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Quintus

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I'm still waiting for Blu cracks to get advanced enough so I can play movies on the equipment of my choice. But for watching TV series, the PS3 next to my bed is the most comfortable solution, so I just ordered Lost Season 1 as my first Blu disc(s). I'm planning on re-watching the whole series before the final season starts.

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I devised a plan to watch every episode before the series finale back when I thought the 4th season was going to be the last. I too want to rewatch everything, but honestly I can recall most if not all of the important details. Rewatching at this point wouldn't add more light to the series, rewatching after Season 6 would though.

I also don't have seasons 1 and 2 on Blu, it'll cost me $100 :)

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I'm paying €46 including shipping for this, I think that's slightly less than I paid for S2 on DVD back when that came out. I have yet to figure out what to do when I've finished watching S1 on Blu.

I desperately need to rewatch the whole thing because for the last two seasons, I had trouble following the various characters' plots since I can barely recall half of the flashbacks, and apparently completely forgot about some crucial side characters (and most names, of course).

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You should check out Amazon for Blu-ray deals Trent. You shouldn't get them from anywhere else. Revolutionary Road was only $14 from them, so was Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy. Cheaper than the DVD versions.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Fuck Blu-ray.

I just found out that starting with S3, Lost is region-coded. Meaning there's no way I can continue buying the editions I have so far and play them on my PS3 (which is a lousy player anyway, by the way).

And still no free software players on the horizon. What about standalone players, are there any codefree ones?

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At the moment, the cheapest Blu-ray player costs around 250 EUR in Slovenia, so I guess I'll wait a bit longer ... We'll see what will happen with the prices around New Year ... :o

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Controls (via the gamepad) are confusing and totally different from the DVD player. And it doesn't seem to be able to scale the 4:3 extra features on Lost correctly for my 16:9 display.

Plus, in my book, any region-locked DVD or Blu player is a lousy player.

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Wow, I just discovered that the UK Amazon can ship Blu-ray players to Slovenia too, and the cheapest one - LG BD370 - costs only 150 EUR. Now that's much better! :unsure: I'll consider that seriously. Does anybody know this player, is it OK? It should be, the customer reviews are mostly very positive ...

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Wow, I just discovered that the UK Amazon can ship Blu-ray players to Slovenia too, and the cheapest one - LG BD370 - costs only 150 EUR. Now that's much better! :unsure: I'll consider that seriously. Does anybody know this player, is it OK? It should be, the customer reviews are mostly very positive ...

I know it as I play Call Of Duty: World At War and Killzone 2 on it and even watch the only 2 Blu-Ray movies I have. It's a good player, despite what Marian says. You can have it as your Blu-Ray player too and you won't have to buy a separate one.

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So yeah, I don't know much about individual Blu-ray players. A PS3 is probably not the most cost effective route to take if all you want is a Blu-ray player. Personally I would buy a Sony player, since it is their creation, but that's pretty much the same price as a PS3.

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Regarding a Blu-Ray player you may wanna keep to a more local brand like Sony or Panasonic. Toshiba has finally jumped the gun and expected to come out with their own Blu-Ray player soon.

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Well they have Blu-ray remotes for the PS3, they're around $20.

I know. Do they actually allow direct access to stuff that's not mapped to gamepad buttons directly? Still, it would be an odd investment, given that the screen it's connected to is a simple computer display without a remote... :unsure:

I repeat my question: Does anyone know about region-free Blu players? I know there are some modified ones to be found on the net, and there at least used to be regular ones by LG and Samsung. But are there any current ones which I can rely on not losing their region-freeness on firmware upgrades?

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Personally I would buy a Sony player, since it is their creation,

Didn't the Blu-Ray Disc Association do that or was it a joint venture with Pioneer? Sony is a prime member and back the format completely but I'm not completely sure if they invented it.

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Would be news to me that they invented it on their own. Anyway, they wouldn't be my first choice for two reasons: 1) They're Sony (meaning they make high quality products, but with lousy customer support) and 2) they co-invented it (meaning they're least likely to support region free modes etc.)

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What's your budget?

Mine? Basically, as low as reasonably possible... I prefer playing movies through my multimedia PC, so any standalone player would mostly be an interim solution until there's a Linux player than can play Blu movies directly from the disc.

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What's your budget?

Mine? Basically, as low as reasonably possible... I prefer playing movies through my multimedia PC, so any standalone player would mostly be an interim solution until there's a Linux player than can play Blu movies directly from the disc.

Do you have a MediaMarkt in your neighborhood, Marian? Get a Samsung BD-P1580. They are new and only 189 Euro.

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Well, I've been googling for details, but without success. Any info on whether there's a code to make the P1580 region free (for Blu in particular)? Or are there modified versions available?

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Answering my own question, it seems the Momitsu BDP-899 is currently the only Blu-Ray player that's multiregion out of the box. After getting great reviews and selling well, it seems to have gone up in price, but I'll keep monitoring it.

This got me thinking about some other things though... if I get a Blu player, I'll hook it up to the projector via HDMI or DVI. But will I be able to play all Blu discs through a digital (coax, not optical) connection to my DD/DTS receiver? I know Blu comes with several new audio formats, but I don't know if they're backwards compatible with the old DVD formats - and it seems I can't count on a player having 6 separate analogue connectors for the amp's 5.1 inputs. Or would I have to get a new amp as well?

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  • 1 month later...

Currently running a side-by-side comparison of An American Werewolf In London using the Picture-in-Picture function on my LCD, with the PS3 running the Blu-Ray and the Xbox 360 running the R2 DVD. Difference in picture quality is incredible, even for what was a pretty good DVD transfer for the time, but it's also a great way to display the PAL speedup that occurs on UK DVDs.

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Aside from the resolution, 24p is my main reason for wanting Blu.

Quick question: I'm not about to replace my amp too soonish, so when I switch to Blu soon, I'll be stuck with regular DD and DTS via SPDIF for now (and a 5.1 analogue input). I can't turn it up too much without fearing the neighbours anyway. My projector (which does 1080x720 at PAL and NTSC frequencies) has a HDMI input (and will probably be replaced by a Full HD/24p upgrade around Christmas). Am I correct in assuming that I should have no problems using a HDMI video connection to the projector and a SPDIF audio connection to view any Blu-Ray disc on the market? Could HDCP cause problems at 1080x720?

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Aside from the resolution, 24p is my main reason for wanting Blu.

Quick question: I'm not about to replace my amp too soonish, so when I switch to Blu soon, I'll be stuck with regular DD and DTS via SPDIF for now (and a 5.1 analogue input). I can't turn it up too much without fearing the neighbours anyway. My projector (which does 1080x720 at PAL and NTSC frequencies) has a HDMI input (and will probably be replaced by a Full HD/24p upgrade around Christmas). Am I correct in assuming that I should have no problems using a HDMI video connection to the projector and a SPDIF audio connection to view any Blu-Ray disc on the market? Could HDCP cause problems at 1080x720?

Should be fine. I use a HDMI connect to my LCD, and an optical SPDIF to my amp and it works great.

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I'll be buying my first Blu-Ray movie on Nov. 17. I don't have a TV to fully appreciate it yet, but that will come.

HDTV's are going for great prices right now, just look around at various places IE: Wally World and what not. I should have waited until this year to have gotten my HDTV. I could have saved $1,000.

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Does anyone have a Led LCD Flat Panel?

Half as thin and 1/10 of the energy usage of a LCD

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In the past 2 year I've seen every movie I want to see in theater and haven't even rented anything on DVD. I also NEVER buy movies to collect anymore. So on my HDTV I watch actual TV and play xbox360 games and I can't really see when I'll need a Blu Ray player.

I'd get a PS3 If I ever needed one though because it's now about as cheap as a decent standalone player

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KM some of the latest computers have blu ray disc burner drives in them. Its food for thought.

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I'm gonna probably pick up a Blu-Ray drive for my computer after the new year. I want to be able to watch Blu-Rays on my home pc. Of course next year too I plan on getting more Blu-Ray movies.

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I thought Lazerdisc was dead?!!! :lol:

optical drives are on their way out

it is inevitable.

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I use optical discs for nearly nothing these days. Just the occasional score CD. Backups are on multiple HDDs.

Have to use them at work sometimes though. Not allowed to provide 'company programs' (aka a batch file) on USB sticks as they can be erased by idiot users *ahem* the client.

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I love optical media. Love having the artwork especially (it's also one of the things I love about LPs). I put all of my scores I acquire onto CD, especially since I don't usually hook my computer up to my separates.

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I thought Lazerdisc was dead?!!! ;)

optical drives are on their way out

it is inevitable.

Nothing lasts forever, I guess.

Optical media is too easily scratched, and the plastic base will eventually deteriorate.

Hard drives have moving parts, which are all points of failure. If the controller card inside fails, the data is prohibitively expensive to recover from the platters.

Flash media is nice, but still has a finite number of read/write cycles, making them useful for data storage, but not so much for maintaining an operating system.

But what do we know? Didn't the computer industry once think that no one would never need more than 640K memory?

The best solution is redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.

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