Samsung BD-P1200

Editors' note June 9, 2008: The rating of this player has been changed since its initial publication to reflect changes in the marketplace.

Editors' note: The rating of the BD-P1400 has been lowered since its initial publication to reflect the disc compatibility issues that have occurred since we reviewed it. While many of the issues were eventually fixed by firmware upgrades, the new rating reflects our decreased confidence, based on the company's delays in the past, that Samsung will offer timely firmware upgrades for newly released movies.

Even though Sony is the most well-known force behind the Blu-ray format, Samsung was actually the first company to roll out a Blu-ray player--the BD-P1000, which arrived in the summer of 2006. Now Samsung has another first: its BD-P1200 is the first second-generation Blu-ray player on the market. First-gen standalone Blu-ray players had all sorts of quirks--some couldn't play CDs, many had lackluster support for high-resolution soundtracks, and they all lacked HDMI 1.3, which promises a range of possible improvements. Worst of all, their selling prices hovered somewhere north of $1,000. Many early adopters and enthusiasts, who still represent the only real market for dedicated high-def disc players, couldn't help but notice that Toshiba's HD DVD players were cheaper and that Sony's PlayStation 3 offered Blu-ray playback and high-def gaming for $600.

The BD-P1200 corrects many of the flaws of the first-gen players. It can play CDs, and has an HDMI 1.3 port, although despite the newer connection the BD-P1200 still has disappointng next-gen audio support. Its image quality on Blu-ray discs and DVDs is excellent, however, it has a slick new design, and we didn't run into nearly as many operational bugs as we did with the BD-P1000. On the other hand, the BD-P1200 is still very expensive, with a street price of $800. Unfortunately, that means the BD-P1200 comes with a similar caveat we put on the Toshiba HD-XA2 review--it's an excellent choice for enthusiasts willing to spend the money, but for everyone else, it's still probably best to wait.

You'll also note that we rated the BD-P1200 slightly higher than Toshiba's flagship HD-XA2 player. While we think they're virtually equal in terms of performance--and the HD-XA2 might even have a very slight edge in features--we rated the BD-P1200 slightly higher for a few reasons. First off, we preferred the design of the BD-P1200, and its remote is clearly superior for those not replacing it with a universal remote. We also felt that the BD-P1200 offers slightly more stable performance, with less freezing and annoying bugs than on the HD-XA2. Lastly, we had to give the BD-P1200 a slight edge because there are simply more movies available on Blu-ray than on HD DVD, and it looks like that will remain the case for the foreseeable future--unless something major changes in the ongoing format war. Granted, the number of available titles has nothing to do with the actual players themselves, but it has a significant impact on how they're used.

Design
Like many Samsung designs, the BD-P1200 looks shiny, sleek and high-tech. The front panel features a glossy black finish that's prone to fingerprints, although you probably won't be touching it too much. There are just three buttons on the front panel: power, output resolution, and disc open/close. A directional-pad-like circle to the far right allows access to four functions: play/pause, stop, chapter forward, and chapter backward. To the left of those controls is the LED display, which is a little small, but we like that it includes the current output resolution. There are three light sources on the front panel: a blue ring around the power button, a blue light emanating from beneath the player, and the LED display. Unfortunately, only the LED display is dimmable, so home theater enthusiasts who strive for completely darkened rooms may want to break out the electrical tape.

The BD-P1200's included remote is a little better than the standard fare.

We're often harsh critics of the remotes included with electronics gear, but the clicker that ships with the BD-P1200 outclasses most of the competition. Important buttons are clearly separated from each other, and there are even little tactile bumps on the play and stop buttons to make it easy to find them by feel. Furthermore, the main control buttons--stop, start, chapter skips, and so forth--glow in the dark, so they can be seen in a darkened home theater. There's still room for improvement of course--we'd like to see larger buttons for the main controls and a better layout for the fast-forward/rewind and chapter-skip buttons.

Features
The BD-P1200 can play back both Blu-ray and standard DVD discs, as well as standard audio CDs. There's no support for either of the niche high-resolution audio formats, DVD-Audio or SACD. Of course, the BD-P1200 cannot play HD DVD discs. For a complete overview of the two competing next-generation disc formats, check out CNET's Quick guide to HD DVD vs. Blu-ray.

The logos hint at the BD-P1200's attractive feature set.

Soundtrack support is adequate for a Blu-ray player, but somewhat disappointing when compared to Toshiba's HD DVD players. The BD-P1200 has built-in decoding for standard Dolby Digital and DTS, as well as Dolby Digital Plus, which is a slightly higher resolution format of Dolby Digital. What it lacks is built-in decoding of the new highest-resolution soundtrack formats, namely Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-Master. For comparison, even Toshiba's entry-level HD-A2 ($400 MSRP) can handle Dolby TrueHD.

(Update 05-11-07): We originally reported that the presence of HDMI 1.3 might mean that the BD-P1200 can pass the bitstream of Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-Master soundtracks to forthcoming compatible receivers, but according to Samsung it cannot. The BD-P1200 has no support for those highest-resolution next-gen audio formats, so audiophiles should look at the Panasonic DMP-BD10A, the Sony BDP-S1, or the PlayStation 3 for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD High Resolution soundtrack support.

HDMI 1.3 also allows for "deep color" and expanded color gamuts, two other features associated with HDMI 1.3 that should improve picture quality (more info). The BD-P1200 is compatible with these features, but for now they're strictly marketing hype. To fully take advantage of these features, they need to be present not only in the player, but also in the display and the content itself. To see the benefits of deep color, for example, it has to be present on the Blu-ray disc and your HDTV--and as far as we know, no such discs or displays are currently available.

The jack pack includes nearly everything you'd want on a Blu-ray player, and the HDMI jack is version 1.3.

The connectivity of the BD-P1200 is nearly comprehensive for a Blu-ray player. The highlight is the HDMI jack, which is capable of outputting both high definition video (up to 1080p, at either 24 or 60 frames per second) and multichannel high resolution audio. For analog video, there's a component video jack and for standard definition video there are legacy S-Video and composite video jacks. Note that the like all Blu-ray players, the BD-P1200 can output high definition video over the component video jacks, unless such behavior is restricted by the disc--and we haven't seen any such discs so far.

For digital audio, there is the aforementioned HDMI jack plus both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs. There is also a 5.1 multichannel analog audio output, plus a standard stereo analog output. Note that high resolution soundtrack formats can only be played in their highest resolution via the HDMI output or the multichannel analog output--standard optical and coaxial connections can't handle the increased bandwidth.

In addition to audio and video jacks, there's also an Ethernet port that can be used to upgrade the firmware. This is a nice addition, as none of the first generation Blu-ray players had upgradeable firmware via Ethernet.

Blu-ray performance
Image quality on Blu-ray discs from the BD-P1200 is excellent. Blu-ray discs generally deliver very impressive picture quality, with colors and detail that are far beyond DVD. For example, the level of detail visible on extremely sharp releases such as Corpse Bride and Crank just isn't possible on even the best-looking DVD discs. This same increase in image quality is also found on HD DVD discs--in fact, we've found recent releases of the same movie on both formats to be essentially identical.

While the image quality of Blu-ray discs was excellent, we found it to be essentially equal to the other Blu-ray players we've tested. This isn't a bad thing, but anyone looking to buy a Blu-ray player should realize that they essentially perform identically. We watched several Blu-ray discs with excellent image quality, including Corpse Bride, Black Hawk Down, and Aeon Flux, and flipped between the BD-P1200 and the Sony PlayStation 3 and found virtually no difference watching the Panasonic TH-50PX77U at a viewing distance of about seven feet.

We also took a look at the BD-P1200's ability to output Blu-ray movies at 24 frames per second (fps), and again, found no improvement using this mode. Technical details aside, the supposed benefit of outputting at 24fps is that--with a compatible display, which there are very few of--there should be some decrease in judder, which manifests as quick stuttering in motion, most often pans, as opposed to smooth motion. We tested this on the Pioneer Pro-FHD1--with its ADV mode on--and for the most part actually saw somewhat increased judder. For example, in Chapter 4 of Aeon Flux, there's some judder on the edge of the white building, and we saw more judder in 24fps mode than in standard 60fps mode. There was one instance where the Pro-FHD1 did not exhibit increased judder in 24fps mode, and we cannot determine why this happened--all other settings were identical to previous tests where there was increased judder. This inconsistent behavior makes us somewhat skeptical of the Pro-FHD1's ability to display 24fps correctly, so we're not about to write off 1080p/24 just yet. We also tested 1080p/24 with the BenQ W10000, and saw virtually no difference between the two modes--but since the W10000 does not change its refresh rate to a multiple of 24, we didn't expect to see much difference. We're continuing to evaluate the performance of Blu-ray players in 24fps mode with compatible displays, and we'll update this review if applicable.

One of the issues that plagued first-generation high-def disc players was slow load times, both on powering up and on loading discs. The BD-P1200 didn't improve significantly in this area, loading Blu-ray discs in about 21 seconds, and powering up and loading a disc in about 40 seconds. This is about the same as last year's BD-P1000, although a little slower on the boot-up. Overall, we felt it was fast enough that we didn't notice that much--it's certainly not as frustrating as the notoriously slow Toshiba HD-A1.

DVD performance
The Samsung BD-P1200 uses Silicon Optix HQV video processing, which we've already seen from the Toshiba HD-XA2 delivers excellent video quality. We started our performance tests with Silicon Optix's own HQV test suite. The BD-P1200 had no trouble displaying the full resolution of DVDs and showed very little jaggies on one test with a rotating line and another with three pivoting lines. It also didn't break a sweat on the difficult 2:3 pull-down processing test, as it kicked into film mode in about half a second as a racecar speeds by the grandstands. It's not surprising that the HQV processor fared so well on tests created by the same company, but it's still a good indication of the performance of the BD-P1200 on DVDs.

We also took a look at actual content material, and the BD-P1200 did not disappoint. DVDs such as King Kong, Vertical Limit, and Star Trek: Insurrection all looked great, with very few jaggies or other artifacts mucking up the picture. These discs looked as good as we've seen from the best performing DVD players we've reviewed.

We also took a look at the introduction to Seabiscuit, which is a sequence we've noticed HQV processors have struggled with in the past. Again, we saw some noticeable jaggies pop up, especially around 1:37 in chapter 1. There's also some very noticeable artifacts at the beginning of chapter 2, (from 3:09 to 3:23), which looks like jaggies or some sort of flashing behavior in the grass. The same sequences displayed from the Oppo DV-981HD look much better. These issues will be noticeable even to nonvideophiles, although they're relatively brief and so may not be particularly bothersome. Since we have not seen these jaggies on other DVDs yet, we can't be sure how widespread this behavior is. To be sure, the DVD upscaling on the BD-P1200 is excellent with only a few exceptions, and we think even videophiles will be impressed.

Load times for DVDs were relatively speedy, although not quite as fast as standalone players. We first got a picture on Aeon Flux 19 seconds after hitting the open/close button, and it was able to load the same disc in 37 seconds when starting from the off position.

How does it compare to PS3?
The main issue with the BD-P1200 is price--its $800 street price is considerably higher than the $600 price tag of the PlayStation 3. There's no doubt the BD-P1200 has some advantages over the PlayStation 3 for home theater use--its standard form factor, excellent upconversion, analog audio outputs, and the fact that it uses a standard IR receiver (the PS3 doesn't) are all working in its favor. On the other hand, the PlayStation 3 offers the same picture quality on Blu-ray discs, as well as offering next-gen gaming, an internal hard drive, and media playback capabilities--not to mention that Sony will almost certainly continue support and upgrade the PS3 for many years to come. Don't get us wrong, the BD-P1200's HDMI 1.3 input, excellent image quality on Blu-ray discs and DVDs, and an upgradeable Ethernet port give it an edge over all current first-generation standalone Blu-ray players. On the other hand, prices for standalone are going to have to fall quite a bit before they can compete with the PS3 for value-conscious buyers' dollars.