Review: Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray Player
Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity - Kris Deering, May 2007
About a year ago, I tested the very first Blu-ray player on the market in our DVD Benchmark: the Samsung BD-P1000. While this player did a decent job as a Blu-ray playback device, it was less than ideal for standard DVD playback. In fact, it was one of the worst I’d seen from Samsung.
Who would have thought that, less than a year later, Samsung would release its successor, and the difference would be staggering? Not only is the BD-P1200 a significant step up as a Blu-ray player, it is light years ahead for SD DVD playback.
Currently, our DVD Benchmark focuses on a player’s abilities as a progressive scan DVD player with standard DVDs. We are in the process of formulating an HD Benchmark that will put HD DVD and Blu-ray players to the test in a variety of areas that are very similar to what our SD DVD Benchmark provides, but for now we will focus on the BD-P1200’s abilities as a progressive scan DVD player.
This is the first Samsung player to use the Silicon Optix Reon HQV video-processing chip. It's the third player we’ve tested that uses this solution, and like the others, the BD-P1200 does extremely well in our testing. This is without a doubt the best DVD player that Samsung has put on the market in terms of video performance, period.
The previous BD-P1000 used the new Genesis “Cortez” video processing solution that integrates some of Faroudja’s newest video processing algorithms. We’ve been fans of Faroudja’s offerings for quite some time but had issues with the FLI-23xx series of chips due to the “macroblocking” issue that manifested with most display devices. This problem appeared as random digital noise that was quite obvious in large solid colors or darker scenes making many DVDs nearly unwatchable. The “Cortez” chip didn’t seem to suffer from this issue but it did a very poor job with DVD video processing in the BD-P1000. It failed the majority of our high detail cadence tests, and despite the DCDi logo, did a very poor job with diagonal line processing. At the same time, the BD-P1000 represented the highest priced player I had tested to date from Samsung.
Needless to say, I didn’t have high hopes for the new BD-P1200, but their switch to Silicon Optix for video processing seemed to have turned things around significantly. The BD-P1200 scored one of the highest placements we’ve had in the DVD Benchmark to date. The Reon chip passed all of our de-interlacing tests without a single hiccup. The only nitpick I had was what seemed like a slightly slower recovery time when the video switched from film to video encoding. When we tested the Reon chip in the Denon DVD-3930 and the Toshiba HD-XA2, it seemed to recover a bit faster with this test.
None of the problems we saw with the BD-P1000 have returned. Cadence detection and diagonal line processing were as good as we’ve seen yet, and the core video problems were also fixed.
The BD-P1000 suffered from Y/C delay, and its chroma filter was in a constant "On" position. This filtering caused a rather severe roll-off in chroma resolution due to the unnecessary filtering. With the BD-P1200, on the other hand, there were no Y/C delay issues, and the chroma filter is only used with 4:2:0 ICP material, which is how it should be correctly applied. This lends to a far cleaner image and better detail in color information.
The BD-P1200 is not clipping any active pixels from the image and retains the full resolution of whatever source you are running (480p or 1080p). The output colorspace is set at YCbCr 4:4:4 but it is not clipping head or toe room like so many other Blu-ray players we’ve tested.
On the HD side, the inclusion of the Reon chip has some other benefits. Like the BD-P1000, the BD-P1200 is doing the I/P conversion from 1080i to 1080p, unless you engage the 1080p24 output available with this player. That output is a raw video signal right off the decoder (although you can still apply some of the HQV post processing such as noise reduction and image enhancement). The “Cortez” chip used in the previous Samsung player would handle a 3-2 cadence fine for 1080i, but it could not handle a 2-2 cadence. This is essential for faithfully reproducing a 1080p image from material originating as a 1080p30 source. A recent example of this is the concert Blu-ray release by Nine Inch Nails. The BD-P1200 is the only current Blu-ray player that can output this disc at 1080p correctly and doesn’t sacrifice detail in its 1080p conversion. I am sure as more concerts are released on Blu-ray, we’ll see more and more encodes sourced from 1080p30 material.
Another benefit is the HQV post processing. I was a fan of this with my flagship DVD player, the Denon DVD-5910. There have been some early Blu-ray releases with noise apparent in the source (some of the early Lionsgate and Sony titles come to mind). The noise reduction features of the Reon allow the end user to tweak the image a bit and get a cleaner output.
From a usability standpoint, the BD-P1200 is a bit of an improvement from the BD-P1000. The player is faster than most of the HD playback devices I’ve used, especially for disc loading and navigation. I also appreciate the fact that the output video resolution doesn’t change all the time from 1080i to 1080p because of the mastering of the discs. This is a problem with the Sony and Pioneer designs.
Conclusions
Without a doubt, this is the best DVD player I’ve tested to date from Samsung and a big step up in performance across the board from their previous Blu-ray offering. It is nice to see that they improved in both SD and HD playback, something I wasn’t expecting from them, given their past efforts. The inclusion of the Reon video-processing chip makes this one of the best DVD players I’ve tested regardless of price point, and the best Blu-ray player on the market for de-interlacing 1080i sourced Blu-ray discs. I would still like to see added support for some of the new advanced audio codecs, but other than that, this gets a “highly recommended” for both Blu-ray and DVD playback.
Click here to view the entire article.
|
