Reviews are starting to trickle in from those early adopters lucky (?) enough to get their grubby mitts on the first Blu-ray player, the Samsung BD-P1000, ahead of its official launch on June 25. The question on everyone's mind is: now that I've just dropped US$1,000 on a movie player, have I at last scaled the heights of cinematic bliss? The answer is a conclusive "maybe."
The Digital Bits has posted some first thoughts after spending time with the new player. While image quality appears to be good, 1080i HDMI output looks a little flaky (though component output is fine).
First, when I switch to 1080i, I'm noticing some very obvious scaling issues that I don't see when the player is set to 720p. ... Second, I'm noticing a very slight "studdering" problem. About once a second, or maybe once every few seconds, the video seems to hesitate for just a instant - a tiny fraction of a second.
And although the player starts up and loads discs more quickly than Toshiba's HD DVD device, it's no speed demon. Most discs still require at least 30 seconds before being ready for playback. And then, of course, there's the price tag. For this kind of cash, the device should simply be more polished, which leaves the reviewer to conclude that "the Blu-ray camp has dropped a dud with their big launch, too." That said, once the HDMI problem was fixed by switching to component video, the picture quality improved noticeably, and a more complete judgment will have to wait for a full review.