I finally selected the Panasonic BDT210 as my Blu-ray player and gave it a try on Saturday night with the Blu-ray version of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rented from Redbox). The verdict? It looked and sounded really, really good.
The BDT210 was on sale at Best Buy last week so I took the bait. Also, these players come with a coupon redeemable for a copy of Avatar 3D and people are reselling the BD for around $100. By the time I get my copy of the BD (8-12 weeks according to the coupon) the price will probably be closer to $19 but we'll see...
Like my other two recent purchases (the TV and the soundbar), my new Blu-ray player is loaded with complicated features and I struggled a bit with the audio setup. The player is set up to output 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound sampled at 96 kHz and my Sony soundbar will not handle anything over 48 kHz so it took some time with the user manual to find the right settings. It took quite a bit of reading and experimenting to get everything set up and I hope I don't need to change it for a long time because I will forget all the details within the next 5-7 days.
One other tidbit I learned about TV audio... if you drive your audio equipment with a connection from the TV you can get only 2-channel stereo regardless of the type of connection. Most all new televisions will output surround sound only when the source is over-the-air. If you are using a cable box, or other equipment such as a DVD/BD player, as the input source, the TV will "down-convert" the sound as per some licensing restriction. So, boys and girls, feed your audio equipment directly from the box/player for the best sound.
0 comments:
Post a Comment