So if you were to buy a BD player today, three of your options would be the $1300 Panasonic, the $1000 Samsung (though it can be had for much cheaper), and the $500 PS3. Sound & Vision magazine took a look at these three BD players, though I wonder why they didn’t include the Philips player, which is also currently available.

Maybe I should be writing this article over at PS3Blog.net. Why? Because the reviewer’s favourite BD player was the cheapest of them all - the PS3. Why?

This machine’s picture and sound quality were nothing short of stunning, and its HDMI 1.3 connection and built-in Dolby TrueHD decoding give it a layer of future-proofing that the other players currently lack. I also appreciated its multichannel Super Audio CD playback and 60-GB hard disk for storing compressed music files. And even though I don’t have much use for the PS3’s gaming capabilities, I definitely got a kick out of Resistance: Fall of Man. The PS3’s $600 price — several hundred less than the others — also goes a long way toward making it the Blu-ray Disc player of choice.

Yup, that’s what I have - a PS3! I use it as a BD player when I have a BD movie to watch (which is still not that often). But I can contest that it makes a really good BD player.

Also of note in the review is this:

A more interesting outcome was the mild “jaggies” that I noted when watching M:I III on HD DVD — a video artifact caused by the Sony projector’s deinterlacing of the Toshiba HD DVD player’s 1080i-format output. Not all TVs will have this problem, but it confirmed for me the advantage of using a true 1080p source like Blu-ray (Toshiba’s second-generation HD DVD player will feature 1080p output over HDMI, which should bring it up to speed with the players tested here).

Shootout: 3 Blu-ray Disc Players

This is just nuts with a captial N.

The MPAA in their infinite wisdom wants every person with at 29″ or larger TV with a stereo system to register with them for $50 or face fines of $500,000 per movie shown.

They also want manufacturers to put in technology to count people who are watching a movie and send it to the MPAA.

Of course, this is listed as satire, but who knows what the MPAA has up it’s sleeves.

MPAA Goes After Home Entertainment Systems

Ultimate AV’s Thomas J. Norton took a sneak peek at the Panasonic DMP-BD10 BD disc player. This is Panasonic’s BD player, and it’ll retail for $1300. It does of course have an HDMI output.

The Panasonic and the Philips are the two BD players to follow up on the first player on the market, the Samsung. Mr. Norton says that it’s the first BD player that deserves a rave review. (He also notes that the problem with BD (the format) previously was not the codec - MPEG2, MPEG4, and VC1 all perform admirably.)

The Panasonic player does a good job upconverting standard DVD’s. It’s operation is also “notably less clunky” than other HD players Mr. Norton has tested. It puts out 1080i or 1080p/60, but not 1080p/24.

Panasonic promises a firmware update for a big weakness the player has - its inability to decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master soundtracks. They would be decoded to digital PCM, and put out on the HDMI 1.1 connection. Your receiver would have to be able to handle that, of course.

This player also plays back CD’s and DVD-Audio’s. For more on the player, read the sneak peek below, but you’ll also have to wait for the full review.

Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-ray Disc Player