BD-P1000 Overview and Build Quality
Not a day goes by that I don't get inundated with emails or news reports of something going on in the new high resolution DVD "format war". I am determined to avoid the tendency to break into loquacious bouts of opinion regarding the formats and simply stick to reviewing this rather fine looking piece of machinery. Believe me, it's easier and it makes my job a whole lot more pleasant if we keep the comparisons to their own articles where they belong. With that being said, Samsung is the first product to market for Blu-ray Disc and, as such, carries the burden of taking heat for anything not yet performing up to snuff with respect to the player's capabilities. As we go through the various functions and utilities of the BD player, you'll get to experience what I did and perhaps get a glimpse inside what makes this $1000 high resolution player tick.
First Impressions and Build Quality
The
Samsung player looks slick. Its piano gloss finish is quite attractive and the player feels
substantial, despite the fact that it only weighs in at just over 9 pounds. Access to the
player's innards was granted through three rear Philips screws and two very industrial looking
allen-head screws on each side of the player.
HDMI is aptly handled by the Silicon Image SiI 9030CTU-7 chip which is spec'ed for 25-150MHz use and 1080p applications. At heart, this is an HDMI 1.0 compliant chip, but standards seem to change faster than the imprinting of silicon does in this industry. The SiI 9030CTU-7 can handle just about anything needed for Blu-ray and more, including 4:2:2 - 4:4:4 up-conversion, 24-bit YCbCr 4:2:2, 1080p and WSXGA (1680x1050) resolutions, DVD-Audio support (not implemented here), 192kHz and 96kHz audio, and more.
A Broadcom chip handles MPEG-2 and H.264 video decoding (just like with the Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player). This is a 64MB chip as far as we can tell and is located nearby the Genesis Faroudja FLI8638-LF chip which is an "all-in-one" chip that is capable of handling digital conversion, 10-bit DCDi deinterlacing, scaling, TrueLife video enhancement, and even dual channel 1080p support. To say that there is a lot of expensive silicon on this motherboard would be an understatement - and make no mistake, this is a motherboard and the BD player is a PC. It just runs Java instead of Windows (which probably means it will crash a lot less than your desktop or laptop).
On the back of the unit we see that Samsung has made provisions for HDMI and component video outputs, composite and s-video (standard definition DVDs only - no Blu-ray), both coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs, and a multi-channel audio output in addition to a mixed L/R analogue out. Right now it seems that the studios are only releasing uncompressed PCM tracks and allowing that to play through via HDMI and the 5.1 outputs. So far, the audio sounds great.
Author's Note on High Resolution Audio, HDMI 1.1, and the BD-P1000
One of the workarounds for high resolution 7.1 audio was to output the format via analogue outputs. Since this player only has 6 analogue outputs, it seems as if the manufacturers have opted to "hobble" the player to only support PCM, Dolby Digital or DTS bitstream content via these outputs. Dolby Digital Plus is also supported which is a higher bitrate version of Dolby Digital and offers much improved fidelity (though we haven't seen any supporting software as of yet). HDMI 1.1 is the format included with this player and, from what we have seen, it won't be upgradeable to handle DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD natively until there is a chip/player upgrade (firmware won't cut it).What users should realize, however, is that HDMI 1.1 will allow manufacturers to convert the HD audio formats to uncompressed PCM and send them out of the HDMI outputs. Yes, HDMI 1.1 can handle 8 channels of uncompressed PCM. In addition, a legacy format like Dolby Digital will always be available via the coax or optical outputs. The end result is that these players should still have a nice long shelf life (you may not have discrete 7.1, but a lack of audio remixes and uncertainty on surround speaker layout may render this moot anyway)
