Buy Samsung HT-J5500W 5.1 Channel 1000-Watt 3D Blu-Ray Home Theater System (2015 Model): Home Theater Systems - Amazon.com FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases. LG BD3. 90: Network Blu- ray Disc. In order to get the best possible experience our LG. COM website please follow below instructions. If you’re using Internet Explorer 8 or earlier, you will need to use an alternate browser such as Firefox or Chrome or upgrade to a newer version of internet Explorer (IE9 or greater). If you’re using Internet Explorer 9 and higher, turn off your Internet Explorer browser’s “Compatibility View settings” by following steps below: Right click at the top of your browser and make sure the “Menu Bar” option is selected. Select “Tools” from the menu bar and then select “Compatibility View settings”In the pop- up menu uncheck all three boxes and click “Close”Your browser window will automatically refresh and you’ll be ready to go. Best Blu- ray Player Reviews – Consumer Reports. Blu- ray players are a good match for high- definition TVs, especially 1. Blu- ray discs. The picture quality is top- notch, the best currently available. Many new players can play 3. D Blu- ray movies and regular high- def Blu- ray discs. The latest development: models that can upconvert 1. K when used with an Ultra HD TV. All Blu- ray players can also play standard DVDs (upconverting the video to quasi- HD resolutions) and CDs, so you can use one player for all your discs. Many new players can stream video from the Internet, providing instant access to movies and TV episodes from Amazon Instant Video, Cinema. Searching For The Best Blu Ray Players? Do Not Buy Any Product Before Reading These Customer Reviews! High quality home entertainment from our range of Blu-ray players & recorders. Enjoy stunning picture quality and incredible audio when watching Blu-ray movies in the. ![]() ![]() Now, Netflix, Vudu, and other online movie services. If you have an HDTV, we strongly recommend that you buy a Blu- ray player rather than a standard DVD player. Prices for Blu- ray players now start at less than $1. D and wireless capbility. There are already many thousands of Blu- ray titles- -movies and TV episodes- -on the market, and a growing number of 3. D Blu- ray titles. Home theater AV receiver, speaker, HDTV, television, projector and Blu-ray player reviews, buying guides, and high end audio and consumer electronics news. Universally recognized as the best Blu-ray player available, the Oppo’s superior video processing will provide the best picture from any disc, with better DVD. Portable Blu- ray players let you watch a movie anytime, anywhere- -perfect for long trips or waits between flights. Though you can also play movies on a laptop computer with a built- in Blu- ray drive, portable players are often smaller and lighter and might offer more playback options. Most portable players look like small laptops minus the keyboard. They typically have a 7- to- 1. Other models have an exposed screen like a tablet's. You probably won't appreciate the benefits of high definition on such a small screen, but if you have a library of Blu- ray discs, you might like the option of taking them on the road. This guide can help you sort through the various options to find the right model. While price is always a factor, also consider the features and brand. Make sure you check out our shopping advice, which should help you find the right model at the best price. The Best Blu- ray Player . Although we haven’t formally tested the S3. If 3. D playback is important to you, the Sony BDP- S5. Since everything else is the same and most people don’t need 3. D, the BDP- S3. 50. Universally recognized as the best Blu- ray player available, the Oppo’s superior video processing will provide the best picture from any disc, with better DVD scaling than competing players and better 4. K scaling than most TVs. An HDMI input means you can even process video from other sources like your cable box. Analog audio outputs and dual HDMI outputs let you connect the Oppo easily to complex setups. But it costs many times what other players do, so it’s for disc connoisseurs only. If you don’t care about streaming, the Sony BDP- S1. And if you don’t care about playing back discs, a good media streamer, like the Roku 2, will still outperform any Blu- ray player and is recommended if you’re really after streaming performance. For major streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, our pick will suffice. Table of contents. Why you should trust us. From 2. 01. 0 to 2. I handled almost all the Blu- ray player reviews for Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity; I had nearly 5. I subjected them to countless objective and subjective tests, and I worked to develop advanced test patterns to better measure performance. I even threw them on a $1. HDMI analyzer to verify their image quality. I know what makes a difference in a Blu- ray player and what you can ignore. This year and last I’ve tested a dozen players for The Wirecutter using the same intensive methods. Who should get this. If you already have a Blu- ray player that works fine, you don’t need to upgrade. The only features that have been added to Blu- ray players recently, such as screen mirroring and 4. K upconversion, are inessential. Your 4. K TV will already upconvert video as well as any inexpensive player, and there are better ways to get your mobile device’s screen to your TV. Some Blu- ray players, mostly from off- brand manufacturers, have stopped getting firmware updates. This is an issue because Blu- ray copy protection is still evolving, and newer discs can have new forms of copy protection, meaning they won’t be viewable on older, non- updated players. If you have one of these older players, find you can’t watch a new Blu- ray you bought, and can’t update your player, you may need to upgrade. Most players continue to get upgrades, though, and we have players that are over five years old that still play all new releases. If you want to add streaming services (Netflix, etc), you’re better off getting a media streamer. They support far more services, have a better user interface, and are faster to use than a Blu- ray player. The streaming features of a Blu- ray player should be considered a bonus rather than a reason to upgrade. Only having a DVD player is a good reason to upgrade. Blu- ray discs offer far better picture (and audio) quality than DVDs or streaming services. For a second room, a Blu- ray player can do double- duty, providing disc playback and adding some basic streaming services to an existing TV. How we picked and tested. From top: Sony BDP- S3. Sony BDP- S5. 50. LG BP5. 50 and Samsung BD- J5. Companies like Toshiba no longer manufacture players, and these days, most of any given company’s models are nearly identical. They almost all have the same progression in features as you go up in price. Base models are wired- only. The level above adds Wi- Fi, then 3. D, and then you get 4. K upconversion. Adding 4. K usually means adding a faster processor, making the overall experience better—but not to a degree that you’d want to pay for it. Since most companies have stopped making players, it was easy to review the main models from the companies that still do: LG, Sony, and Samsung. Some other companies like Panasonic and Pioneer are making players, but their models were eliminated for reasons discussed below. We consider Wi- Fi to be essential for most people. As mentioned earlier, Blu- ray players receive firmware updates to let them play the most recent movies. Movies also have special features that can require online access. Since most people use Wi- Fi around their house for connectivity, we assume you’ll want your player to have it as well. If you can easily run Ethernet to your BD player, you could save a few dollars with a wired player, but the price difference is minimal and cheaper players are also generally slower overall. As long as the player provides access to the services, it will work just fine for streaming. Beyond that, additional features are not nearly as necessary. When we asked more than 1,5. TV, less than 2 percent said they cared about 3. D. Even if adding 3. D to a Blu- ray player only costs $1. If you might want 3. D in the future, spending $1. If not, pass. You do not need 4. K upconversion, which converts 1. Blu- ray discs to 4. K resolution. Your 4. K TV has this capability built- in, and it’s likely to do the job just as well as a $1. Blu- ray player. If you really want better 4. K upconversion, the Oppo BDP- 1. D will do it for eight times the cost of our pick. Unfortunately, most websites and magazines have stopped reviewing Blu- ray players. CNET published a total of two reviews this year, and they each covered models that included 3. D. Sound & Vision also published a total of two reviews, and the models reviewed cost $2,0. The tests. I rely heavily on test discs with objective test patterns. Flaws in players can show up on test discs that don’t show up (or are harder to see) on regular program material. The Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark, Version 2 provided the majority of the key test patterns. I also watched a selection of DVDs and Blu- ray movies to verify what the test patterns showed. Streaming services were utilized and tested, including load times. For the most part, Blu- ray discs played back through any Blu- ray player are going to look identical. You should know that for the most part, Blu- ray discs played back through any Blu- ray player are going to look identical, regardless of brand. If a player is described by a reviewer as having “blacker- blacks” or “extra sharpness” with a Blu- ray disc, then it (or the reviewer) is doing something wrong. Thankfully, almost all players do exactly this. It lets me examine the output of a Blu- ray player on a per- pixel level and make sure it’s outputting the correct values. If a player didn’t pass this test, we would knock it off our list, but our picks all were perfect in this regard. The important tests from the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark, Version 2 Blu- ray disc that all the players needed to pass were: Clipping: Are all 1,9. Blu- ray disc visible? Some players crop a few rows of pixels, but most are perfect. Does it play back Blu- ray discs encoded at this popular cadence correctly? Without this, DVD movies will look choppy and have artifacts. Luma resolution: Is all the black- and- white detail there? Blu- ray and DVD discs actually have color overlaid on black- and- white data. If the luma information is incorrect, you’re losing detail. Chroma resolution: Is the color detail there? Some players rebuild the compressed color information incorrectly, losing details. Chroma upsampling error (CUE): Is chroma information scaled correctly? If not, you get jagged edges with DVDs and streaming content. Diagonal filtering: Does the player reduce jagged edges when dealing with interlaced content correctly? Color space decoding: The bits on a Blu- ray are converted to a format your TV can handle when they are output. Does it perform this conversion correctly? I do many, many more tests, but these are the key ones. Our pick. Note: The updated version of our favorite Blu- ray player, the Sony BDP- S3. S3. 50. 0. Although we haven’t formally tested the S3. The Sony BDP- S3. Blu- ray player you should buy, because it has all essential features and the best interface while correctly outputting Blu- ray discs. Prior Sony players had a long, confusing list of services and features. This year’s Sony models are clear and easy to use. The S3. 50. 0 includes Wi- Fi and Ethernet connections for getting online, has a compact form factor, does not feel laggy when using the interface, and plays back content perfectly. Past Sony players used the media crossbar interface first introduced in the Play. Station 3, which offered lots of streaming services but organized them in a huge list you had to scroll through. This was inconvenient. The new front page gives you an area to add your favorite apps and sources (including local media storage) and fast access to Blu- ray discs. LG lets you pick some favorite apps, but you can’t add as many to the front page as you can with the Sony. Many of the featured services, such as Amazon, are hidden on another layer behind the main page and can be tricky to find. Samsung has a custom screen that gives you recommendations, but it only works some of the time in my experience. Neither interface is as simple and easy to use as Sony’s. The Wi- Fi only supports 2. GHz bands but has a two- by- two MIMO antenna setup that allows for stronger signals and faster speeds than the more common one- by- one antenna designs. The extra speeds offered by 5. GHz Wi- Fi aren’t needed for streaming content, since it maxes out around 8 Mbps. Though 5. GHz would improve signal reception in some situations, we didn’t feel this lack was an issue. The BDP- S3. 50. 0’s compact size makes it easy to put into an AV cabinet or smaller space. Previous Sony Blu- ray players had an angled top that made it impossible to put a remote or other device on top of it. This year they went to a plain box design that solves this problem. Other players we tested had a texture to the top and weren’t as easy to place things on top of. The BSP- S3. 50. 0 is relatively responsive to your actions when you use the remote. On the cheapest Blu- ray players (the ones without Wi- Fi), the interface drags. Netflix images will be slow to load as you try to navigate.
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