Peculiarities of the Samsung Blu-ray player (1 Viewer)

[Ed St. Clair]

It's REALLY messed up that BD is ONLY reviewable on a defective playback device. It's made many pile on Blu & we all may be eating crow soon.
When does the chip fix come for those that purchased players already?
When is the date that player have been fixed?

Rachael,
How much could you get right now for your D-VHS collection??? :-0
Are prices falling now that HD discs are out?
Maybe a Sammy upgraded will get you on the BD bandwagon!!! ;-)

 

[RobertR]

 

[Rachael B]

I have no intention of selling my tapes. I watched Galaxy Quest on D-Theater last night. I could name my price on some of them like Alien and Mulholland Drive. That could change? I don't care. I bought them to watch not to speculate on. I like the formatvery much and I make my own 1080i & 480i tapes. The 480i tapes look better than DVD-R's too. Content is the word.

I think better software will make me happy with Blu. If the format goes anyplace, I'll buy a better player later.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Big Cat,
Good to know your not out to make money on this hobby. ;-)
Cause, this hobby only 'takes' money!
Just, would you sooner or later replace D-VHS titles on HD disc?
Or, would you keep both formats?
Are prices falling for D-VHS titles?

Hope Samsung is able to fix your, and everyone else's, player.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Hi RobertR,
You "doubt it", that fixing the player will improve PQ?
Would you say that the PQ of the Samsung will stay the same or be worse, after the fix?
If the Blu titles are messed up, the Blu titles are messed up, I agree with you & the poster on that.
However the Perfect Vision found a problem with playback, Samsung said there is a problem with playback, & the chip maker is fixing the problem with playback. That tells me there is a problem with playback.

Even if NOTHING changes with Blu-it titles (to use your words; doubt it), I believe the playback of SD DVD will improve. Hope this problem is fixed fast!!!

 

[RobertR]

Sharpness may improve, but only slightly, according to the person I quoted. Noise may be worse. That doesn’t sound like anyone will eat crow about BD PQ.

 

[Rachael B]

Ed, the really rare D-Theater titles sell for really high prices. I have all the rare ones except Bourne, which is the rarest one. I preordered it at 3 places and never got a copy. Folks think maybe only a hundred or two got made. Mulholland Drive and Alien are very sought for. There's a thread over on AVS about trying to buy Mulholland and it apparently sells for $150-$250. It may never come out on HD again, or maybe not for a long time...? Some of the other titles may be a long time coming back. I don't buy D-Theater tapes anymore. I make my own tapes at this point.

I have no intention of selling or replacing my tapes. I jumped on the U-571 HD-DVD to compare to my tape. I got T2 on BD to compare to the tape. In both cases they were relatively equal to their tape. If a tape ever breaks or develops severe prolems, then I'd replace it. I'm very happy with the tapes nearly all. I stille have 2 I have not watched. I have Evolution out to watch and I have not taken the shrinkwrap off of Fight Club yet.

I'll use D-VHS till I don't have any decks left working.

I wonder if the Samsung players running the demo disc at Busted Buy has these fixes or just cheater software, my bet??? The clips off 50 First Dates and Ultrviolet in no way look like the actual discs! I think it's the software that's F'ed!

I think Sony should of participated in D-Theater. Then they'd have some idea of what it takes to release good HD. I predict them and Disney will bring up the rear of quality for quite some time due to cheapness and inexperience.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RobertR,

Spears at AVS confirmed that the noise filtering in the Samsung also affects the component output. So all video outputs of the Sammy are currently compromised.

There won't be more "noise" in the fixed Sammy, there will be more natural film detail including film-grain. That's really what the Sammy is filtering out. The Sammy's noise algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to filter out MPEG noise like mosquito crawl so it proabably isn't even helping with "bad" noise at all... just "good" noise like natural film information! Grrr.

 

[RobertR]

So the DNR filter was put on a setting that deliberately kills detail, including film grain? Why? Didn't they think they were solving some problems with the picture by setting it that way? Or were they so astoundingly incompetent that they had no idea of the effects?

 

[Michael Osadciw]

who knows...Robert, who knows...maybe they weren't aware that when these chips were shipped to them to be put in the players it came with a factory default setting of "on" when it was intended to be "off" ...could be the case, you never know!!

Mike

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I would not say "deliberately". Just a mistake was made.
A BIG 1!!!
So the chip remains the same, just the setting is changed.

Unless Blu Blu-it with a ton of noise, everyone should be able to enjoy a much less 'BLUred' picture.

I also think BD titles will improve with 50/advanced codec transfers.
So your right about these not being "the best BD can be", however things should improve to the point of people (me) not making jokes about the transfers.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RobertR,

The Samsung design crew had no idea this setting was enabled (by default it seems) on the processing chip they were using. It came as a surprise to them after the players were in the stores!

 

[RobertR]

This is utterly astounding to me. You mean the player was designed and built and prepared for mass production AND produced without ANYONE in the entire company bothering to see what kind of PQ it had at ANY stage in the process (and thereby saying "hmmm...PQ seems rather soft") ALL the way to where it went out the door to stores??? That defies credulity (and logic).

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RobertR,

On the one hand, I agree with what you're saying. And I'm sure that there was some sort of QC but maybe that assumed the softness was in the BD discs themselves. The softness affects different titles differently... probably because the "noisier" the image the softer the result. In any case, had they watched Underworld they might not have noticed any problem at all (that looked pretty sharp/detailed).

Keep in mind the context here: regarding HD DVD, the Toshiba player came to market not being able to provide true 720P output (first down-samples to 480P then back up to 720P) and that there were many un-programmed buttons on the remote that caused the A1 to lock-up when pushed.

These are first-gen products that were produced with no format experience, no format history, and just a few test-discs to ensure proper opperation.

Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't found more problems than this!

 

[RobertR]

So the Samsung engineers said "yeah, the format looks soft, this is what we'll go with"? It still sounds very, very weird to me, David. I mean, here you have this Genesis chip in the player at a stage where it would be obvious to the engineers that it could hugely affect the PQ, and nobody thought "hmmmm, let's view the PQ with and without the chip.....let's ask Genesis what the default modes are....let's ask Genesis what it's supposed to DO to the picture...

I'm an engineer, and we LOVE to tweak things and do what-if stuff, see if we can make things better, see what makes things worse, etc. Even if a player isn't completely bug free, shouldn't PQ have been the top priority?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Robert,

the difference isn't huge... many enthusiasts will probably notice a subtle gain in detail with the setting properly fixed. And Like I said, some BD titles (like Underworld) look sharp and detailed even with the noise reduction setting in place.

Were the Samsung techs waching their player on a 100" projection screen? Probably not. Given the horrid source material from Sony that they had to work with, i'm not too surprised they didn't catch this.

Remember... Toshiba is making *both* players and is behind their format... they *know* what those discs are supposed to look like (and have direct assistance from microsoft tweaking all the way). Sammy is just a company making a player!

-dave

 

[RobertR]

Thanks for the post, David. I appreciate your comments on the Samsung bug in the AVS thread as well. What I’m hearing from you is that fixing this won’t really “fix” any titles, just make bad looking titles look “not quite as bad”. Studios still need to get their act together with what they put out.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Thanks RobertR,

that's my theory! Most of these BD titles (especially sony's) have more problems than just some softness... so I can't imagine picture-perfect miracles springing forth from the same discs once the Sammy firmware has been updated...

 

[Michael Osadciw]

As I've posted at AVS, I've never been a fan of Sony titles. Their DVDs have never been up to par with Fox or Warner. This is showing with Blu-ray titles. Once more studios start releasing on Blu-ray (the hope is) they will improve.

Mike

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I think it was more like they designed the product based on all components working/setup properly. It was MANUFACTURED will the chip set wrong/improperly.
So, as DaViD posted, QC, not design.
The unit was NOT designed to preform how it now does.
Not engineering, so your brethren are off the hook!!! ;-)