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Blu-ray has landed

Uncategorised By Dec 28, 2008

Finally made the decision to experiment with Blu-ray and took advantage of Blockbuster’s deal to carry one home.

It took about two hours in all to connect it to my Naim n-Vi and Panasonic Plasma via an Aten HDMI switcher and Chord Company HDMI cables.  Actually possibly the most time consuming elements were reprogramming the Harmony 895 remote control and the online upgrade the new player required.

WALL-E one of the FOC Blu-rays was initially quite dissapointing due to the apparantly poor black level.  The problem was caused by the settings on the BDP-S350: it wasn’t set to theater but normal.  This made a huge difference especially as the action moved on to the ship where the blacks weren’t being confused by the dusty conditions of Earth. With a good disc, Blu-ray – even with a budget player – is dramatically better then DVD even from a great DVD player.

I’m pretty shocked however by the differences between a good master  – WALL-E and a poor one – Bangkok Dangerous.  BK looked like an average DVD rather than a hi-def source.

A quick comparison between the Naim n-Vi playing a DVD and the Sony was interesting: the n-Vi was far superior in both sound and picture quality.

Today’s was a quick install, more detail when I have a chance to strip the whole system down and reinstall it optimally.

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