The Samsung BD-P1400/XEU Blu-ray High Definition Player

Now that HD-DVD has finally bitten the dust its being reported by UK merchants Play.com and Dixons that consumer interest in Blu-Ray players has spiked significantly. Not sure how much of this interest has converted into actual sales of the hardware, although a quick browse around Dixons website reveals that they don’t actually have many of them in stock. Although Play do have a couple available for reasonably good prices too. The Samsung BD-P1400/XEU Blu-ray High Definition Player is currently in stock for a mere £199, and while its not without its reported flaws, this is currently the best price around for those wishing to dip their toes into an emerging market. It critics complain about slow loading speeds and the fact that out of the box it ony supports Blu-ray Profile 1.0 - although there a downloadable update on Samsung’s website to remedy this. Counter that with what you get when you actually get to watch a Blu Ray movie in all its glory and some faults coud be worth living with for the time being. But if you’re patient and can wait a month or two then I’m sure it wont be long before Budget players start to flood the shelves, just as DVD players did 4 or 5 years ago.

Buy the Samsung BD-P1400/XEU Blu Ray Player from Play.com today.

PS3 Lite on the Cards?

Todays rumour mill seems to working overtime with suggestions that Sony could well be unleashing a slimmer, leaner version of their flagship High Definition PS3 games console this Autumn. The word seems to have been leaked to T3 by an un-named source over at the recent CES in January. The new console is said to be slimmer and lighter as well as sporting a bigger hard drive too (possibly 160gb). Of course in the long run we would probably have expected Sony to do something like this, after all they have have a track record of streamlining their popular games consoles, starting with the PSOne, but to release something a soon as this Autumn would be unlikely - but hey you never know.

Source: T3

BRAVIA Full HD VPL-VW40 Projector

BRAVIA Full HD VPL-VW40 Home Theatre Projector Brings you Superb Cinematic Picture Quality. Last week Sony added the final piece of the Jigsaw to its range of Home Theatre Projectors with the launch of the VPL-VW40. The BRAVIA badged VPL-VW40 is capable of 1080p Full HD and uses Sony SXRD™ technology to re-create the original cinematic viewing experience as closely as possible at home. Read more

Samsung LE40M86BD Picture settings

We’re getting a fair bit of traffic looking for the ideal picture settings for the LE40M86BD of late so I thought I’d do a little research and see what I could find. I don’t own this TV so these aren’t verified personally but they do come from reliable sources. Many thanks to HDTVTest and the AVforums for these.

Hi Def Settings through HDMI:
Mode:	Movie	Size:	Just Scan
Contrast:	90	Digital N/R:	Off
Brightness:	50	Active Colour:	Off
Sharpness:	30	DNIe:	Off
Colour:	51	Move Plus:	Off
Tint:	50
Colour Tone:	Warm2
Backlight:	1*
Detailed Settings		White Balance
Black Adjust:	Off	R-offset:	17
Dynamic Contrast:	Off	G-offset:	15
Gamma:	-1	B-offset:	11
Edge Enhancement:	Off	R-Gain:	4
Colour Space:	Wide	G-Gain:	14
xVYCC:	On	B-Gain:	30
Standard Definition Settings Through RGB Scart.
Mode:	Movie	Size:	16:9
Contrast:	70	Digital N/R:	Off
Brightness:	44	Active Colour:	Off
Sharpness:	26	DNIe:	Off
Colour:	52	Move Plus:	Off
Tint:	50
Colour Tone:	Normal
Backlight:	4
Detailed Settings		White Balance
Black Adjust:	Low	R-offset:	15
Dynamic Contrast:	Off	G-offset:	14
Gamma:	0	B-offset:	13
Edge Enhancement:	Off	R-Gain:	10
Colour Space:	Wide	G-Gain:	18
xVYCC:	Off	B-Gain:	12

Please note that these settings are subjective and dependent upon your ambient lighting arrangement as well as quality of source signal. As such they should be considered a good place to start tweaking to suit your viewing environment. If you have any settings that might improve on these then feel free to post them in the comments section.