Best BD Player for the Money

[Tommygun]

The war is over. I hope to add a Blu ray player to our theater over the next month or so. What are the best players/features?

[jspartan]

Only good ones are Panasonic's latest and the PS3. Only one worth any money is the PS3.

[gil]

I'll echo the PS3. It loads FAST, easy to use and firmware upgradeable. I've had mine for over a year and have had no issues. Has very good upconversion for regular DVD's as well. A couple of drawbacks, the fan is a little noisy, and no dedicated remote is included but the game controller doubles as one (at least that was the case when I bought mine back then, might not be that way today)...I ended up buying the Bluetooth remote dedicated for the PS3 online for about $20...Oh, and it is bluetooth so you can't program the codes onto a universal remote like my beloved Pronto...that may be important to someone considering a PS3 purchase for use in a home theater set-up. Hope that gave you some insight.

[krammer]

gil,

There is an IR adaptor for the PS3 which hooks up USB style. I'm sure there are work arounds. I believe plissken found a way using such adaptor + they are cheap. Me, I'm happy with the BT mote dedicated for the system. Much better response than my Harmony 880.

And to stay on topic, if you go blu, get the PS3 & be happy. I'm really getting sick of trying to defend it as a dedicated BD player. If people actually tried it out, their whole "standalone only" theory would be thrown out the window.

The only downside to the PS3 is if you do not own a HDMI receiver you can't listen to LPCM tracks.... Thats it folks. All else is good. :)

[gil]

krammer,

funny thing is, I know about the remote adapter available, but in all honesty, I never thought I would be keeping the PS3 for very long so why bother with it..., I mean, after all, this thing is a gaming machine first and a BR player second, right?! ...And for that reason, it would seem obvious that a "standalone only" player would outperform the PS3 for BR playback. So why not ditch the PS3? ...Yeah, that was my exact thinking when I bought it, here we are over a year later, and I have no plans to ditch it anytime soon. :)

[Tommygun]

Thanks for the info.