Audio Video News

A short time ago, we reviewed Samsung's BD-P1500 Blu-ray player. Time really flies, because Samsung already has a new player on the way. The BD-P2500 is a follow-up and upgrade to the BD-P1500, with some new features and a fatter price tag to match.

BD-Life and 7.1-channel support are the player's two biggest upgrades over its predecessor. The BD-P1500 only had two-channel analog audio output, surround sound users should be extremely pleased by the sudden jump up to full 7.1-channel analog surround sound. Of course, plenty of digital audio support is still built-in, including Dolby TrueHD decoding and planned support for Dolby DTS-HD HR decoding via a firmware upgrade later this fall.

The new BD-Live (or Blu-ray Profile 2.0) support offers access to the latest Blu-ray interactivity features, while backwards compatibility for Profile 1.1 mean users can still use Bonus View, the picture-in-picture feature for commentary tracks and other interesting visual tidbits in movies. With support for BD-Live interactivity features, the player's ethernet port might get much more of a workout than it did in the old version, where it was relegated just for firmware upgrades.

Finally, the BD-P2500 incorporates a Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) processing chip, which Samsung claims provides the best DVD upconversion and Blu-ray viewing available. HQV processing is found in several high-end Blu-ray players, including the Marantz BD8002 and the Denon DVD-3800. Those players retail for four times as much as the BD-P2500, so this might just be the least expensive HQV-equipped device on the market.

Samsung's new player ships in October, with a retail price of $499. It's a hundred dollars more than the BD-P1500, but for all the extra features it offers, it might just be worth it. - Will Greenwald