LG BH100 599.99 at Circuit City

I know certain people said that LG was garbage, but is this a good deal or not? It is an on line deal only.

this unit will work, but it is buggy...price is a little steep though...eBay is cheaper...

the current model is the LG BH200...

save your pennies and buy the Samsung dual format player

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[Post edited by r-u-serious on Feb 21, 2008]

If I remember correctly the LG combo players did not play the interactive (HDi) features on HD DVD's but DID play the movies. I don't know if it affected both models so you may have to do some research. I would wait until Samsung or someone else came out with a solid combo player or just buy a bluray player with profile 2.0 (when available) and the prices drop to your liking.

With regards to the BH200, I'm curious about its Blu Ray profile.

I've went to their site earlier today and looked at the specifications page. There was no indication of any profile conformance on their specs page (unless I missed it). The system does have an Ethernet port which of course hints at the capability.

So I just went to Pioneer's site and looked at the BDP-95FD again no mention of supported Blu Ray profiles.

So I'm going to make the assumption that I'm a bit further knowledged then Joe Consumer, how does one know what profile these players support (other then of course coming to these message boards and asking).

Uni

Thanks guys for the information.

BH-200 has bewen going as low as $599. on amazon. Thought I'd share that along.

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So I just went to Pioneer's site and looked at the BDP-95FD again no mention of supported Blu Ray profiles.

If you ask me, the more the keep people ignorant of the whole Blu-Ray profile deal, the less trouble they will have selling players. It was a bad idea to not have a ready spec. This may be one of the issues that will ultimately shoot Blu-Ray in the foot. Once word gets out that not ALL players will play ALL movies people will be more and more hesitant to buy.

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Once word gets out that not ALL players will play ALL movies people will be more and more hesitant to buy.

In fairness to BR, the movies will play. The profiles relate to the "special feature" capabilities that the player will have (PIP, Internet Interactivity).

I certainly agree that the profile adds confusion within the format itself and could slow the adoption rate. However, as a PS3 owner I am considering picking up a second stand alone player. I'll hold off for the prices to drop and the profiles to match but like I said, at this point in time even if there was a BR 2.0 system out there, I'd have a tough time finding it.

spoonard that is happening now. The majority of the Blu supporters are buying the PS3, not any of the stand alone players. SONY used their fans as guiny pigs.

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Once word gets out that not ALL players will play ALL movies people will be more and more hesitant to buy.

A particular player not being able to play a particular movie has nothing to do with "Profile specs". It was a requirement from the beginning that all movie titles with profile 1.1 or 2.0 features offer backwards compatibility for profile 1.0 players. This seems to have held up to be true in nearly all cases, the exception taken care of with firmware upgrades. A more common problem with Samsung models in particular is the playback of a couple of Fox titles that had incompatible BD+ features. I'm uncertain whether these player's issues with these movies have been addressed with a firmware update yet or not...

Also, the new Lionsgate BD-Java title 3:10 TO YUMA will not play on my friend's Samsung 1200 player, even with the recent update from a few weeks ago. DVDTOWN editor James Plath was able to watch it on his legacy Samsung 1000 player (just not the PIP feature).

Samsung will have to prepare a special update for this title (and others with special BD-Java features), so that they will at least play the movie and regular special features [interactive features not capable on profile 1.0 players].

Here's some info about this title from the HighDefDigest review of the bonus PIP feature "Inside Yuma" -

* Inside Yuma – When this disc was first announced by Lionsgate, indications were that it would be a Profile 1.1-enabled title with Picture-in-Picture interactive features. However, the actual release product does not conform to the Profile 1.1 specification. When activated, Inside Yuma presents a pop-up control bar down the left of the screen containing selectable icons. Initially we start with options for script pages or storyboard graphics that can be overlaid on top of the movie (powered by regular Java, and not necessarily requiring Profile 1.1 capability). They are sporadic and frankly not all that interesting. As the movie progresses, new icons appear that will cause the movie to pause and branch off into separately encoded versions of the scene with Picture-in-Picture windows burned into the video. When complete, you'll be returned back to the main movie. Each of these segments is encoded with AVC compression, whereas the regular movie uses VC-1. Among the content are behind-the-scenes production footage, visual effects demonstrations, and "dailies" (a showcase of all the unedited footage from every camera angle that the editor had to work with, presented side-by-side in small boxes next to the final version). None of them are all that compelling, and the constant pausing and restarting of the movie is annoying. If the disc authors were going to use branching rather than true PiP, why not branch off into full-screen versions of the video segments that you could clearly see, rather than tiny fake PiP windows? It feels like the Inside Yuma feature was originally intended to utilize true Profile 1.1 functionality, but the authors couldn't get it to work in time and created this irritating workaround instead. - [END]

-JIMI (the Voodoo Child)

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[Post edited by Love Hendrix! on Feb 21, 2008]

I wouldn't bother at all getting a Standalone player until the profiles are finally finished.... right now its just a mess....

Get a PS3 if you can't wait for HD. There is to much of a risk that you'll end up out of pocket with a expensive paperweight.

Here's a master list of all the current Blu-ray players made and exactly what they do, including what higher audio codecs they play, if they decode them internally or bitstream them out, what their latest firmware upgrades are, and what Profiles they meet:

http://www.idoblu.co.uk/page2%20Blu-ray%20Players.html

It's still cheaper and probably more sensible to buy a separate BD and HD DVD player. If you can wait until late spring or summer, you'll find more BD players with Profile 2.0, if the Internet connection is important to you. Otherwise, do get a player with Profile 1.1 that plays a BD disc's interactive things like true picture-in-picture.

John

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[Post edited by John J. Puccio on Feb 21, 2008]