IFA 2007 Blu-ray Player Roundup: Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Philips and Daewoo

IFA 2007 is taking place in Berlin these days and that's the reason why just about every important manufacturer of A/V devices is using this event as a launch pad for its latest products. And one of the most popular products around IFA seems to be the Blu-ray player, since no less than 4 major companies, namely Sony, Sharp, Philips and Daewoo, have showcased their own models.

We'll start with Sony, as they're the original developers of the Blu-ray format. Thus, the Japanese company has presented at IFA the BDP-S500, which builds on the successful platform of the S300 model by adding Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD support for enhanced 7.1-channel surround with supporting movies and audio systems. Moreover, it also provides HDMI 1.3 to output these compressed signals to external receivers and support the full color range of the newest HDTV sets, as well as the x.V.Color (deep color), 24p frame rate and 1080p DVD upscaling. The S500 will first become available in Europe, in October, for a whopping 899 Euros ($1,228).

The second important Blu-ray announcement comes from Philips, which presented the BDP7100 model, a device capable of delivering the best this format has to offer, as well Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD High Resolution Audio multi-channel audio decoding and digital audio optical outputs. Moreover, the Philips BDP7100 supports native 24fps cinematic resolution input via HDMI, which is the same format used in movies. Unfortunately, no pricing or availability information here.

The third player we'll talk about today comes from Sharp and it's dubbed BD-HP20S. It's compatible with Blu-ray discs, supports the MPEG-2, MPEG-4/H264 and VC-1 HDTV video codecs and it's also capable of upscaling PAL signal up to 1080p resolution. Moreover, much like most of the current-generation players, the device is capable of outputting the Blu-ray movie in their original cinema format, as well as the necessary Java applications.

The fourth announcement comes from Daewoo that also presented such an item, namely the DBP-1000 model. According to the company, its player can output movies at up to 1080p via its HDMI port. It will upscale DVD and JPEG photos to full HD resolution and supports DivX content too. The DBP-1000 can handle all the major recordable and rewriteable DVD and CD formats, along with BD-R and BD-RE discs. Moreover, the DBP-1000 has a full array of s-, composite- and component-video and digital and analogue sound outputs. Unfortunately, there's no word on the pricing or availability here either.

Finally, we'll take a look at Samsung, coming at IFA with no less than 3 models, namely the BD-UP5000 Duo HD Player and the BD-P1400 and BD-P2400 Blu-ray players. The first model, namely the dual format player, supports both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats as well as their interactive technologies, BD Java and HDi. The combo player is based on the high-end BD-P2400 Blu-ray player, also presented at IFA, a device that provides a very impressive list of technical specs, including here HDMI 1.3 output to 24 frames, Dolby Digital and DTS audio playback, HDMI CEC (Anynet+) technology that allows consumers to use a single remote control to operate the BD player, TV and other A/V products from Samsung. Additionally, each model is able to up-convert standard DVD discs to full HD 1080p resolution via the HDMI connection. The devices also sport the built-in Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) processor, a powerful unit similar to those used by Hollywood production studios, which enable true 1080i to 1080p HD de-interlacing.











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