Certainly, you folks have seen the news from this week's Consumer Electronics Show about Warner Bros.
siding with Blu-ray, but the real name of CES is hardware--which Blu-ray has made
its own splashes in as well. But while pouring over countless player
announcements this week, it’s easy to get confused--BD Live? High-def audio codecs? Why do these
players seem to be so wildly different from each other?

For the most part, the difference is in audio. Though all
Blu-ray discs and players support surround sound, players do not all come with
internal support for advanced audio codecs like Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby
TrueHD, and DTS HD.  These features usually aren’t found on less expensive
players. But the higher picture quality of Blu-ray is only one of the advantages
over standard DVD; these optional audio features increase surround sound
capabilities from 5.1 to 7.1, and some add the benefit of lossless
(uncompressed) surround sound. What’s more, these formats typically require an
HDMI 1.3 connection.

If you buy a player that only delivers bitstream (optical,
coaxial) output, you may not always be able to take advantage of superior audio
codecs, unless you have a high-end receiver that supports the decoding of the
bitstream.  Even if you have a receiver that can handle the decoding, if
you plan on watching the picture-in-picture features that the new players
support, the bitstream--only players deliver standard- quality Dolby Digital or
DTS when PIP is activated.  Players with internal decoding can still
output high resolution audio during PIP. In the end, the right Blu-ray player
for you will match up with your surround sound setup and accompanying receiver.
If this all sounds Greek to you, stick with a lower-tier player, but to make
the most of your surround sound investment, read your player’s specs and make
sure they match your living room’s setup.

All of this year’s new players (and any other new ones going
forward) support Bonus View, also known as Final Standard Profile or Profile
1.1.  This means that they can support PIP. The only Blu-ray players on
the market that support this right now are the Sony PlayStation 3, the
Panasonic DMP-BD30, and the Samsung BD-UP5000 combo player.  If you want to
have full feature support for the new titles, make sure you buy one of these
players, or wait for one of this year’s many new models from the likes of
Philips, Sharp and others. Otherwise, newer movies will still work by default
on an older player, but some of their bonus features may not play. BD Live,
meanwhile, is yet another spec of Blu-ray (also known as Profile 2.0). This
spec requires more memory and a mandatory Internet connection--designed to
allow you to download special, movie-specific content to your player--but it
has yet to see much support from either movies or hardware. In other words, don't fret over BD Live. --Adam

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