How much better is a top of the range blu-ray player compated to £250 ones?

I've got a 42" Sharp LCD and Sony £300 Blu-ray player......realistically, how much better would the picture/sound be on a 3K Denon be than a standard blu ray player?
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  • George7George7 Posts: 840
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    You'd probably struggle to tell the difference. There's a much greater difference between different TVs than there is between Blu-ray players.
  • jackthomjackthom Posts: 6,621
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    If you had a projector and were throwing the picture onto a 120" screen you might notice some difference.

    On a 42" LCD I doubt it. :)
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,330
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    I've got a 42" Sharp LCD and Sony £300 Blu-ray player......realistically, how much better would the picture/sound be on a 3K Denon be than a standard blu ray player?

    I would have thought the most limiting factor is the disc itself, and how greatly it's compressed.

    £3000 players are more about bragging rights than performance :D
  • grahamcrowdengrahamcrowden Posts: 1,041
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    The build quality and general quality of the components would likely be far superior , but also likely to be way beyond what you'd ever need .

    The people stupid enough to spend 3K on a Bluray player would likely not be able to tell the difference between that and a £100 Sony
  • figrin_danfigrin_dan Posts: 1,437
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    I paid a little extra for my Blu Ray player. For my money I got:
    A nice looking player
    An easy to use remote
    An easy to follow manual
    Region free Blu Ray playback
    Slightly better picture
    Very easy to use GUI
    Simple firmware updates
    Analogue outputs

    None of these came with my previous Sony BD player
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,330
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    figrin_dan wrote: »
    I paid a little extra for my Blu Ray player. For my money I got:
    A nice looking player
    An easy to use remote
    An easy to follow manual
    Region free Blu Ray playback
    Slightly better picture
    Very easy to use GUI
    Simple firmware updates
    Analogue outputs

    None of these came with my previous Sony BD player

    Ignoring the rest, which are just personal opinions, how is the firmware upgrade simpler?. Or are you comparing a new player with an old one? - in which case you neglected to mention the huge increase in loading speed.
  • webbiewebbie Posts: 1,614
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    figrin_dan: Model numbers would be useful so we know what you're comparing.
  • Pugwash69Pugwash69 Posts: 3,787
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    Our cheap brand player takes much longer to load a disc, doesn't do rewinding very well, spits some discs out for no apparent reason and looks cheap. The remote control is ok though. Good enough for the bedroom.
  • Pacman1854Pacman1854 Posts: 1,380
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    Okay, let me turn this question around a little.

    I've currently no blue-ray player but a couple have caught my eye over the weekend, a Toshiba BDX1100 that Currys/PC World are currently offering for less than £80, and a Technika BRSS10 which our local Tesco are currently offering for less than £50.

    Now, I'm not much of a video/audio geek, as in I'm not too bothered if one has the Thromm 5000 processor whereas the cheaper one only has the Thromm 4500. I've a Toshiba 32" HD TV (no surround-sound at the moment) with the V+ connected via HDMI, and I have one HDMI port free.
    I'm really after something that's simple, does the job, but that you can really notice the difference between DVD and blue-ray quality, mainly so I can sell it to the wife as a step-up.

    So, would I notice any difference between one of the above players as opposed to a £200/£300 machine in a normal domestic setting?
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,330
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    Pacman1854 wrote: »
    Okay, let me turn this question around a little.

    I've currently no blue-ray player but a couple have caught my eye over the weekend, a Toshiba BDX1100 that Currys/PC World are currently offering for less than £80, and a Technika BRSS10 which our local Tesco are currently offering for less than £50.

    Now, I'm not much of a video/audio geek, as in I'm not too bothered if one has the Thromm 5000 processor whereas the cheaper one only has the Thromm 4500. I've a Toshiba 32" HD TV (no surround-sound at the moment) with the V+ connected via HDMI, and I have one HDMI port free.
    I'm really after something that's simple, does the job, but that you can really notice the difference between DVD and blue-ray quality, mainly so I can sell it to the wife as a step-up.

    So, would I notice any difference between one of the above players as opposed to a £200/£300 machine in a normal domestic setting?

    Probably picture quality would be no different, but ease of operations and facilities may be poorer.

    If you just want to 'chuck a disc in and press play', then it's probably fine.
  • c4rvc4rv Posts: 29,538
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    Pacman1854 wrote: »
    I'm really after something that's simple, does the job, but that you can really notice the difference between DVD and blue-ray quality, mainly so I can sell it to the wife as a step-up.

    even with a basic blu-ray player, on a 42" screen you will definately notice the difference between DVD and blu-ray unless you were sitting a long way from the screen.
  • Pugwash69Pugwash69 Posts: 3,787
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    c4rv wrote: »
    even with a basic blu-ray player, on a 42" screen you will definately notice the difference between DVD and blu-ray unless you were sitting a long way from the screen.

    On a 32" screen however I wouldn't spend more on the player than the TV is worth!
  • Chris FrostChris Frost Posts: 11,015
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    From personal experience in calibrating flatscreen TVs and projection systems which include Blu-Ray players as source devices...
    Budget players are pretty much the same with BD disc unless the player is very broken in its design

    Midrange players - I see some differences between say Panasonic and Sony models in the £200 - £300 price bracket. It's difficult to be specific on model by model, but some players are capable of reproducing a little more information in the shadow areas (gamma tracking) and produce a more natural image. Now, let me be the first to say that this shouldn't be the case if the player is simply reading bits from a disc and passing that info to the display for decoding; but nonetheless that's my observation.

    Top range players - Until recently I'd have been hard pushed to tell much difference between a £500 Denon and the £3K Marantz. However, I recently set up one of the new Arcam BDP1000 players (£1000). The difference here between that player and anything else I have used is absolutely astonishing. The Arcam digs information off the disc that I've never seen from any other BD player. If you have seen Gladiator then you'll know the opening battle scene. The Arcam does the trick of keeping convincing blacks and accurate whites and manages to show detail and information in the shadow areas and also conveys a greater sence of image depth than I have seen before. It also makes the progression of dawn lighting far more noticable. It's a very impressive machine
  • Pacman1854Pacman1854 Posts: 1,380
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    c4rv wrote: »
    even with a basic blu-ray player, on a 42" screen you will definately notice the difference between DVD and blu-ray unless you were sitting a long way from the screen.

    No, due to the current layout of the living room you're probably looking at about 6 feet from the screen to the sofa.

    Obviously if I did go down this line, until I bought some discs, the majority of stuff I'd be watching would be on the DVD's I currently have. How good/different would the upscaling be as I believe both the above players upscale close to 1080 quality?
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,330
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    Pacman1854 wrote: »
    No, due to the current layout of the living room you're probably looking at about 6 feet from the screen to the sofa.

    Obviously if I did go down this line, until I bought some discs, the majority of stuff I'd be watching would be on the DVD's I currently have. How good/different would the upscaling be as I believe both the above players upscale close to 1080 quality?

    Upscalers don't make SD in to HD - it's a common misconception. All they do is make the picture fit the screen, how well it does this affects how good the resulting SD picture is (it's NOT HD though).

    BD players generally have good scalers, and give a slightly better upscaled image than most good TV's.
  • fastest fingerfastest finger Posts: 12,862
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    Pacman1854 wrote: »
    Okay, let me turn this question around a little.

    I've currently no blue-ray player but a couple have caught my eye over the weekend, a Toshiba BDX1100 that Currys/PC World are currently offering for less than £80, and a Technika BRSS10 which our local Tesco are currently offering for less than £50.

    Now, I'm not much of a video/audio geek, as in I'm not too bothered if one has the Thromm 5000 processor whereas the cheaper one only has the Thromm 4500. I've a Toshiba 32" HD TV (no surround-sound at the moment) with the V+ connected via HDMI, and I have one HDMI port free.
    I'm really after something that's simple, does the job, but that you can really notice the difference between DVD and blue-ray quality, mainly so I can sell it to the wife as a step-up.

    So, would I notice any difference between one of the above players as opposed to a £200/£300 machine in a normal domestic setting?

    From what I've read, the Technika is "OK" for the money, the colours are a little warm, the sound a little flat, but it's perfectly watchable.

    As for the Toshiba, I've only read good things about the picture and sound, So much so that I just picked one up for my parents for Christmas. Build quality is decent and the remote looks easy to use. The connections are a little limited and it's not very quick at loading, but it has everything they need.
  • grahamcrowdengrahamcrowden Posts: 1,041
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    figrin_dan wrote: »
    I paid a little extra for my Blu Ray player. For my money I got:
    A nice looking player
    An easy to use remote
    An easy to follow manual
    Region free Blu Ray playback
    Slightly better picture
    Very easy to use GUI
    Simple firmware updates
    Analogue outputs

    None of these came with my previous Sony BD player

    The multiregion capabilty adds £130 to the price of a decent player .
    The only players that have hacks are cheap Far eastern imports , so you can't include Bluray region free in your list as its something that is possible with all players at extra cost- even your Sony
  • grahamcrowdengrahamcrowden Posts: 1,041
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    The Technika will likely have a multi region hack whereas the Tosh won't.
    Both are low budget models so if I was only going to spend under £100 I'd go for the £50 one.
  • pocatellopocatello Posts: 8,813
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    More than likely your tv and sound system will be the limit on quality
  • figrin_danfigrin_dan Posts: 1,437
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    The multiregion capabilty adds £130 to the price of a decent player .
    The only players that have hacks are cheap Far eastern imports , so you can't include Bluray region free in your list as its something that is possible with all players at extra cost- even your Sony
    The hardware kit is £25 for my player. The player seems to be designed for this kit, this way it doesn't violate the Blu Ray licensing agreement and you can still trust the kit to work. It's an Oppo BD Player but most of the features I listed follow on to the "very" expensive players.
  • Glawster2002Glawster2002 Posts: 15,189
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    The build quality and general quality of the components would likely be far superior , but also likely to be way beyond what you'd ever need .

    The people stupid enough to spend 3K on a Bluray player would likely not be able to tell the difference between that and a £100 Sony

    Why is someone who spends £3K on a Blu-ray player "stupid"?

    Someone in a position where they have, say, a £15K budget for a home cinema set-up are hardly likely to finish it off with a £100 Blu-ray player, are they? If they were to spend £5K on the AV Amp, they're going to buy a Blu-ray player that compliments that AV Amp.

    After all, they wouldn't be spending your money.
  • finbaarfinbaar Posts: 4,818
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    Why is someone who spends £3K on a Blu-ray player "stupid"?

    Because to be that into telly that you would spend £3k on a player means you must be a bit mad. However, if you can afford £3k then you obviously are not thick, just obbsessed.

    God I didn't even know you COULD spend £3000 on a Blu-Ray player. However as a late adoptor of this kind of tech (I got a DVD player in 2006) I am not the target audience I suppose. And I shouldn't critisise others for splashing cash when I am off to the running shop this afternoon to spend £175 on a new waterproof top as it is slightly lighter than my current one.
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,330
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    If they were to spend £5K on the AV Amp, they're going to buy a Blu-ray player that compliments that AV Amp.

    You mean they are going to spend a PRICE that compliments the PRICE of the rest :p

    I would suggest that the quality won't be any better, as blind tests would easily prove.
  • Glawster2002Glawster2002 Posts: 15,189
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    finbaar wrote: »
    Because to be that into telly that you would spend £3k on a player means you must be a bit mad. However, if you can afford £3k then you obviously are not thick, just obbsessed.

    People put different values on different things.
    finbaar wrote: »
    God I didn't even know you COULD spend £3000 on a Blu-Ray player.

    I'm sure you could spend far more if you really wanted to! :D
    You mean they are going to spend a PRICE that compliments the PRICE of the rest :p

    Which is what many people do when they are buying a system.
    I would suggest that the quality won't be any better, as blind tests would easily prove.

    I haven't suggested there would be any difference, but how many people would choose a product based purely on a blind test, something the AV world seems to be totally obsessed with.
  • bobcarbobcar Posts: 19,424
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    Which is what many people do when they are buying a system.
    it doesn't always make a lot of sense though, for example spending more an an HDMI cable won't make any difference.

    Whilst you spend your money how you see fit (I'm certainly not criticising you for spending £3k on a Blu-ray player) I would suggest that £500 and an extra £2.5k on the TV would make more difference - though you may have the best TV you can get anyway so that wouldn't be possible.
    I haven't suggested there would be any difference, but how many people would choose a product based purely on a blind test, something the AV world seems to be totally obsessed with.

    I don't think the AV industry is at all obsessed with double blind testing quite the opposite. What you generally get is wishy washy talk about "enhanced blacks" and being able to "really pick out the tonal quality of instruments".
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