TV & Home Cinema

TV Is Changing at Warp Speed

In an increasingly media saturated culture, you might assume the number of households with televisions would be on the rise. But according to the folks at Nielsen, TV households dropped from 115.9 million during the 2010-2011 season to 114.7 million the following year. At first glance, it seems that people are simply watching less television, but perhaps the state of TV is actually changing.

There are a number of factors at play here, from the diminishing impact of network channels, to the new formats available to TV consumers. Basic cable and satellite packages run consumers about $30 a month, as noted on http://www.directtvdeal.com, while a streaming option like Netflix offers a range of TV and film content for $8 per month. As with the smartphone revolution that preceded it, it appears that the way we view and pay for TV is changing quickly.

Samsung brings a touch of the High St to Smart TV

Samsung Electronics Co. UK Ltd, the UK’s number one TV brand with the most awarded TV range, today announces British retailer, Marks & Spencer (M&S), as the first UK retail partner to create an App for Samsung Smart TVs.
The new App which is available to download from Samsung’s Smart TV App store, Samsung Apps today and developed in collaboration with the multichannel video agency Adjust Your Set, will give viewers access to the latest in high street trends as well as tips on lifestyle, food, fashion and technology all from the comfort of their living room.
Viewers interested in fashion and home trends, advice on selecting the perfect wine, beauty tips or recipes, will be able to switch straight to the M&S Smart TV App on the biggest and brightest screen in the house.
Guy Kinnell, Marketing Director for TV, Samsung UK comments:  “The development of the M&S Smart TV App highlights the popularity of Smart TV as the most immersive and interactive format for consumers.

LG OLED TVs to grow to 31″!

While 31″ is positively monitor-like in the ever growing world of LCD and Plasma display technology, 31″ in OLED terms is a minor miracle.  The forever next-big-thing display technology has, until now, been strictly portable TV sizes – Sony’s 11″ XEL-1 being the most prominent and expensive example, although Samsung has previously displayed a 31″ device a couple of years ago at a trade show.  As of yet though, no commercially available model has left the Korean’s factory.  AMOLED has of course risen in prominence with its inclusion on HTC’s Legend and Desire handsets as well as the Super AMOLED variant appearing on Samsung’s higher devices, and has noticeably better contrast do to it’s local illumination switching per pixel.  For some time OLED screens have been hampered by issues with certain parts of their RGB spectrum expiring before the others but manufacturers believe this is becoming a thing of the past so while LG does not yet have a release date or price, it does show that the technology is viable for larger panels and could be on its way to a front room near you soon.

Posted by: Ian

Panasonic announces DivX portable Blu-ray player

Well if this gadget doesn’t fall in to the ‘I want one of those’ category I don’t know what does! In the press release we received last night, DivX and Panasonic jointly announced the worlds first DivX certified portable Blu-ray player. Now personally I love watching films on Blu-ray so I definitely want to get my hands on one of these to review!

DivX, Inc. and Panasonic Corporation today announced the launch of the world’s first DivX Certified® portable Blu-ray Disc player. Available now in the United States, Canada, France and Australia, and soon in the rest of the world, the portable Panasonic DMP-B15 joins Panasonic’s growing list of DivX Certified stand alone Blu-ray players, enabling consumers to enjoy DivX videos when they are at home or on the go.

The DMP-B15 incorporates the DivX Certified LSI “UniPhier®” integrated multimedia chip platform for high-quality DivX video playback and possesses all the functionality of Panasonic’s stand alone Blu-ray players, including extensive visual, audio and network features. Its portability is enhanced by DivX compression technology which enables over six hours of high-quality DivX video to fit on just one DVD without sacrificing visual quality. The DMP-B15 can also be connected to an HDTV or used as a stand alone Blu-ray disc player.

“As the pioneer in the development of DVD and Blu-ray technologies, we are pleased to bring the first portable Blu-ray player to market with DivX Certified video playback,” said Kazuhiko Nakamura, Group Manager of Product Technology, Video Business Unit, Network Business Group, Panasonic AVC Networks Company, Panasonic Corporation. “DivX Certification enables us to offer added value to our customer base by enhancing their viewing experience and providing them with true portability of their high-quality DivX videos on innovative Panasonic products.”

A wide range of Panasonic products have received DivX Certification, with portable and stand alone Blu-ray players being the most recent additions to a list that includes HDTVs, DVD players, and in-car players. “The Blu-ray Disc player market is significant and growing, accounting for 9 percent of the total stand alone player market in 2009, up from just over 5 percent in 2008,” said Sheri Greenspan, senior consumer analyst for iSuppli Corp.

“This is truly a landmark product that will fuel the growth of the Blu-ray market and extend the reach of our high-quality DivX video ecosystem,” said Kevin Hell, Chief Executive Officer of DivX, Inc. “New products, such as this one, enable consumers to enjoy the DivX video experience seamlessly, anytime, anywhere. We look forward to expanding our business relationship with Panasonic as they continue to innovate and develop the latest in consumer electronics.”

Products that bear the DivX Certified logo have undergone a rigorous testing program to ensure a high-quality DivX media experience, including reliable video creation and playback, interoperability with other DivX Certified devices and the visual quality users expect from DivX.

For more information about Panasonic visit http://www.panasonic.com.
For more information about DivX video, visit www.divx.com.

Posted by: Matt

Sony BDP-S5000ES Blu-ray player review

The Sony BDP-S5000ES is a Blu-Ray player that sits at the upper end of the price range.

Touted as being their "top-of-the-line Blu-ray Disc player" – can it live up to that description ?

What’s in the box?

• the player itself
• remote control and batteries
• composite AV cable
• Sony USB memory card
• power cable (the power cable in our test unit was a european 2 pin, but I’d fully expect the final product to have correct region specific plugs)

Personally I would have thought that a product like this would at least warrant an HDMI cable thrown in.

Sony BDP-S5000ES Specification:

• Weights and Measurements
  – Dimensions (Approx.) : 17" x 4.92" x 14.37" (430 × 125 × 365mm)
  – Weight (Approx.) : 22lbs (10.0kg)
• Video
  – Video Digital-to-Analog Converter : 1080i, 720p: 14 bit/296 MHz (HD); 480i, 480p; 14 bit/216 MHz (SD)
  – HD Reality Enhancer : Yes
  – Precision Cinema HD Upscale : Yes
  – Super Bit Mapping : Yes
• Audio Features
  – Dolby® : Built in Decoder & Bit-Stream (via HDMI and Coaxial and Optical) output
  – Dolby® Digital plus Decoding : Built in Decoder & Bit-Stream (via HDMI) output
  – Dolby® TrueHD Decoding : Built in Decoder & Bit-Stream (via HDMI) output
  – dts® Decoding : Built in Decoder & Bit-Stream (via HDMI and Coaxial and Optical) output
  – dts®-HD Decoding : Built in Decoder & Bit-Stream (via HDMI) output
  – LPCM : 2ch & 6 Ch (192kHz/96kHz/48kHz); 8 ch (96kHz/48kHz) output; 2ch (96kHz/24bit) over Coaxial & Optical
  – Individual Speaker Setting : Large/Small; Existence or Nonexistence; Distance

General

As you look at the player you can see that Sony has gone for a fairly clean design – with just 5 buttons – Power, Eject, Play, Pause and Stop.

There are indicator LED’s above the play and pause buttons, and 3 additional indicator LED’s to denote when certain modes are on (24P mode, HD Audio and SBM[super Bit Mapping]).

Plus the actual display itself of course 😀

Round the back you have more connections than you could shake a stick at. If you look at the full resolution image you can see them all clearly labelled. Pretty much every video and audio connector you would want. The only connection I could think of that wasn’t on there was SCART, but as that’s a European format that is not HD capable I didn’t see that as much of a loss.

The XMB (Cross Media Bar) in action

Highlights

• very good picture and sound quality
• remote illuminates at the touch of a button
• ability to dim and even disable the illuminations on the front of the player
• upgradable firmware

Lowlights

• price
• no HDMI cable supplied
• slow loading

Review

The very first impression you have when you get the box is that it weighs more than you’d expect. As you can see in the specifications above, the BDP-S5000ES weighs in at 10kg – this along with its size means that it is going to need a bit of space on a reasonably sturdy shelf.

Initially I hooked the player up to a 28inch Sony Bravia.

Once everything is setup and you start the player you are walked through a quick-setup that will get you up and running – you can always tinker with any of the settings again later.

I just want to take a moment to mention a feature on the remote that I find useful – the backlight button. Dead useful when you’ve darkened the room to enjoy the movie and then want to find the pause button.

So now I was setup I had a quick wander around the player’s interface menu.

It’s very similar to the PS3’s XMB (cross media bar) – you select the main area, which offers dropdowns, which in turn can offer sub-options etc. All very nice though with the remote I had it would sometimes double-jump, taking a keypress twice instead of just the once, which lead to a little frustration (again this might just be the test unit we had, but I wanted to mention it).

As you look through all the options it becomes obvious that you can tweak just about anything you want to, there are options in there that I’ve never seen before.

My favourite option was the ability to dim or even disable the illuminations on the front of the player. What you may not realise from the photos above is that the slot for the Blu-ray is illuminated, so that along with the 5 coloured LED’s and the display on the front was very distracting to me in a dark room – a very nice option that I wish more companies would include on their electronics.

And whilst the player can easily handle photo-CD’s and audio CD’s, the main reason for the player is its Blu-Ray playback. So let’s take a look.

Initially I’d connected up with the supplied composite cables (well they included them) and I put in a Blu-ray.

And I have to say I was a little surprised, on first inserting the disc I was greeted with a message that told me that loading of the Blu-ray could take 2-3 minutes. Pardon? The video format of the future takes how long to load ?

This lead me to my second discovery about Blu-ray players – they have loader animations (similar to the hourglass in Windows) between ‘chapters’ – don’t worry this doesn’t happen mid movie, just as you move from one area of the disc to another, like from a menu to the movie or back.

In the end it didn’t take that long to load, but it was a noticeable period – and then I was into the trailers (on a side rant, why do movie companies insist on putting trailers at the front of the disc instead of just letting me get to the movie I’ve paid for? Put them in as additional content and I can watch them IF I want to). Several frustrated clicks of remote later I got to the main menu, started the film and was totally under whelmed by the picture.

Which is what I was expecting from a composite cable. I really don’t understand why it’s in the box, supplying a composite cable with a player of this quality seems like madness, especially when you consider that there’s no HDMI cable provided!

So then I powered down and connected up an HDMI cable I’d borrowed.

Powering back up I went into the settings and changed the video output to 1080i (the highest this particular TV could achieve).

And I started the Blu-ray again, after waiting and clicking and finally getting into the movie, I could now see the sharpness that was missing with composite cable. OK, cool – I can actually see what Blu-ray is offering a sharper picture on HD TV’s.

So now I tried a DVD of the same movie so that I could compare the sharpness between an upscaled DVD and a Blu-ray.

Once settled back on the sofa, Whilst I had a general feeling that the Blu-ray was sharper, I could definitely live with the upscaled DVD – and I could get an upscaling DVD player for a lot less than the Blu-ray player.

Unconvinced by Blu-ray I decided to try it on a friends larger TV.

This time it was connected up to a 50" Panasonic Plasma (very nice).

Again I was connecting up with the HDMI cable, but now I could switch the player into full 1080p mode. So now I was able to see the ‘full HD’ capabilities of Blu-ray. And there is no question that on a large screen in 1080p, Blu-ray is noticeably sharper than an upscaled DVD.

We took a couple of photos to show the difference (not quite the same exact video frame, but you’ll get the idea)

Upscaled DVD on the left, Blu-ray image on the right (click to enlarge)

So having agreed about the differences between upscaling and Blu-ray, and seeing the PS3 under the plasma, I was curious how the PS3 stacks up against the BDP-S5000ES.

The first thing to say is that as we’d been setting up the BDP-S5000ES I’d mentioned some of the things I’d observed on my TV and when I mentioned loader screens I was greeted by blank stares. After inserting the Blu-ray into the PS3 I understood why – it loads a LOT quicker than the BDP-S5000ES, to the point where the loader animations barely appeared before they were replaced by the video after.

So PS3 loads quicker. How does its picture compare?

Personally I preferred the PS3’s picture, banding seemed less noticeable and black and white footage didn’t seem to get colour tinged the way it was on the dedicated player.

I think that the picture on the BDP-S5000ES was slightly sharper, but that’s more of a feeling than anything we measured – we all agreed that both were very watchable.

Conclusion

So if you have a large enough TV that is capable of full 1080p HD playback then you will notice the difference between upscaled DVD’s and Blu-ray’s.

Coming back to Sony’s tagline of "top-of-the-line Blu-ray Disc player" – whilst I’m sure that video and audio philes everywhere will have flame wars about this one, if it were my money I’d get a PS3 and a whole load of movies and games with the change.

That said, it’s a personal choice and with the firmware being upgradable it might be that future improvements to the BDP-S5000ES would change my mind.

Review by: Iain