region-appropriate player.

Blu-ray divides the world into three regions:
- Region A: The Americas (including Canada and Latin America) as well as east and south-east Asia.
- Region B: Africa, Europe, The Middle East and Oceania (that includes Australia)
- Region C: China, Russia, India and the various former Soviet nations.

If you buy a player at retail in Australia, it’s most likely to be a region B player. That means it can only play discs that are either designed for the region or discs that are not region coded (fortunately, a large number of available movies are not region coded and can be played anywhere).

You may well be tempted, especially with the current exchange rate to buy a US player, and order all your discs from the US. At the moment that’s a perfectly valid choice, though you may get in trouble later on if the exchange rate takes a turn for the worse, and doing so can also limit your ability to play Australian-bought DVDs (more on that in a moment).

Even better, a small number of players are appearing that support, either natively or through modding, both Region A and Region B discs. Several newer Samsung models, such as the BD-P1400 are multi-region, and reportedly there are several Sony models that can also play both region A and B discs. If you plan to order movies from the US, these are really your best bet.

However, we should throw in a warning here: buying a Blu-ray player from overseas can also run you into trouble playing DVD movies you’ve bought in Australia. Most existent Blu-ray players recognise DVD region coding (Australia is region 4), so if you plan to use it to play DVDs as well, you need to get a player that matches the region of your current disc collection.

3. HDMI cable included
HDMI cables are still ridiculously expensive, typically in the region of $80 or so. If you really hunt around you can get one for around $40 (which is still pretty insane). But it’s better to get a player that comes with one, so you don’t have to.

4. Multiple output ports
The next thing to look at is outputs. You should have at least one HDMI 1.3 output (the one that you’re most likely to use), as well as component output. Composite and S-Video output is useful if you plan to ever connect the player to an older TV set.

Analogue audio outputs are also necessary if you plan to connect the player to an older set or amplifier. Cheaper player will typically only come with two analogue audio outputs (left and right), while high-end players will often come with both stereo audio outputs and 5.1 channel analogue outputs.

5. Digital audio output and internal decoders
Audio support in Blu-ray players is quite variable. If all you intend to do is plug the player into your high-definition TV set and be done with it, it’s not something you really have to worry about. If you have an expensive AV multi-speaker and receiver setup, however, it’s something that you need to pay attention to.

Blu-ray players will transmit audio to the audio receiver (which may, in fact, be the TV set if you just plan to use the TV’s speakers) either over the HDMI cable, an optical cable or a coaxial cable (if you don’t have a digital receiver, you can also just connect the speakers to the analogue output ports of the player).

All Blu-ray players are required to support Dolby Digital, DTS and PCM decoding, and all movie discs will come with audio tracks encoded in one of those formats. The players will be able to decode those tracks and send them over the HDMI or optical cable to the receiver. Some discs will also come with additional audio tracks, however, usually in Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus.

TrueHD and Digital Plus support 7.1 or 8-channel audio. Support for decoding these formats is optional in Blu-ray players, and tends to only appear in more expensive models. (Note that some players may not have a TrueHD or DD+ decoder, but they may be able to send the TrueHD signal to an external receiver that can decode it).

So which Blu-ray player should I buy?
Right now, the answer to this question is easy: buy the PlayStation3. It’s the most affordable, most capable, most up-to-date and most solid Blu-ray player on the market right now. It’s also the only profile 2 player to be found at the time this article was written, though we hope that changes soon.

The PS3 also happens to be a pretty good games console and network media player. When prices come down on stand-alone players and new model are released the PS3’s status as the best Blu-ray player available might change, but for now it’s the one to get.