Early Samsung Blu-ray Players Ship with Chip Mistake

akoinuma -- Wed, 07/19/2006 - 12:33

Read our exclusive news story coverage by The Perfect Vision Video Editor Scott Wilkinson here:

http://www.avguide.com/news/2006/07/19/exclusive-early-samsung-blu-ray-p...

Comments? Questions? Post them here. Scott will check from time to time to respond.

scottwilkinson -- Wed, 07/19/2006 - 15:37

No one knows when Samsung will announce an update policy for existing players in the field, but we will bring you that info as soon as possible. In the meantime, I suggest that owners of the BD-P1000 contact Samsung and let them know this is important to you. The greater the pressure they feel to do something about it, the quicker it will get done.

Stay tuned to AVGuide.com for more details as they become available. And please contribute to this forum with your own Blu-ray experiences.

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision

jec7 -- Wed, 07/19/2006 - 15:48

Thank you so much for verifying what I've noticed since purchasing this Blu-Ray player a couple of weeks ago. I'm accustomed to viewing HD material over-the-air; I've had DirecTV HD for several years; and I manage a 720p, HD production facility here in Atlanta. I'm using a Toshiba 34" HD CRT (component inputs) which has been calibrated by Randy Tomlinson. It makes amazing HD images from HDNet and OTA.

I purchased 4 movies with the player, "Fifth Element", "50 First Dates", "House of Flying Daggers", and "Hitch". I was not really impressed with the video sharpness and quality, but the uncompressed PCM audio sure caught my ears! I continued to buy movies including "Crash", "Lord of War", etc., expecting that the software was at fault for the "less-than-impressive" HD image. I was wrong -- all the software appears the same (ICT?). Is the noise-reduction chip at fault? Does anyone have the same experience using the HDMI outputs? I want to let Samsung know of my disappointment but am unsure of how to contact them? Thanks in advance!

John

scottwilkinson -- Wed, 07/19/2006 - 16:25

The softness is not due to ICT; it is equally evident from the HDMI and component outputs. (As far as I know, there are no titles that implement ICT...yet.) It is due to the fact that the scaler's noise-reduction circuit was enabled.

Probably the best way to contact Samsung is through their tech-support system at www.samsung.com/support/index.asp. Let all early adopters' voices be heard!

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision

shamus -- Wed, 07/19/2006 - 23:25

Scott, Excellent find!!!! Can you clearify in your article, when comparing the Sammy to the Toshiba, were you using an old Samsung or the modified one???? Also any more thoughts on the picture quality of the modified one would be great!! Thanks

scottwilkinson -- Wed, 07/19/2006 - 23:40

In my direct comparison with the Toshiba, I was using an older, unmodified Samsung player; that is, one with the Genesis noise reduction enabled. I only got to see an updated player (one with the noise reduction turned off) for about an hour at Sony Pictures Studio. As I said in my AVGuide.com article, the modified player's image was quite a bit sharper than the unmodified one, which was playing on the next screen.

I hope to get an updated player to use over a longer period to really see just how much better it is. At that time, I will also do another direct comparison with the Toshiba.

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision

shamus -- Thu, 07/20/2006 - 01:53

Thanks for the quick response.. It will be interesting to see how much of an improvement this will make and more importantly... how it will compare to the Toshiba now. Thanks again

shamus -- Thu, 07/20/2006 - 02:31

One more thing.... As an early adopter, many of us were dissapointed with the PQ compared to the Toshiba. I havent seen the Toshiba on my display but I have often heard it descibed as wow...including by yourself. Unfortunately as much as I enjoy my Samsung...I have not been wowed. I know you didnt have much time to mess around with the player, but in your initial viewing, do you feel the noise reduction feature was all to blame for the so so PQ??? Or do you also feel(as many have felt) that partial blame is do to the codecs Sony is using???? In other words once seeing the modified Samsung, were you "wowed"??????

advancedcinematics -- Thu, 07/20/2006 - 08:36

Sony has made it again! That company did not learn on the past errors! It is unbelievable that Sony, Samsung and others linked to the BD project introduce to the market a product and midia so bad that any person cannot distinguish it from a good DVD, and we are talking on high definition. What those companies think that we, the consumers, are? Ignorants

lrstevens421 -- Fri, 07/21/2006 - 09:22

Hi, I'm new to this forum, but I'm a regular on another. I am one of the early blu-ray adopters and I was ready to kill samsung (not literally). Initially I wasn't sure if the problem was with the player or the software, but Scott has helped shed some light on the situation.

Scott - are you aware of any companies out there that will perform the necessary mods? O do we have to wait for Samsung? If these companies exist I know they will void the manufacturer's warranty but I'm very impatient. Any ideas?

lrstevens421 -- Fri, 07/21/2006 - 09:49

I spoke to Chris in tier 2 technical support at Samsung, he advised me that Samsung is aware of the problem and are currently working on a frimware update (no date though). It's important that blu-ray owners contact Samsung and let their voices be heard.

rewjr -- Fri, 07/21/2006 - 17:10

Lets just say from the start that Betaray damage control is in full gear ...

The real issue is the Betaray use of Dinosauric MPEG2 Sony forced pig of a video codec causing many compression artifacts on a 25GB single layer Betaray disk .

Compare this to Toshiba's brillant choice of the superior VC-1 video codec for HD-DVD on a dual layer 30GB disk ( yes that's right more storage than Betaray ) .

Joe Kane has done extensive codec comparisons of digital HDTV video and admits VC-1 running at 12-14 mbs out preforms MPEG2 at 24 mbs ..

I have seen this at CEDIA myself .

It's over fan boys ...

scottwilkinson -- Fri, 07/21/2006 - 17:25

I am aware of no third-party companies that will perform the modification; it must come from Samsung. And I've heard nothing about when to expect it from them. Sorry, you're just going to have to be patient. (Grrr!)

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision

shamus -- Sat, 07/22/2006 - 14:04

shamus wrote:One more thing.... As an early adopter, many of us were dissapointed with the PQ compared to the Toshiba. I havent seen the Toshiba on my display but I have often heard it descibed as wow...including by yourself. Unfortunately as much as I enjoy my Samsung...I have not been wowed. I know you didnt have much time to mess around with the player, but in your initial viewing, do you feel the noise reduction feature was all to blame for the so so PQ??? Or do you also feel(as many have felt) that partial blame is do to the codecs Sony is using???? In other words once seeing the modified Samsung, were you "wowed"??????

Scott any feedback on my previous post???????????? Sorry to bother you but your the only guy in town whos seen one of these "modified" units.

scottwilkinson -- Sat, 07/22/2006 - 15:19

If you mean your post about whether or not the poor PQ can be laid entirely at the feet of the Genesis noise reduction, my answer is no. For example, The Fifth Element was mastered from a substandard print, which Don Eklund at Sony Pcitures admitted to me. Also, I suspect that the MPEG-2 encoding has something to do with it generally, though I can find no one at Sony (or anywhere in the Blu-ray camp) to confirm that. As I've said before, I only saw the modified player for an hour with two titles, so I can't draw any firm conclusions from that limited experience.

The pre-launch Blu-ray demos I've seen generally looked spectacular, though the clips could have been carefully chosen and optimized in a manner not representative of commercial releases; I simply don't know. I recently saw an unreleased test HD DVD encoded with MPEG-2 that did not look nearly as good as the VC-1 titles I've seen; in particular, it looked softer. I don't know what bit rate was used; I'll try to find out.

I believe that the Blu-ray camp made several mistakes in the launch of the format that all contributed to the poor PQ people are seeing. This leads some to conclude that they were over-confident and so did not attend to the details as much as they should have. I tend to agree. I will continue to look into this and report my findings here.

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision

shamus -- Sat, 07/22/2006 - 16:01

Thanks Scott

DanH -- Sun, 07/23/2006 - 19:44

Scott I'm a bit surprised they didn't set you up with a beta version of the firmware. With all that is riding on the line especially now with HD-DVD really looking good out of the shoot I thought this was the least they would do.

Also I would have thought something like that filter would be able to enabled and disenabled in a user menu. Many DVD players have such a feature, right?

scottwilkinson -- Sun, 07/23/2006 - 20:40

I agree completely: with all that's riding on the Samsung player for the Blu-ray camp, I'm amazed they released it as it was. And I hear the firmware update might not be available until September! This is probably why they didn't set me up with beta firmware (which would likely be buggy, so I wouldn't want to review it anyway).

You're correct that many players and displays have noise reduction filters that can be turned on and off in the user menu. Why this switch is not present in the Samsung's menu is a mystery to me.

Scott Wilkinson
Video Editor
The Perfect Vision

DanH -- Mon, 07/24/2006 - 15:19

I should think an update to the firmware to just turn that filter off would be real simple and low risk as far as adding a bug would go. That is, it should only require something as simple as flipping one bit in a register. Maybe they have other refinements they want to include or it just isn't that simple. Anyway I would think they would want you have have some sort of beta update with the understanding that it is beta. It shouldn't be that buggy.

It is certainly going to be interesting how this all plays out. Right now, like you said, it looks like the Blu-ray camp has gotten a bit over confident.