Naim and BlueRay or HD?

Hi Roy,

Many thanks for the above details

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by neil w:
tony

heres one for ya

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000W4B7DS/300...21/?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

this will take full advantage of your 7.1 inputs , and with 7 free discs its works out about £150

allan

i know you will have done the reasearch , whats the difference between ep30 / ep35

neil

oooops 7.1 bitstream only !!!!!!!!!!

neil

Oh well, it was a good thought Neil!

Now I've invested in a Blu-Ray player (hopefully it'll be delivered tomorrow) I'm now waiting until someone comes out with a processor that'll accept HDMI & decode all the latest sound formats.

Unfortunately this is not likely to be Naim, for the reasons already mentioned here.

I suspect that Naim's HiDef player will hit the shelves shortly after the n-Vi scaler card!! ;-)

Duncan

I have an EP35 and am more than happy with it.

I have it connected using the hdmi for picture and the analogues for the sound. Up and running within 5 minutes after downloading the latest f/w update.

quote:

Originally posted by Roy Donaldson:
reluctant to comment too much on sound as setting up the Toshiba players for 5.1 analog output is not regarded as easy, there are a number of settings on the Toshiba alone to get right. Also, the way it outputs it's LFE channel means you need to adjust the volume levels in your processor and not the HD-DVD player. So, there are quite a few interactions to get right.

Roy,

I vaguely remember from some time ago when people were first grappling with this was that the usual trick was to lower all channels by 10db inside the player but leave the LFE channel at 0db. This effectively increases the bass output relative to the other channels and means you don't have to make changes in the AV processor.

Just had a quick search (using the term "bass management" ) in the HD-DVD players section of AVS and found some info over there. Here's a link to some related discussion regarding the XA2 but still applicable, I would think, to the EP35.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=856083

Allan

We have been playing a lot with the HD formats. Recently there was a (to remain unnamed) HD-DVD player in the shop. Through decent quality 1080p projection (the new Panasonic which is stunning), 1080p LCD display (panasonic again, damn good) and 720p plasma (Pioneer 428), it was so bad that my colleagues were actually feeling ill trying to watch movement. We also have a Sharp BluRay thing (£350) and this is very good indeed.

Now, me personally, I find watching BluRay through the Sharp a touch more distracting than high quality DVD (Arcam/Naim). We used Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on both formats. The DVD is obviously nowhere near as good overall for resolution and grain. The BD knocks spots off DVD for its filmic quality, depth of colour and lack of grain. However, this is true for me only when things aren't moving around. movement causes the usual slight blurring and/or judder that it does on DVD, but since the rest of the picture is so awesome I find that blurring more distracting. Since DVD is overall worse anyway, the juddering/blurring is not such an issue to me.

Now, I emphasise that this is my opinion since my colleagues and I were very much at odds on this issue. They all seemed to far prefer the way BD was handling things and the fact that slow scenes were just so beautiful, whereas one colleague in particular was finding it quite difficult to 'go back' to DVD since the grain and lack of quality of the DVD picutre really intruded on him whereas he was more than happy to accept the minor blemishes on the BD presentation.

On the subject of wo will win the war, this is more difficult. It appears that HD-DVD sales in the US have really outstripped BD, both in terms of discs and players. However, it's a different story in Europe where the more informed market has been slow to take up HD formats and now appears to be running with BD. Two one other items which may have some impact - Sony will not allow pornographic material to be mastered on BD apparently - something to do with the licensing - whereas HD-DVD already has porn adoption. This is a big market which could affect the formats, at least in the early days. The second item is paramount's adoption of HD-DVD exclusively. Paramount is closely aligned with Microsoft so there is talk of this being a political move (Microsoft = X-Box = HD-DVD) but the fact is that paramount is one of the biggest players in the movie industry so it could shift things.

That said, the PS3 accounts for a huge number of BD players, so Sony can shore up the BD business for quite some time provided the PS3 eventually gains more market traction once the Wii saturates, which it may do in a few months. Sony is in this for the long haul since it doesn't view the PS3 as a games console but as an entertainment centre. Once they sort out their marketing PS3s should become more prevalent and therefore so too should BD.

My money's on BD, but it always has been so I guess I could be biassed.

i have found hd via basic toshiba player to be slightly beter than sd via my n-vi, i have also found some judder on transformers hd but none on bourne ultimatum, mine is playing into fujitsu 42" 58 series plasma, hope to buy a ps3 in the next few months to see how blue-ray looks, i feel the bigger the screen will determine how much better hd looks, i looked at full hd paasonic plasmas but preferred the picture on the fujitsu which is only hd-ready ie 768 horizontal resolution, i also find 1080i to give me a better image than 720p

quote:

Originally posted by Frank Abela:
... once the Wii saturates, which it may do in a few months.

Nice one

(sorry, couldn't resist, hehe)

My new Panasonic BD10 Blu-Ray player was delivered today. And jolly nice it is too!

The picture quality with SD DVDs, which it upscales to 1080P, is excellent, and it's multi-region to boot.

Lots of options on the menu but it was very straightforward to set up - only problem is that using the 7.1 analogue outputs my rear effects pair of speakers aren't outputting. It's not the player because I swapped the rear outputs over so it's either the connect or the AV2 inputs. A bit of a fag and I managed to lose one of my balls in the process. From the Fraim...

Now all I need is an actual Blu-Ray disc to play on it!

Tony,

It sounds like if you are playing a disc with a 5.1 soundtrack and that's what you are getting, 5.1 only. The usual way around this when using a digital input is to use DPL IIx (or similar) to generate a signal for the extra pair of rear speakers in a 7.1 setup but I doubt this is possible when using the analog inputs.

Are you using DPL IIx with your digital inputs to fill in the rear channels?

BTW, Casino Royale on Blu-ray has an excellent soundtrack and would be a good place to start.

Hi Allan.

The problem showed when I was running the Panasonic's speaker set-up routine & using the test tone, not using a disc. The rear speakers were silent & were also silent when I swapped the outputs on the back of the Panasonic.

I'll try a 7.1 configuration but that'll be through the digital inputs, which worked fine with my previous player so should still be OK.

Hi folks,

Sorry for not being able to join in as much as I'd like to, things are a bit of frantic here. I have been loosely keeping tabs on the thread as and when I could.

Thanks for all of the helpful comments and pointers so far - very much appreciated.

All of the hardware arguments aside, one minor concern I have is that I just don't want to invest a lot of hard earned cash in a format that will become defunct in five years time and have a pile of software that remains unused. Remember your old prerecorded VHS cassettes anyone? So I'll probably hang on for a few months yet and watch the market place as a whole and of course keep tabs on what Naim may do?

I do have a close friend who is about to take delivery of a PS3 so I will certainly have a look at that and compare DVD against BR when I get the opportunity. When I view the new format side by side with DVD and ONLY if I'm really blown away with it, then this may make me investigate things to the point of buying? Certainly to the point of booking demo's at my local dealer!

We'll see anyway.

I am really excited as to HD's possibilities and will be watching the format war closely.

I'll also be watching the astonishing rise and improvement of the LCD screen too. Only a couple of years ago, INMHO small LCD TV's were practically unwatchable but now, even the biggies are getting better. My father in law bought a Sony Bravia over the holidays and I was certainly more impressed with it than I thought I would be.

Again, interesting to see how it all develops.

Cheers,

Kevin

Hi Kevin.

Just a couple of comments - firstly, it's a fair bet that all the current DVD formats will be obsolete in three years, yet alone five!

However, if you've got a player and a pile of software to go with it, you can carry on using it all the time the thing's working.

My old Pioneer laserdisk player and the umpteen discs I accumulated over the years, a so-called "obsolete" and "failed" format, were still in use by me until I sold the lot last year, purely because they took up a lot of space. Perfectly playable and although the quality wasn't quite up there with DVD it was a damn sight better than VHS. All the American discs I owned had excellent Dolby Digital or dts soundtracks to boot. You can still buy the discs on E-Bay.

You will find the picture quality on a PS3 really superb through a proper HD display.

Of course you can just wait, but time marches on...

quote:

Originally posted by Allan Probin:
Tony,

It sounds like if you are playing a disc with a 5.1 soundtrack and that's what you are getting, 5.1 only. The usual way around this when using a digital input is to use DPL IIx (or similar) to generate a signal for the extra pair of rear speakers in a 7.1 setup but I doubt this is possible when using the analog inputs.

Are you using DPL IIx with your digital inputs to fill in the rear channels?

BTW, Casino Royale on Blu-ray has an excellent soundtrack and would be a good place to start.

Today's Tip from an experienced User -

With the Naim AV2 sound processor, it is important when setting the multichannel analogue inputs up for 8 channels, to make sure you've selected the correct number of channels on the speaker setup. If, say, it's previously set up for six channels then the rear pair of effects speakers will not work.

A fundamental error which I'm sure no one would make...

Tony,

Off topic, but, how do you rate your Oppo DVD player through the Lumagen? I'm thinking of a bit of a re-organisation of sources following a few experiments over the christmas holidays.

Feeding 1080p24 directly from my HD players to the projector looks slightly cleaner than passing it through my VP50 video processor. However, deinterlacing and scaling of SD-DVD looks better when done by the VP50 as compared to being done inside the projector.

I'm thinking about getting an Oppo 980H for multi-region DVD playback and an Oppo 3-way HDMI switch and setting up the switch something like this:

Blu-Ray (1080p24) --> Input 1
HD-DVD (1080p24) --> Input 2
VP50 (1080p24/1080p50) --> Input 3
Output --> SIM2 projector

Inputs to the VP50 would be something like this:

Oppo 980H (480i/576i) --> HDMI 1 --> 1080p
HD Satellite (1080i) --> HDMI 2 --> 1080p
Xbox 360 (720p/1080i) --> Component 1 --> 1080p

Currently, although I'm sending 1080p24 in to the VP50 and getting 1080p24 out, there is clearly some 'processing' going on and the signal is not simply passed through. On the other hand, the VP50 is noticeably better than the processor inside the SIM when it comes to handling SD.

Hi Allan.

Lots to be posted on this subject I think!

My Oppo 970HD's the predecessor of the 980 but doesn't have upscaling/deinterlacing capability. Through the Lumagen the picture quality's superb - at least on a par with the Arcam 139 I had on home trial.

As you probably know, Oppos are real "giant Killers" and not just for their picture quality. Mine will play just about any type of disc, including some dodgy DVDs which my previous TagMclaren player turned its nose up at. It makes a pretty good fist of playing CDs, DVD-As & SACDs (which is why my AV2 was set up for 5.1 analogue...)

Oppo offer excellent support, as do their UK distributors CRT Projectors. Hopefully they're working on a dual-format HD player with all HD sound decoding options & 7.1 analogue outs. I wouldn't be surprised!

The Panasonic Blu-Ray player through the Lumagen is very good with SD so I've decided to use it instead of the Oppo to keep things relatively simple for SWMBO.

The Oppo switchbox looks the business & it will be interesting to see if passing the video through it will bring the picture slightly down to the VP50 pass-through. Now I've got my new 3000E projector with 2 HDMI inputs I've got a few tests of my own to run, specifically direct vs. via Lumagen. It's very convenient to use the Lumagen for a switchbox as well as a processor.

Anyway, good luck. I'll be very interested to learn how you get on.

Warner Brothers have just announced they will be switching to Blu-Ray exclusivity next year. Still a few studio announcements to come in the next few days (CES) but non as significant as this I would have thought.

Reuters - Warner Bros to back Blu-ray DVD format

Looks like the format war has been decided. In some ways that's a bit of a shame; it brought hardware prices down and kept the manufacturers and content providers on their toes. In the long run a single format is probably for the best but lets hope hardware prices don't start creeping up and the studios don't let the optional regional coding on blu-ray disc go to their heads.

Allan

Just realised my obvious mistake! When I was reading this news as it was breaking late Friday night / early Saturday morning I must have still been in 2007 mode. When I read May 2008 for the switchover I immediately classed it as a next year thing.

Note to self: for next few weeks, take extra care writing cheques.

Having prevaricated for too long on what format to go for and finally getting a Blu-Ray player on Friday, I could gloat a bit at this point!

Nevertheless, I really think this move can only be good for High-Definition DVD in general. The studios can then concentrate on the one format so we'll get more releases, the hardware manufacturers will all switch to Blu-Ray manufacture & the ensuing increased competition will drive prices of players down.

I finally managed to get my sweaty little mitts on a few Blu-Ray discs yesterday and for those of you who think the increase in quality over standard definition DVD isn't significant; well you're so, so wrong...

Tony,

What persuded you to go for the Panasonic BD10 rather than (say) the Pioneer X70?

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by tonym:
I finally managed to get my sweaty little mitts on a few Blu-Ray discs yesterday and for those of you who think the increase in quality over standard definition DVD isn't significant; well you're so, so wrong...

at last

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
Tony,

What persuded you to go for the Panasonic BD10 rather than (say) the Pioneer X70?

Cheers

Don

Hi Don.

Two reasons - it's considerably cheaper (I got an ex-demo one for £300), but mainly because it's got 7.1 analogue outputs so I can feed these into my AV2 & thus obtain most of the HD sound formats.

quote:

Originally posted by neil w:

quote:

Originally posted by tonym:
I finally managed to get my sweaty little mitts on a few Blu-Ray discs yesterday and for those of you who think the increase in quality over standard definition DVD isn't significant; well you're so, so wrong...

at last

OK Neil, fair comment...

Thanks Tony,

Yes, they are cheaper, I've seen them offered for about £350 whereas the Pioneers still seem to be fetching about £1k.

Cheers

Don