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Samsung BD-P1400 is cheapest Blu-ray Disc player yet

Mimicking the  way HD DVD players hit new rock bottom prices with sudden, unannounced sales, Blu-ray Disc hardware is at a never before seen level of affordability.

Retailers such as Amazon, Circuit City and Best Buy - as reported by High-Def Digest - are all listing the Samsung BD-P1400 at prices below $300 – representing a $200 break from the original list price of $499.

Besides the sale price temporarily bringing down the cost of Blu-ray Disc hardware for the holiday season, the Samsung BD-P1400 also carries the distinction of being the first player to support DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, according to High-Def Digest.

Like Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless compression scheme that is able to provide audio quality on par with PCM tracks but at the expense of less storage. Players without DTS-HD Master Audio support are able to extract a lower-quality 1.5 Mbps core stream.

Despite the drop to $299, HD DVD still hangs on to its reputation for being the more affordable technology. Even with the prices back up from $99, the entry level Toshiba HD-A3 is still $100 less on Amazon than the Samsung BD-P1400.

There is more to the story than just hardware prices, though, as even with more expensive hardware, Blu-ray Disc leads the way in movie title sales.

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Also..
By lopri on 12/10/2007 5:38:01 AM , Rating: 2
Noticed that Amazon now clearly states "Toshiba HD-A3 720p/1080i HD DVD Player". I almost purchased one in the past thinking it's capable of 1080p.

It was definitely confusing/misleading in the past when I couldn't easily tell whether it's 1080p. I wouldn't pay $200 for a 1080i player, either. If one were to purchase a HD-DVD player, invest $50~$100 more and purchase a 1080p-capable player.

(And before anyone says anything about 1080i vs 1080p: Yes, I have a 52"/1080p/120Hz LCD TV and can tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p. Ask yourself how you'd feel after you had purchased a 720p/1080i TV, thinking it was a 1080p.)




RE: Also..
By regnez on 12/10/2007 6:03:51 AM , Rating: 5
If one were to purchase a HD-DVD player, invest $50~$100 more and purchase a 1080p-capable player.

That would not make much sense if your television could only do 720p/1080i.

My parents have an older Sony HDTV which can do 1080i at best, so as a Christmas gift I purchased them the HD-A3. With the deal Amazon had awhile back, I ended up with 12 HD-DVDs (2 in the box, 5 from Amazon, 5 from mail-in rebate) and the player for $199, with no shipping or tax.

Just because you are not in the market for a certain item does not mean there is no market for it.


RE: Also..
By FITCamaro on 12/10/2007 6:47:20 AM , Rating: 3
Well said.

And the vast majority of people cannot tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p. Plus with an LCD or Plasma television, a 1080i signal is already being converted by the display to 1080p. If you have a good chip in the TV, it will convert the image fast enough to where there is absolutely no difference between a native 1080p signal and the 1080i one.


RE: Also..
By drivendriver on 12/10/2007 7:57:17 AM , Rating: 1
No matter how good your de-interlacer is, de-interlaced 1080i is not identical to 1080p. In some cases you may not be able to tell the difference between the two, but claiming that "there is absolutely no difference" or that "a 1080i signal is already being converted by the display to 1080p" is simply inaccurate.

Each interlaced frame contains two fields sampled at different points in time. De-interlacing produces a single image by combining two fields captured at different points in time. When this is not done properly, it produces noticeable artifacts and.

In contrast, a non-interlaced (progressive) frame is entirely sampled at a single point in time.


RE: Also..
By therealnickdanger on 12/10/2007 8:32:28 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
No matter how good your de-interlacer is...

quote:
When this is not done properly...

The fact is that it CAN be done properly. For the majority of folks out there that own a "1080i LCD", they won't know or care as to the difference. I personally think it's retarded of Toshiba to even offer non-1080p products in a market this competitive, I think it will sting them later, despite the ignorance of the masses.


RE: Also..
By masher2 (blog) on 12/10/2007 11:06:48 AM , Rating: 5
> "de-interlaced 1080i is not identical to 1080p...Each interlaced frame contains two fields sampled at different points in time"

Incorrect. You've confused on-disc video with OTA (broadcast) video. While what you say is true for OTA, but video encoded on disc is stored with matching time indices. A 1080i version of this is simple two "half-frames", which can be recombined using a simple weave operation, to yield the original 1080p signal. Bit-identical. The only time this isn't true is if your display attempts to do something incorrect with the signal, such as discarding half the info and bobbing to line double.

In fact, the chipset for all original BD 1080p players pull the video off in 1080i anyway, then deinterlace to generate a 1080p output signal.


RE: Also..
By MrPickins on 12/10/2007 4:22:21 PM , Rating: 2
Excellent info. It can't be repeated enough.

I'd 6 you if I could.


RE: Also..
By blaster5k on 12/10/2007 5:04:18 PM , Rating: 2
An excellent explanation. It's unfortunate that most people aren't very educated on the differences between 1080i and 1080p.


RE: Also..
By mcnabney on 12/10/2007 8:04:50 PM , Rating: 2
There is also no such thing as a 1080i LCD. LCDs have a single native, progressive, resolution. You may send it a 1080i, 420p, or whatever resolution and the TV will convert the resolution to the display's native resolution. Whether that looks like ass is up to the viewer. VHS looks horrifying on a panel.
A good 1080p TV will convert 1080i signals and look identical to 1080p. Until there is movement. That is where the media to screen progressive resolution really shines.


RE: Also..
By Gio6518 on 12/11/2007 12:00:47 AM , Rating: 1
absolutely correct

you notice a large difference between 720p (or as the people here call it 1080i)
depending on the size of the TV and the viewing distance


RE: Also..
By masher2 (blog) on 12/11/2007 1:17:46 AM , Rating: 3
> "A good 1080p TV will convert 1080i signals and look identical to 1080p. Until there is movement"

No, you're still not seeing the effect matching time indices has on the source signal. When viewing interlaced material captured by a TV camera (such as most OTA HD broadcasts), each half-frame is captured at differing points in time. So deinterlacing introduced artifacting, as the fields may not precisely match up.

But material on HD disc is progressive by nature. When its interlaced, each frame is simply "cut in half". The time indices between fields of each half-frame match. Perfectly. A weave operation therefore recreates the original progressive source. There is no temporal artifacting created in this case.

In fact, a time-synced 1080i signal at 48 hz (or some multiple thereof) will actually be superior to a 1080p@30 signal. The "interlaced" doesn't affect the quality at all in this case, and the frame rate means you don't get the judder introduced by the 3:2 pulldown process.


RE: Also..
By Chaser on 12/10/07, Rating: -1
RE: Also..
By Chaser on 12/10/2007 8:32:55 AM , Rating: 1
540. and I can't do simple subtraction. But to add onto that in most cases 720P can actually look better than 1080I. As it contains almost 200 more scanned lines without interlacing tricks.


RE: Also..
By therealnickdanger on 12/10/2007 8:47:21 AM , Rating: 4
Chaser,

1080i is still 1080 lines, but it is two sets of 520 (even and odd lines) displayed at twice the speed of 1080p. When the source material is interlaced properly (by the player) and then the display or VP deinterlaces properly, it really is no different than 1080p. Incongruity between the equipment or poor techniques - which are more common on budget products - will cause visual artifacts.

I'll bet you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference between 1080p and 1080i on my FHD1 or my bud's 6010 Kuro. 1080i-->1080p usually looks softer than "true 1080p", but a lot of that can be fixed with tweaking. The highest-quality 1080i sources I have access to are OTA, so it's not as good as HD-DVD/BD anyway, so I can't really make a fair comparison. Again, we're talking about a realm that Joe Everyman doesn't know or care about.


RE: Also..
By therealnickdanger on 12/10/2007 8:47:51 AM , Rating: 2
Haha, I fell into your trap as well. 520-->540


RE: Also..
By Chaser on 12/10/07, Rating: -1
RE: Also..
By mruffin75 on 12/10/2007 9:48:06 AM , Rating: 4
quote:
But 1080P is twice the resolution of 1080I. A term like "twice the speed" might sound better but that speed is displaying "twice as less" pixels on the screen, therefore to be more accurate 1080i could/should almost be called 540I.


There is no difference in resolution. 1080i has exactly the same amount of pixels as 1080p. The difference is that they are shown on alternating frames (Note they are not showing the *same* pixels twice...but different ones). This is not as geek-satisfying as 1080p, but for someone to say it's 540 lines is absolutely horridly wrong.

This seems to be a common misconception.


RE: Also..
By Locutus465 on 12/10/2007 9:53:23 AM , Rating: 2
Frankely I would have been happier if this player supported Profile 1.1 at 1080i, but that's just me.


RE: Also..
By omnicronx on 12/10/2007 10:01:57 AM , Rating: 4
quote:
This is not as geek-satisfying as 1080p, but for someone to say it's 540 lines is absolutely horridly wrong.
Bingo, no frames are being altered, and the TV still ends up receiving the same resolution. People think 1080i is somehow missing information, when in fact the source is still the same (1080p). And to be fair, although 1080p only runs at 24 frames, 1080i/60 actually requires more space because of the ext