When it comes to Blu-Ray, Samsung has always been ahead of the pack, though the South Korea-based electronics conglomerate may not be the best known name, among the various vendors supporting this format.
Samsung was first to market with a Blu-Ray player (BD-P1000) last Summer, and now the company is also the first vendor to release a second-gen Blu-Ray device (BD-P1200).
In my 2006 review of the Samsung BD-P1000, I had indicated that – despite the player's many attractive features – its steep price (at the time it retailed for $1,299.99 at Futureshop.ca) was likely to place it out of the range of all but the really serious videophiles.
The good news is the price of the second generation player has dropped quite a bit.
The BD-P1200 retails for around $700 at TheBrick.com, FutureShop.ca, and BestBuy.ca.
Despite the price drop, that's still quite a sizeable chunk of change to fork out for a single AV device so the question is: do the features of the BD-P1200 justify the cost?
Let's investigate further before we proffer an opinion.
Colours Unlimited
When it comes to Blu-Ray players, video and audio quality are by far the most crucial factors to consider when making a buying decision. Along with that you want to be sure the device is versatile – playing not just Blu-Ray discs, but most – if not all – of your existing media: your entire range of CDs, DVDs, for instance.
If that seems a no-brainer consider this: many first-gen Blu-Ray players don't play CDs. The BD-P1200, however, does.
And on the issue of audio and video quality, all first-generation players don't support the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) version 1.3 specification that was released in June 2006.
But the BD-P1200 does; it has an HDMI 1.3 compliant port.
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