Deal:Pioneer BDC-2202B5PK Blu-Ray DVD-/+RW $130 at Frys.com

QUOTE #1 May 23, 2008 You know Blu-ray hasn't quite reached a mainstream price point when manufacturers try to pawn off a $750 Profile 1.0 player as affordable, but Panasonic's new UniPhier 3 processor, its 3rd generation 45nm chip, could soon change that. Half the size of Panasonic's second-gen chip, the UniPhier 3 should reduce production costs ultimately resulting in lower prices for you and me when it comes time to grabbing a Blu-ray player off store shelves. More impressive is the fact that while $750 may only get you Profile 1.0 features right now, the UniPhier 3 handles all of Blu-ray's Profile 2.0 features. That includes picture-in-picture, new graphics engine, laser control, DivX 1080p, ethernet controller, DTS-HD MA, and Dolby TrueHD. Sample shipments start next month, so hopefully come the second half of 2008 we'll see the UniPhier 3 in action.

quote # 2 July 15, 2008 Japan's NEC Corp. seem to be throwing themselves into the Blu-ray market with force, announcing they expect to double sales of its own Blu-ray products in the next couple of years. And not necessarily because Blu-ray is guaranteed to double in popularity, but because they plan to bring down the price of Blu-ray players thanks to their new BD Live-capable superchip. NEC forecasts that they'll own 40% of the Blu-ray chip market by March 2009, and grow that market share to over half by March 2011. With the new superchip pretty much guaranteed to bring down manufacturing costs of Blu-ray players, and trickling its way down the supply chain to result in cheaper Blu-ray players for us, NEC expects sales of about $378 million in the Blu-ray category by March 2011. The real question is whether or not NEC's new chip and competing superchips such as Panasonic's UniPhier will bring Blu-ray player prices below the $200 mark anytime soon. Until then, Blu-ray will remain nothing more than a niche product bought by only the most dedicated home theater fanatics.

OK, I'm a noob to blu-ray players and the world of HD in general. Heres' my noob non-techie question: What's the difference (technically, not subjectively) between the picture on my HD TV when it's upconverted to 1080p using an upconverting DVD player, and when I use a Blu-Ray DVD player to get a 1080p picture? I'm sure there's a significant difference, I'm just wondering about the mechanics of it. Can anyone please explain? Thanks

To make it really short a HDTV is operating on a higher resolution format than a standard definition DVD of (480 vertical lines of resolution). If you connect this DVD player to a HDTV which is set to it highest resolution, (1080) the picture will be pillared on the sides (blacked out) and on top and bottom if the video is in 16:9 format.

Almost all up converted DVD players need to have a HDMI or YBG component outputs to connect to a HDTV. The up conversion is created through these ports.

Now up conversion is functional doubling of lines of resolution. 480x2=960. So now the DVD player is outputting 2 scan lines for every one line of resolution horizontally. The same factor is induced vertically too. This also causes a slight distortion in the picture but now the black pillars are gone.

The picture will defiantly look better but not as rich as a true HD signal.

The following is for visualization and not true dimensions of scan lines.

1080 = 1mm scan line - full screen coverage on HDTV
780 = 2mm scan line - full screen coverage on HDTV
480 = 3mm scan line - full screen coverage on HDTV
A signal through a HDMI / RGB input using either an HD/DVD or Blu-ray signal is true 1080 lines of resolution. Each line is a different scan of moving picture.

Broadcast varies between 720 and 1080.


I hope this help and please forgive my penmanship.