Anthony
Grimani is president of Performance Media Industries in Fairfax,
California.
Back when the HD format war was raging, I wrote a few columns about the
technical pitfalls that you might encounter when configuring
early-generation players. Now that Blu-ray has emerged victorious, it
seems like an appropriate time to revisit the state of Blu-ray players,
focusing on the features that are essential to their performance. While
I wouldn’t go so far as to say these features are mandatory for every
Blu-ray player you install, you’d have a hard time convincing me
they’re not. Here are the top three, not necessarily in order.
1. BD-Live (Blu-ray Profile 2)
As of this writing, Blu-ray is just now getting online. The PlayStation
3 became the first BD-Live player just two days ago. While Live
functionality, which includes access to web-enabled special features,
is not required to enjoy feature presentations, the Blu-ray experience
is not complete without it. Your forward-thinking clients will
undoubtedly miss it when they attempt to surf the web-enabled features
on upcoming Blu-ray releases. The big three Blu-ray studios (FOX,
Disney, and Sony) have already announced their first Live-enabled
titles, and more are sure to follow.
Unfortunately, your options for Live players are currently limited to
the PS3 (software version 2.20 or higher). If the PS3 absolutely will
not do, you’ll just have to wait. Panasonic has announced the DMP-BD50
(release date TBA), and Sony will be offering the BDP-S350 (Summer
2008) and BDP-S550 (Fall 2008). Now would be a good time to pick up a
dealership for these lines, if you don’t have one already.
As a side note for anyone who is curious, BD-Live includes all the
features supported by the other Blu-ray profiles: Grace Period Profile
and Final Standard Profile (a.k.a. BonusView). These features include
Picture-in-Picture, Audio Mixing, Local/Persistent Storage, and Virtual
File System. In addition, BD-Live mandates greater local storage
capacity and a network connection for Internet access. BD-Live players
have it all.
2. True 1080p Video Output
Without naming names, I must say that early Blu-ray players were subtly
misleading in their declarations of 1080p video output. While they
would technically do it, the way they did it left something to be
desired. The native 1080p content on the disc was actually decoded as
1080i and then de-interlaced back into 1080p. This relied on the player
to accurately reconstruct the content’s original frames, which some
models did not do correctly. As a result, common practice was to output
1080i from these players and let an external video processor perform
the conversion back to 1080p.
There are two “right” ways to output 1080p. The first is to decode the
1080p content on the disc in native form (no interlaced conversion) and
send it at its native frame rate. For nearly every movie released on
Blu-ray, the native frame rate will be 24 frames per second (a.k.a 24
fps, 24p, or 24 Hz). This obviously requires that the display and
downstream electronics be able to handle 24 fps, which some do not. The
second way is similar to the first, except the native frame rate is
multiplied out to 60 fps. In the case of native 24 fps material, the
original frames are repeated in a 2:3 pattern. The primary reason for
doing this is to make the signal compatible with displays that accept
60 fps, but not 24 fps.
I could provide a list of players with proper 1080p video output, but
it would be largely academic, because none of them, except the PS3, are
Live. When the Panasonic and Sony players hit the market later this
year, find out how they output 1080p before installing them.
3. Proper Primary and Secondary Audio Output
Support for primary and secondary audio streams is mandated for BD-Live
players. Think of primary audio as the feature soundtrack and secondary
audio as commentary from the director, etc., talking about the movie
while it plays. By definition, primary and secondary audio require the
player to decode both streams internally (if necessary), mix them, and
output the composite as uncompressed PCM or a re-compressed bitstream.
While this may seem simple in theory, it gets complicated in practice.
Purists usually choose native bitstream output for the primary audio
track, which automatically disables secondary audio, and vice versa. As
a custom integrator, you want the player to operate in the simplest
manner possible, which is undeniably for it to decode everything
internally and never output native bitstream. That way, it doesn’t
matter if secondary audio is being mixed in or not. Your client doesn’t
have to navigate through any player menus or push any special buttons
to get secondary audio to work. As tempting as it is to use bitstream
for primary audio, resist the urge. You aren’t sacrificing much—if
anything—in terms of sound quality to have the player decode the
signal. The trick in today’s market is finding a Blu-ray player
with all the necessary audio decoding on board.
The pickings are really slim. Aside from the PS3 (which is scheduled to
receive software version 2.30 enabling DTS-HD Master Audio decoding on
April 15, 2008) your first shot at a Live player that will decode the
lossless audio formats from both Dolby and DTS will be the
aforementioned Panasonic DMP-BD50 or the Sony BDP-S550, whichever makes
it to market first.
PS3 or Bust?
It is a little hard to believe that the PS3 is the only Blu-ray player
on the market today that supports all three important features. So
what’s a custom integrator to do for clients who wouldn’t have a gaming
console if you gave it to them? Do you install a player that’s lacking
important features, or do you deprive your clients of the Blu-ray
experience until a fully featured player is released? The decision is
ultimately yours, but I would have to think long and hard about
installing anything but a PS3 at this point in the game.
