If you’re an Arcam aficionado, there must have been times when you thought the arrival of a Blu-ray Disc player would never come. The brand’s original strategy, to support both HD DVD and BD with a universal player, was shunted off the road when the HD format war came to an abrupt end.
A second, BD-only project met a similar fate when Arcam’s chosen chip supplier proved unable to deliver.
Years in the making: Arcam’s FMJ BDP100 Blu-ray player is here at last
Third time lucky then? It seems so. The wait is finally over with the arrival of the FMJ – Arcam says “Faithful Musical Joy”; I say “Full Metal Jacket” – BDP100.
Unlike the majority of mass-market BD players, the BDP100 is painstakingly built. It’s heavy -6.2kg, no less – and has an extremely rigid chassis. Back panel outputs comprise HDMI; component- and composite-video; Stereo analogue audio; and optical and coaxial digital audio. Read the rest of this entry »
Pioneer may be a well established name on the Blu-ray spinning circuit by now, but the company’s deal with Sharp last year to pool their BD resources means that the BDP-320 is likely to be one of the last pure Pioneer Blu-ray players off the production line.
End of an era: Pioneer’s BDP-320
The BDP-320 sits in the lower half of Pioneer’s six-strong Blu-ray player range. The feature spec rises fairly gradually from model to model though – the BDP-320 offers 48-bit Deep Colour over the basic BDP-120′s 36-bit, but step up to the BDP-LX5 and you’ll get the anti-jitter Precision Quartz Lock System. Otherwise, features and connections are very similar. A good-looking machine – slimline with a gloss black finish – it feels solidly constructed. While the higher end models might have a classier build on close inspection, the BDP-320 certainly doesn’t look cheap.
The back is home to a single HDMI v1.3 port, Ethernet, component, optical and composite digital audio outputs, and a remote control input for custom instals. The USB port is for additional memory storage beyond the 1GB already on board for BD-Live content. As yet, there’s no sign of Wi-Fi connectivity at this level from Pioneer, such as you’ll find in the similarly priced LG BD390 or Sony BDP-S560. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Many people enjoying Blu-ray movies do so using a Sony PlayStation 3, while the rest of us will opt for a dedicated Blu-ray player. For the latter, philips is touting its BDP3000 as a budget player and, while certainly not the cheapest, it does offer 1080p playback, the optimal Blu-ray format.
philips‘ BDP3000: the shiny black fascia affords the minimum of buttons and distracting lights.
Presented in a 6cm-high box with a tastefully unfussy, shiny black fascia, the philips BDP3000 is a straight replacement for a DVD player. That is, it plays all your DVD Region 2 discs as well as high definition Blu-ray Region B titles, along with DivX movies saved to CD and DVD media, including home-recorded discs.
Additionally, the device has been designed to play media on CDaudio discs, MP3 and WMA CDs, and just about any disc that contains JPG images. Apart from a simple status window, the front of the unit is as featureless as you can get, providing just four buttons: Power, Eject, Play and Pause. It uses a tray-loading mechanism that is quiet and feels strong enough to resist clumsy treatment. Read the rest of this entry »
