What is it about technology products and acronyms? It’s bad enough that products have deadpan model numbers; can you tell what the new Samsung product does if all you know is the “BD-C8000” model number? I know that I can’t guess. Let me tell you what it is: a 3D BD HD player with WiFi, [...]
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HDTV Almanac - Portable Alphabet Soup
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alfredpoor
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videograbber
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> can you tell what the new Samsung product does if all you know is the “BD-C8000” model number? I know that I can’t guess. Let me tell you what it is: a 3D BD HD player with... <
No, but I can tell you that I'd never even consider buying any Samsung 3D Blu-ray player. Why not? Because they don't even support playback on their own "3D-Ready" TV sets! Talk about abandoning your customers.
Luckily, Panasonic 3D Blu-ray players DO support the Samsung 3D-HDTV's (DLP checkerboard mode), so when the day arrives that there's enough 3D content to make it worth buying one, that's likely what I'll be getting.
- Tim
P.S. And really? $500!? for a portable player with a 10.3" 1024x600 screen? What are they smoking? And 3 hours on a charge (claimed, usually optimistically) gets you through one whole movie, and part of the next. If I'm looking for portable, I can rip Blu-rays to my laptop, carry 20 movies with me on its 500GB drive, and watch 2 full films (4.5 hrs on a charge), on a 12.1" 1280x800 screen. All for $500. Oh, and have a full Win7 computer with touchscreen to boot. I don't know if I could set it up to play 3D discs though. It does have both HDMI and VGA outputs, so it might. Maybe some day when there are enough to care about, I might find out.
No, but I can tell you that I'd never even consider buying any Samsung 3D Blu-ray player. Why not? Because they don't even support playback on their own "3D-Ready" TV sets! Talk about abandoning your customers.
Luckily, Panasonic 3D Blu-ray players DO support the Samsung 3D-HDTV's (DLP checkerboard mode), so when the day arrives that there's enough 3D content to make it worth buying one, that's likely what I'll be getting.
- Tim
P.S. And really? $500!? for a portable player with a 10.3" 1024x600 screen? What are they smoking? And 3 hours on a charge (claimed, usually optimistically) gets you through one whole movie, and part of the next. If I'm looking for portable, I can rip Blu-rays to my laptop, carry 20 movies with me on its 500GB drive, and watch 2 full films (4.5 hrs on a charge), on a 12.1" 1280x800 screen. All for $500. Oh, and have a full Win7 computer with touchscreen to boot. I don't know if I could set it up to play 3D discs though. It does have both HDMI and VGA outputs, so it might. Maybe some day when there are enough to care about, I might find out.
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alfredpoor
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Less is more?
I know people who really would rather have a simple device that just does the one thing well, rather than have to learn how to make a computer do it. I'm not one of them, and I'm with you on prefering to spend my money on a $500 notebook that will do it all (and with a 720p-capable HD screen, as well). But this is not the only case I can think of where you spend more to get less in the name of "convenience".videograbber wrote:>And really? $500!? for a portable player with a 10.3" 1024x600 screen?
Alfred
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videograbber
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Alfred,
that's actually a good point, and I have to agree with you on it.
The only thing I could add is that in the next 6 months, there will be many, many vendors responding to the iPad with their own tablets, all in the $500 and under range, and all just as capable of playing videos as the Samsung XYZ unit. However, they'll have much better battery life. As one example that seems to be getting a lot of press, the Adam from Notion Ink has the same (sub-HD 1024x600) screen rez, but can play HD videos for 20 hours(!) on a charge, and is slated to have a List price of $450 or less. Plus you can browse the web, and do lots of other stuff with it, yet it's still simpler and easier to use than a full-blown computer. It may even be easier to use just for watching movies than the Samsung!
More limited function devices, equivalent to the Samsung, will probably be closer to $300 than $500. But they won't have the Blu-ray player integrated, which I'm sure adds a lot to the Samsung cost. Rather than carry my expensive BR discs out of the house, I'd prefer to rip them, but as you pointed out, many would not.
- Tim
that's actually a good point, and I have to agree with you on it.
The only thing I could add is that in the next 6 months, there will be many, many vendors responding to the iPad with their own tablets, all in the $500 and under range, and all just as capable of playing videos as the Samsung XYZ unit. However, they'll have much better battery life. As one example that seems to be getting a lot of press, the Adam from Notion Ink has the same (sub-HD 1024x600) screen rez, but can play HD videos for 20 hours(!) on a charge, and is slated to have a List price of $450 or less. Plus you can browse the web, and do lots of other stuff with it, yet it's still simpler and easier to use than a full-blown computer. It may even be easier to use just for watching movies than the Samsung!
More limited function devices, equivalent to the Samsung, will probably be closer to $300 than $500. But they won't have the Blu-ray player integrated, which I'm sure adds a lot to the Samsung cost. Rather than carry my expensive BR discs out of the house, I'd prefer to rip them, but as you pointed out, many would not.
- Tim