I have been being very nice with Christmas approaching and have only one thing on my wish list; a Blu-ray player to go with our new HDTV LCD Samsung.

Now the wife told me this morning that she is afraid she will buy the wrong Blu-ray player, get the wrong free movies or that I will change my mind on the brand, she knows me to well, she told me to just go get whatever I wanted. But if I get the LG HD DVD/Blu-ray she will kill me cause she is thinking 300 or 400 at tops, so now I have to figure out the Sharp, Samsung, or the older Sony player. Oh yea, and someone is telling me about the PS3 now.

Any ideas?????

You get the most expensive one you can afford. Don't forget the holidays are right around the corner, buy yourself a present, I am.

If the LG HD-DVD / Blu-ray player was available when I bought mine I probably would have gone for that, although it is expensive like you say. All in all I am pretty happy with my Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray player. Seems to have all the bells and whistles including 24 frames per second for improved video quality (disc and TV need to support 24fs) Up conversion is to 1080P and seems quite good. Although some say Toshiba is hard to beat for up conversion ( never compared them). Now I find it hard to watch normal TV even in High Def after being spoiled with Hi Definition DVD's. Good luck in your search.

The PS3 certainly has a lot going for it. Price wise, its very competitive. It supports 1080p and picture and sound quality is excellent. It's network enabled (both wired and wireless) It can also form the basis of a pretty decent media center. Browses the web, can play video, audio and picture files stored on other PC's over the network. And lastly, its a pretty decent games console.

I have no interest in gaming and know nothing about how well a PS3 plays Blu-Ray. But if you decide to buy a standalone unit, I'd recommend the Panasonic DMP-BD30. I bought it the other day at Circuit City and it does a fantastic job of upconverting standard DVD to 1080p. It also says it supports BD-R, both single and double layer, in case you decide to back up Blu-Ray movies in the future. Also, (I think) it's the only player currently on the market to play version 1.1 of the Blu-Ray standard, while others only do version 1.0.

Thanks everyone; now I have to do a little research on the Panasonic and PS3 as well. This decision is not getting any easier, LOL.

Alan, good advise I think I will take you up on it.

@ Some Ramdom Guy

Well, here it is midnight and after reading reviews and looking at all the possibilities I think you have got a good one. I am headed to CircuitCity tomorrow to have an up-close look and I think I will be bringing this player home with me. Maybe the wife will let me hook it up now and she can put the box under the tree.

BestBuy here also has the Panasonic in stock, now I need one of the 12% coupons.

Best Buy, Dec 7-10:

10% off, or 12% with your Reward Zone membership.

Includes all BD and HD players. I just got this coupon in the mail today.

Here's $20 off; hopefully someone else can do better than that.

http://emailinfo.bestbuy.com/P/v3/Co...=1007&ci=50432

EDIT: D'oh - see CDan's post.

Hopefully I will get the coupons in todays mail also.

Thanks CDan

Went to the local CC today and their inventory said that had one of the Pansonic as SomeRandomGuy mentioned but they could not find it. I will check out bestbuy tomorrow.

How about this one

Samsung 1080p Blu-ray and HD DVD Player BD-UP5000 ($779)
http://www.onsale.com/shop/detail~dp...~220.0000.aspx

Just gave them a call and the earliest this will be available is Jan 7th. I want one NOW, lol

You might want to buy yourself an HDMI cable online right now if you don't have one already. The Blu-ray players don't come pre-packaged with them. They're ridiculously expensive off the shelf at places like Wal-Mart (something like $35 for a 6-ft cable, I believe).

monoprice.com and meritline.com are both good vendors.

I am back at the drawing board.

I need to find a player that will play R and RE discs also. The Sony 500 will but it is 700.00. So more research is needed now.

Costco has the Samsung 1400 I believe; for 379.00 today but it will not read R and RE discs according to the specs on the case.

Yes Kip that is an issue, I will be keeping my eyes open with you for a player with those specs

Specs can be wrong about disc compatibility. I'd suggest that rather than relying on specs, you visit someplace like AVS and find out from owners what the various machines will play. None of the HD machines list playback of HD content on DVDs as being supported, but it is.

Samsung website say's it does. Click.

Page 11 of the manual says that it does not

http://www.samsung.com/ca/support/pr...e=UM&language=

A friend is shipping me his Panny BluRay writer to play with. I will backup a bluRay movie (Ice Age) and burn it to a BD-RE disc and take it with me to CC and Bestbuy and play around. I found one at BB that does support R and RE discs according to the specs but it is 499.00 bucks.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1186008217564

I followed Dan's advice and went to AVS forums and it seems a FW update for the BD-P1400 added the support a while back .

Thanks crossg

Was at the local Costco yesterday and they have the 1400 on sale for 379.00 so I am going to pick it up today. At least with Costco I can easily return it if I am not happy.

HDMI 1.3 bitstream audio out is a nice bit of future-proofing too. All you need with that is an AVR that can accept it and decode HD audio. (read big bucks here)