gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
I'm getting ready to purchase a Blue Ray player for my home theater system and am looking for advice on what units offer the best combination of features, performance, and price. I'm not looking for the ultimate, more like somehthing with a street price in the $250-500 range. It should have analog audio out since my current receiver isn't HDMI capable (the TV is AFaIK). Right now from my own research the Samsung BP2500 looks like a top contender. I think I definitely want a unit with ethernet (don't need wireless, the cable modem and wireless router is near the TV), Profile 2.0 w/internal memory. I also want it to do a good job upconverting DVDs to 1080p (or i if that's all that is available). One thing that bothers me is that I'm reading that many of these players require at least a few minutes to launch a disk which seems like someting that I would find annoying and likely to be "cured" in future models. I will eventually upgrade the receiver but for now it's 5.1 audio and lack of HDMI switching or even pass through doesn't seem like a big deal. FIWI, the TV is a Sharp Aquos 46" LCD with 1080p native resolution and that's likely to remain part of the setup for quite a while.