I am currently looking to get a bluray player in the next few days.
I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations or advice on what models look at (or not look at, depending).

It seems that the PS3 was one avenue, as well as the samsung players.

Anyone have the Insignia bluray player? It is on sale at BestBuy for about $200.

I am leaning toward the PS3 to begin with, but I don't know if Sony would drop the price for Christmas.




Quoting ajm:

Quote:
I went for the ps3 when they were released in the UK last year. Since then, I've played games on it for under 2 hours.

One of the reasons I think the PS3 is probably one of the better players is that it will be a supported platform far longer than standalone players (IMHO). Due to the fact that obviously lots of people play games on it as well. If not most.

Which means Sony will keep doing firmware upgrades much longer than Samsung/Sony/Pioneer would for standalone players.

that's my £0.02 anyway.

Btw. the ps3 is the only games console I've ever owned. Shame it doesn't do most of what it was designed for in my house.

Quoting ajm:

Quote:
Btw. the ps3 is the only games console I've ever owned. Shame it doesn't do most of what it was designed for in my house.

The PS3 became my first console ever earlier this year.

I have never been mch of a gamer, only having experimented with the C64 and then later playing (only) Monkey island and Duke Nukem on the PC. I have since discovered what a great diversion games can be. Also, some of those games tell interesting stories and almost have movie-like qualities. Obviously all this is cutting into my movie-watching time

Another vote for the PS3.

One of the things I liked about it before I bought it was the easy availability of firmware upgrades - I did the latest a couple of days ago.

So far it has played all the blu rays I have thrown at it with no problem at all. And it's a nice addition that it remembers where I was last watching any blu ray movie when I put it back in so it restarts from the same place.

Amazon.co.uk are (or were) selling the Sony BDPS350 for £129.

It's currently out of stock and the price is showing at £179 but it may come back down again.

I don't know how good this player is (I have a PS3)

I am waiting for my ordered SONY BDS550 to arrive any day now - I have heard plenty of good things about it, but of course can't verify anything at the moment...

I currently have SONY BDS300, and - although I don't have any reference point with any other BD players out there - it is painfully slow in loading movies. Even if you put the power on, it takes easily a couple of minutes before you get the deck open. Frustrating.

Hopefully this new one will be quicker.

I saw an internal Blu-ray player at Media Markt for 99 EUR, which seems to be the normal price, not a special offer, it's a Blu-ray + HD-DVD player with DVD writer by LG. I guess it's not 2.0 compatible or something like that?!

Quoting Pantheon:

Quote:
At the moment I'm holding off on Blu-ray until the prices come down.

But...what I would like to know is if they can be multi-region.  I buy a lot of R1 titles (I'm in the UK) and would want to continue this practice.
I also don't particularly want to have a dvd player for multi-region stuff and a R2 Blu-ray at the same time.

Early next year I'm visiting Australia again and am thinking of picking up a Blu-ray in duty free, so any advice would be appreciated.

At the moment there is no easy availability of multi-region blu ray playback. You do get multi-region DVD playback still in the blu ray players (if you 'fix' them).

However, I haven't had any problems with blu rays - the main studio's seem to be either making them multi-region to start with or are producing blu rays for all the regions at the same time. I have a UK player and I haven't been unable to get a blu ray of a film that I really wanted - and sometime the UK version was cheaper than the US version.

If you want to look at the current situation re region codes for the existing blu ray discs look at http://bluray.liesinc.net/