Blu-Ray Player-Learn What Features Will Enhance Your Viewing Enjoyment

Here’s a list of “everything” you need to consider when you’re ready to buy a Blu-ray player. This list is accurate as of December 2011.

Internet And Memory Features

• Wi-Fi: Let’s you connect to the Internet without an Ethernet wire. This is pretty nice when your media or entertainment center is no where near an Internet connection. You don’t really want to run a bunch of long wires all around the house.

  Just be aware that there are a couple of ways the Wi-Fi is built into the player. One way is that it’s built into the player. Another is that you’ll need an external adapter that you plug into the USB port on the player. And the third option is that you have to “buy” the Wi-Fi adapter as an extra.

• Streaming Services: So once you’re connected to the Internet, a whole new world is open to you. It’s called “Streaming Services”. Each manufacture’s Blu-ray player may offer a different selection of services.

  Here’s a list to help you get an idea of what’s available.

  (note: Some services may require a subscription. You can remove or add a service with firmware updates)

  Video Services:YouTube, Netflix, DIVX TV, Crackle, Qriosity, Amazon, CinemaNow, Blockbuster, Vudu, Hulu Plus.

  Music Services:Gracenote, NPR, Qriosity, MOG, Pandora, Napster, Slacker, vTuner

  Photos, Social, Other:Picasa, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, Weather.There may be more services available.

  Just make sure that the Blu-ray player you want to buy has the service listed in it’s specs or on the box somewhere.

• Internal Memory: Internal memory gives you access to BD-Live. You’ll need at least 1GB of memory in the player. If there’s no Internal memory than a USB flash drive or memory card can be used.

  You’ll also need an Internet connection to be able to download games, and movie trailers.

• Memory card slot and USB connections: Allows you to play music, watch a photo gallery, or watch videos. Some players have a slide-show feature for your photos.

Media Features

• List and description of discs that can be played:
• - Blu-ray discs (BD): Hight-definition discs
  - BD-R discs: You can play recordable Blu-ray discs
  - BD-RE discs: Can play Blu-ray discs that are Recordable/Erasable
  - DVD-R discs: Play DVD Recordable discs. These discs may have been burned.
  - DVD+R discs: Same as DVD-R and they can be burned too.
  - DVD+RW discs: Play DVD Re-Writable discs, as well as, burned DVD+RW.
  - DVD-Audio discs: The DVD-Audio quality can be better than a CD.
  - SACD discs: Super Audio CD has stereo and better quality than a CD.
  - MP3 audio: Any MP3 that has been burned from the computer, copied to a USB or SD card.
  - CD-R audio discs: Play a CD-Recordable disc burned on computer.
  - CD-RW audio discs: Play CD ReWritable disc burned on a computer.
  - WMA files: Play Windows Media Audio file that has been burned onto a CD-R/RW.
  - Video CDs (mpeg–1): play video CDs in the MPEG–1 format.
  - JPEG image files: Can view photos that have been burned onto a CD-R/RW.
• - DLNA compatible: Digital Living Network Alliance allows DLNA devices like a TV, printer, cell phone to share photos and videos with the DLNA Blu-ray player. No extra software is needed.
• 3D: 3D players can also play regular Blu-ray, DVDs, and CDs. Of course you’ll need a 3D TV along with a couple pairs of 3D glasses.
• Movie-like Surround sound: If you really want to get that “cinema” experience, you’ll need to get a Dolby Digital Receiver along with 6-speakers including a sub-woofer if you’re watching standard DVD movies.

  Blu-ray players also support the new lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master formats, spittin exact reproductions of the movie’s master sound track.

  Dialog and subtitles in different languages are available for certain movies.Parental code is also available.

• Navigation: Easily navigate the discs menus and any other content at the same time while watching a movie.

  Chapter previews allow you to check-out the beginnings of each section or chapter. There is also a Chapter gallery that shows the thumbnail of a chapter’s opening scene.

  You can even navigate by “go-to by time” where you enter hours and minutes that you’d like to skip to.

• Picture control: Allows you to view scenes from different angles. Of course, this feature first has to be available on the disc

  Zoom allows for zooming in on a specific picture frame.

• Disc capacity: Not quite common at this time, but look out for more multi-disc players. For now most multi-disc players hold between three to five discs.

Connections and Load Times

• Coaxial digital-audio out: You’ll need some sort of Digital-audio output if your TV or home-media system doesn’t have an HDMI connection. The coaxial cable is similar to the composite-video cable. They both use the ubiquitous RCA connectors.

  This coaxial or optical both support multichannel Dolby Digital and DTS audio, but unfortunately, not the more enhanced formats that come with the HDMI cable.

  The bottom line. You need to be aware of the player’s outputs so the’ll match the inputs on your receiver or external digital decoder.

• Optical digital-audio out: Another alternative if your TV is lacking a HDMI input connection. An optical digital audio cable can connect to a digital receiver, giving you both stereo and multi-channels.

  Again, this cable is similar to the Coaxial digital cable in its support of Dolby Digital and DTS audio, but not the enhanced format that come with the HDMI cable.

  Same bottom line as the coaxial digital cable, make sure outputs and inputs match.

• Component out: Of all the three, Coaxial, Optical, and Component, this is offers the best for viewing high quality video.

  Three separate RCA jacks, red, yellow, white. This is what I use with my 40-inch Sharp HDTV.

  (note: I have a Tunewear Visual Dock for my iPod Classic. So all I do is load up the iPod from iTunes Library. Connect to the Tunewear dock. Use the docks remote to play movies and TV shows. It’s a little funky. But I’m comfortable with it. And that’s what this is all about-comfort and enjoyment.)

• Blu-ray load time range (sec.): The amount of time it takes from the time you press the “load” button until the video information appears on screen. Java encoded players will normally take longer to load.
• DVD load time (sec.): The amount of time it takes from the time you press the “load” button until the video information appears on screen.