Blu-ray player that will play multi-region DVDs

[JP]

The Foehn & Hirsch has had some really decent reviews in the press but they can be quite difficult to find on the more trusted review sources due to the Foehn & Hirsch essentially being a Momitsu BDP-899 with an eBuyer own brand badge on the box.

I've got a couple of them on the way to me at the moment, I ordered two as I thought I'd buy my Mum one too as she'd mentioned her DVD player died recently and this seemed ideal for the price.

From what what I've read about them the only likely problem (apart from the problems Spatial mentioned seemed to be unusual) is the problems that you'd normally get with budget Chinese hardware such as this. It's more than a bit ugly, it may not last as long as you'd like and it'll have more than likely been built by a load of Chinese seven year olds that are stored in a cage...but for £58 I'm willing to give it a go.

I'd been planning on either buying an Oppo or a US PS3 as I really wanted access to the Criterion Collection but for £58 I'm more than willing to take a gamble with this.

[teddymeow]

My sarcasm meter's wonky this evening but I get the feeling you're mocking me.

I'm serious. The reason I haven't bought a standalone player is because I thought the PS3 was supposed to be "up there" with the better BR players. Maybe it's just it's ease of updating that makes it so good?

I'll have to check out this F&H player.

[NekoFever]

Wow. I had no idea there'd be any difference in BR players, given it's all digital.

It's all digital on DVD, CD and MP3, but there's still a massive variance in quality of players. The files are stored and encoded digitally on the disc so what you put into different players is identical, but once it's in there it's at the mercy of the hardware's processing, implementation of the codecs, etc.

I don't know where this misconception that all BD players are identical in terms of AV quality has come from because it seems really common but the fundamental technology of Blu-ray is exactly the same as DVD.

[Spatial]

I'm serious.

Sorry, that was in replay to Matt Chainsaw not you - I wasn't sure from the tone of his post if he was being quite serious or not.

I was posting on the phone which took a while and didn't see your post.

[teddymeow]

Oops, my bad.

[Spatial]

No, entirely my fault I should have quoted him when I replied to avoid any confusion.

Christ, it's far too civil on this forum. If this was anywhere else we'd be cussing each other out by now

[JP]

For people looking for any more info on the H&K blu ray player, HMV also stuck a different badge on it and called it a Limit BD-M100. There's probably a few others out there too and if you can find them they may even be a little bit cheaper than the ?57:99 H&K.

[TonyDA]

For simple multi-region Blu-Ray playback, is there any reason to spend the extra £180 on an Oppo 83, as opposed to an Oppo 80?

[NekoFever]

For simple multi-region Blu-Ray playback, is there any reason to spend the extra ?180 on an Oppo 83, as opposed to an Oppo 80?

Not really for Blu-ray. The big benefits of the 83 come when upscaling DVDs, and the 80 is more than adequate at that on all but the biggest screens. I'm on a 42" TV and it looks better than my old Pioneer DVD player.

I recommend this review, where he goes into some of the differences.

[TonyDA]

Great, thanks for that. At the moment, I only want a new player for blu-ray playback. I so rarely play dvds that quality of upscaling isn't very important. Main issue for me is having the access to US and UK discs - as I've had a US PS3 player for the past 18 months, all my discs are US, and quite a few are locked.

[dvdx2]

It's all digital on DVD, CD and MP3, but there's still a massive variance in quality of players. The files are stored and encoded digitally on the disc so what you put into different players is identical, but once it's in there it's at the mercy of the hardware's processing, implementation of the codecs, etc.

I don't know where this misconception that all BD players are identical in terms of AV quality has come from because it seems really common but the fundamental technology of Blu-ray is exactly the same as DVD.

I have sony BD360 and a ps3 - can you recommend a blu ray player that will out perform these on image quality?

[Matt]

Sorry, that was in replay to Matt Chainsaw not you - I wasn't sure from the tone of his post if he was being quite serious or not.

I was posting on the phone which took a while and didn't see your post.

No mate, I was being serious. I had NO idea, I thought the PS3 was meant to be a great player.

Now, I know DVD and CD players can offer a wide difference in quality, but I thought it was different with BR players as HDMI is digital, unlike say a CD player where you go to analogue very early in the pipeline.

I'm interested in what Lyris has to say on this, if he pops into this thread.

[NekoFever]

As far as I've heard, the PS3 is a good player. It certainly performs better as a BD player than the PS2 did for DVDs, and it's unparalleled for support via updates - you won't find any other players from 2006 that have been updated through BD 1.1 and 2.0 and are getting a 3D update.

I never had any complaints about the video quality of mine, and the decision to get a standalone was more down to the lack of certain frills like analogue audio outs, bitstreamed HD audio, quieter operation, multiregion, etc.

Back on the all-digital thing, it's true that there are fewer analogue steps for the video at least, but the player still does the decoding and takes it from a video file encoded on the disc in MPEG-4 or whatever to an uncompressed stream that your TV can understand. Different hardware will do this differently and any processing done to the video is going to change the output.

The difference between the best and the worst BD player probably isn't as big as the best and worst DVD player just because the video source is cleaner in the first place and so less processing is needed, but it's still there.

[Matt]

I'm finding this really interesting.

Does anyone know what stages in the pipeline are analogue? I've been thinking about this, and best I can tell, there is no analogue until the image leaves the LCD / plasma panel as lightwaves. I assumed HDMI sent the image as bits rather than a waveform.

Given that, I don't see how a BR player could be better than the PS3. We're talking codecs, and unencoding is a case of both codec and processing power. The PS3 will be far more powerful than any other BR player I'd imagine. So that leaves codecs, and the PS3 can be updated with the latest advances if someone works out a slight improvement in any of them. You can get variations in decoding codecs, but it's very slight and as the PS3 is fully upgradeable, no reason it can't keep up.

I'd really like a professional opinion on this. Spatial says this player is far more vibrant, but is that because it's artificially bumping up the colour dynamics? Like some people prefer the game colours of the 360 over the PS3.

I'm looking for an answer on this, as of course I want the best I can afford for my home setup. £58 is a bargain, even if it's just for a multi region BR player, but right now it's not something I really need (only have the Die Hard set as Region A only). However, if this player really does enhance the image as much as Spatial says, it's a no brainer for me

[Escape-To-88]

My PS3 picture is very, very dark and looses [sic] a hell of a load of detail but with this it's all a lot more vibrant and with a greater depth of colour reproduction. I put The Dark Knight in as a test when I got it and ended up watching over an hour with my jaw on the floor - I was amazed at how much detail I'd been missing (and means I have to revisit most of my Blu-ray collection as a result).

While my PS3 isn't super dark it is a slightly darker image to that of my 360's HD-DVD drive. I haven't had a proper play with the player yet as I'm away, but am keen to do some upscaling comparisons. Particularly between the PS3 and the £58 player - mainly the Japanese DVD version of the Kill Bill flicks and the U.K blu-ray. As, while the JP one's play on my 360, they look horrible due to the NTSC signal which results in a lot of colour bleed and motion judder.

I have a projector so used to watching pics at 60-70". If anyone wants me to, and doesn't mind waiting a week until I get back home, I can try and get some comparisons between the cheapy Foehn and the PS3 regarding upscaling and BR playback. I set up my systems using a range of test discs and patterns so should get a decent comparison, IF I can source a decent camera

I think the PS3 is an excellent upscaler, but as ever it depends on the tranfer. Case in point my Criterion 'Fear and Loathing...' looks easily as good as the 360's HD-DVD version. It's very difficult to tell them apart and that's with a 60" image!

I guess the one advantage the PS3 has over the cheap player is that it gets firmware updates, and also that it can recieve wirelessly, as my router is in my attic room on the fourth floor!

I'd been planning on either buying an Oppo or a US PS3 as I really wanted access to the Criterion Collection but for £58 I'm more than willing to take a gamble with this.

The main reason I got one for fifty-eight bones was similar. I have a U.S Ps3 and got fed up of waiting for some decent foreign movies to be released in the States namely Mesrine, Che, The Vengeance Trilogy etc. etc.