Blu-Ray Buying Guide 2010

Performance

Think all Blu-ray players produce exactly the same video? Not so. Even though Blu-ray video is digital, different players have different ways of processing it. For instance, Sony advertises “Super Bit Mapping” to smooth background shadows and gradients and “HD Reality Enhancer” for sharpening moving edges on its Blu-ray players. Do any of them make a difference? Check reviews to separate gimmicks from useful features. We do have to admit that in general, picture quality is incredibly consistent across Blu-ray players, and many consumers would have a hard time spotting the benefits of these frills.

If you plan to watch DVDs with your Blu-ray player, there’s more room to go wrong. Upconverting 480p DVD-quality video to 1080p is a complex task that can be done quick and dirty (any TV can technically scale up standard-def output from an old DVD player) or with complex algorithms that preserve the most detail and result in the best possible picture. Carefully read reviews to make sure the player you’ve selected will do a good job with your library of old DVDs.

Ports

The HDMI standard has made connecting a Blu-ray player to an HDTV a breeze. One plug and you have picture and sound. But you’ll still need to pay attention to that cluster of ports on the back.

If you’re connecting to an older HDTV, like a CRT set, your TV might only have component video inputs (the red, green and blue ones), rather than an HDMI connector. Although you won’t technically experience full Blu-ray quality with that configuration, you’ll need a player with component video output to watch anything at all.

If you plan on running audio from the Blu-ray player through a receiver to get that bombastic soundtrack in all its 7.1-channel glory, you’ll need to pay attention to audio, too. Ideally, you’ll be able to run an HDMI cable straight to your receiver, letting it handle the process of decoding the audio data and sending it out to each speaker. But you’ll need a newer receiver for that, with an HDMI input and support for audio codecs like DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD. If you still want to use that 20-year-old Yamaha, you’ll probably need a Blu-ray player with analog audio outputs – preferably 7.1 channels. An S/PDIF digital optical output can also do the trick.

As we mentioned earlier, pretty much all modern Blu-ray players meet the BD-Live specification, which requires them to have both an Ethernet port for Internet connectivity, and a USB port. While these are both incredibly useful, many buyers find Wi-Fi much easier to connect, since TVs rarely find themselves in the same room as a hard wire to the Internet.