LopezYY Posted October 12, 2008 Posted October 12, 2008 Hi folks. I posted this in another topic but decided to start a new thread in case anyone has their experience to share. Hi People. Thought I would post a quick review of the BH200. Brought mine over on the plane from the states. Picked it up a couple of weeks back at Best Buy New York - thanks to a 10% off voucher cost me $360+tax. All up with CC charges, it landed around $497, when the dollar was around 79c. The good: ====== Fast start up - power up and disc loading MUCH faster than the A2 and XE1 Toshiba I had Nice menu - easy enough to navigate Plays every disc I have tried flawlessly, except my glitchy I am legend on extended mode. 1 lockup on Break up US combo disc before flashing to June FW all menus work flawless, Blu ray or HD DVD Hex edit hack works great - plays pal DVDs, NTSC, all high def, etc Good sound via Mult channel PCM - my amp is not true HD but accepts PCM Smooth playback - unlike the XE1 movement glitch (jerky playback) the LG plays back video silky smoth on motion. Very quiet fan - quiter than my march 08 manufactured XE1 - and that is very quiet. Best of all - it plays it all - DVDs, Blu, HD, anything! The Not so good: =========== There is a major issue with this machine - the gamma level is turned WAY up and is impossible to adjust. as a result the blacks appear crushed with dark details blending together into a murky mess. Compare the XE1 side by side to the BH200 and you will see the shadow detail is very disappointing on the Bh200 and on default the picture is way too soft - far worse than a good quality DVD machine. You can compensate a little bit by turning up the brightness / sharpness level in the picture setting but then you loose the benefits of QDEO processing. Soft picture. Again can compensate for it somewhat by turning up sharpness, but then you have the edge enhancement Picture is grainy if you're not using default QDEO setting. So you either live with a dark soft picture or you sharpen it up and accept a high level of graineness. Mediocre DVD playback. The Reon chip in the XE1 walks all over the QDEO decoding on the BH200 The best compromise I found is setting the player to 720p, putting sharpness on maximum and turning the brightness up to 27 while leaving contrast at maximum of 50. the picture starts to show a nearly accceptable level of shadow detail but at the expense of overblown brightness in the picture. Overall it's a cool piece of gear and something I'll hold onto as a collectors item. I just wish LG would have spent a little more time tuning the picture like the guys at Toshiba did and gave us a darned gamma setting. That would have made it perfect. Would be very interested to hear from other owners on their picture experience. LG - They always almost get there but not quiet. It's no Toshiba! smile.gif
achjimmy Posted October 12, 2008 Posted October 12, 2008 (edited) Interesting review, havn't noticed the issue with the blacks to your level. I perfer the pq to the Xe1, I thought the Xe1 was a tad bright for my liking sometimes and perfered the BH200! And have to disagree with the last sentance. There is not much in it but the Qdeo takes care of SD DVD better IMO, every DVD i threw in it i perfered on the BH200 to the XE1. Have you got or tried Planet Earth in your BH200, my one will not play in it since updating the FW. Also since the June FW was installed the PIO panel flashes briefly with a sync error message before accepting and playing fine. Edited October 12, 2008 by achjimmy
ausnew Posted October 12, 2008 Posted October 12, 2008 I also have not found this on my machine I was watching College Road Trip with the family last week, and we were blown away, by how sharp the picture was, and I have not tweaked any settings I also have the XE1
otaku1503559845 Posted October 13, 2008 Posted October 13, 2008 Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I actually prefer the picture with the LG machine to my XE-1 also. I find it alot sharper than my XE-1. I love the machine and with exception of my Planet Earth HD DVD it has played all the Blu Rays and HD DVDs I have thrown at it. Now if only LG would address the remaining bugs and add profile 2.0 (one can dream)
Grunter1503560097 Posted October 13, 2008 Posted October 13, 2008 ...Mediocre DVD playback. The Reon chip in the XE1 walks all over the QDEO decoding on the BH200... I can't say I agree with to many of your "The not so goods", but specifically to the above I found in my back to back testing, the opposite to be the case. I found that whilst there's not much in it, I preferred the PQ of the upscaling of the BH200 to the XE1. I've found it hard to fault the BH200 overall in it's comparison to the XE1. The XE1 has a very slim edge in PQ on HD-DVD, but factor in that the BH200 also plays Blu-Ray and upscales SD DVD very well and it's a very keenly priced, then it's very easy to ignore the marginal differences.
Musketeer1503560487 Posted October 13, 2008 Posted October 13, 2008 Mediocre DVD playback. The Reon chip in the XE1 walks all over the QDEO decoding on the BH200 Wow. I've been very impressed by the picture I get playing my DVD's on the BH200. I don't have an XE1 to compare it to though. If it really walks all over the BH200 in upscaling it must be truly awesome - almost real HD. On this topic, I wonder if new upscaling tech will continue to get better and better, to the point where perhaps one day true HD will be a redundant concept. Imagine being able to take grainy 1940's footage and artificially (and on-the-fly) make it look as good as a 2008 full HD movie. Seems impossible, but stuff we would have thought impossible a few years ago is happening now. Things move quickly with tech.
peterjcat Posted October 13, 2008 Posted October 13, 2008 The Not so good:=========== There is a major issue with this machine - the gamma level is turned WAY up and is impossible to adjust. as a result the blacks appear crushed with dark details blending together into a murky mess. Compare the XE1 side by side to the BH200 and you will see the shadow detail is very disappointing on the Bh200 and on default the picture is way too soft - far worse than a good quality DVD machine. You can compensate a little bit by turning up the brightness / sharpness level in the picture setting but then you loose the benefits of QDEO processing. Soft picture. Again can compensate for it somewhat by turning up sharpness, but then you have the edge enhancement Picture is grainy if you're not using default QDEO setting. So you either live with a dark soft picture or you sharpen it up and accept a high level of graineness. Mediocre DVD playback. The Reon chip in the XE1 walks all over the QDEO decoding on the BH200 The best compromise I found is setting the player to 720p, putting sharpness on maximum and turning the brightness up to 27 while leaving contrast at maximum of 50. the picture starts to show a nearly accceptable level of shadow detail but at the expense of overblown brightness in the picture. Overall it's a cool piece of gear and something I'll hold onto as a collectors item. I just wish LG would have spent a little more time tuning the picture like the guys at Toshiba did and gave us a darned gamma setting. That would have made it perfect. Would be very interested to hear from other owners on their picture experience. Nope, not my experience at all -- haven't noticed anything wrong with the gamma/blacks/shadow detail in movies or using the DVE test cards. You may need to adjust your display perhaps? BTW you don't lose the benefits of QDEO processing by fiddling with the settings. QDEO is always operating, but the menu item lets you select values other than the QDEO defaults for brightness/sharpness/etc. And it's a different kind of upscaling from the Reon but I don't think it's any worse. Lot of people prefer it to the XE1, I like em both.
LopezYY Posted October 13, 2008 Author Posted October 13, 2008 Nope, not my experience at all -- haven't noticed anything wrong with the gamma/blacks/shadow detail in movies or using the DVE test cards. You may need to adjust your display perhaps? BTW you don't lose the benefits of QDEO processing by fiddling with the settings. QDEO is always operating, but the menu item lets you select values other than the QDEO defaults for brightness/sharpness/etc. And it's a different kind of upscaling from the Reon but I don't think it's any worse. Lot of people prefer it to the XE1, I like em both. Wow - some great discussion through the day. Very interesting and thanks to everybody for their comments. I have to say that it's not just my eyes on the above opion, but my wife has confirmed that she also found the XE1 picture better overall, and she is a regular, non fussy viewer. And I also came back home to discover that you can buy a new Sony 2.0 profile machine now for under $400 that's apparently very good. Even at the 79c exchange I got, that's over $100 cheaper than the LG BH200. Although, BH200 does give you HD DVD and more importantly, Blu ray zone switching. Are there any other players on the market that do this? Maybe it's my panel. I'm using a Pana 50" PX60 plasma and it's a little funny on the scaling. Most of my SD devices look better on 480p than they do on 720p with upconversion (although 1080i looks better overall than 720p on most things). Begining to suspect that it is much an interplay between devices (BD and panel) as it is the machine. Good to hear most of you are very happy with the LG. I don't think it's my particular machine/unit - everything appears to be fine. It's a Mar 2008 manufacture date so from the last batch. And i don't get any PIO errors or loading/display errors at all - the thing works fine despite being hand carried and thrown around crossing the world in the plane luggage bin. I find everything you all are saying very encouraging. Since getting back and using the LG I have been less excited about this machine than the XE1 when I secured it early in the year (which came after having the A2 for around 6 months). LG didn't have the same punch in the picture that we liked on the XE1, although it is good. Probably comparable or slightly better than the A2 I had before the XE1 (A2 is same as the Aussie E1 HD DVD machine from Tosh). This A2 had no picture or sharpness adjustments and had the same soft look to the picture. Perhaps our plasma is on the soft side in taking HD signal and I need to over correct with sharpness settings to get it to reasonable level. Having said this, the Xe1 looked great when sharpness was set 1 level above the default (it has 2 level sharpness setting). The gamma issue is documented. After writing the above I did some research today and there are reviews on the net supporting exactly what I have described below. There is definitely an issue with gamma setting and it blows out the shadow detail. If you look at darker movies the darker cloths in particular blend into a black texture. Hair also looks non descript in darker scenes. This was definitely not the case on the Xe1. Having said all this, the XE1 has this major glitch with movement. Don't know how many of you have noticed, but if you play movies they will jerk ever so slightly when there's panning movement. It's most obvious on Oceans 13 from states, but even when you boot up a Universal HD DVD, you see the HD DVD logo jump ever so slightly as it moves on the screen during the intro spash screen. I've been running firmware 2.7 (2.8 is buggy on 24p, not that I use that right now with my rig) Have not tried Planet earth - I have the aussie version of this - will fire up tonight. If you all have had problems with it, it prob won't work on my end also. Darn - I haven't seen it yet and the XE1 is packed away now...no room... Another question, are you all running 1080p at 60hz or 24hz? What do you notice as the difference b/w 24 and 60? Is it just movement or does the picture look different also?
Mjr69 Posted October 13, 2008 Posted October 13, 2008 My 2 cents (~0.003 US cents) Firstly we can only comment on what we have and what we see - which brings in all kinds of variables - but interesting just the same... I can't get my BH200 to output HDMI therefore I cannot comment on the HDMI BR image or the upscaling ability as it won't via component nor can I comment on the audio via HDMI. However I am very happy with the BR using the QDEO default setting. I have tried the manual setting and honestly without getting a test disc out and going through a proper calibration I doubt whether I could improve much on the picture with my setup. A beautiful and vibrant 48 sq ft image with natural skin tones and deep blacks. I have the latest FW, driver and have tried the multistandard sd dvd fix and all works OK (sd dvd at 480 via comonent). HD DVDs are another matter - they look fine with the LG via component - they just don't "pop" like with the XE1 via HDMI (or component). I admit I am being very fussy here but the XE1 IS sharper. The build quality and feel of the LG is VERY good - the XE1 just appears to me to be a step above. I am happy with both my purchases and until I upgrade my receiver and display device(s) I am sure I am not appreciating what the LG is capable of. Finally I don't get any jerkiness with the XE1 - but I am not outputting at 24f/sec. Incidentally I find the panning of some movies more jerky at my local cinemas!
LopezYY Posted October 13, 2008 Author Posted October 13, 2008 Thank you for the affirmation. You have confirmed that I am not going crazy. The pop you are talking about is exactly that - the xe1 image just seems to jump off the screen. This is why the player used to cost $1600 when it was released - it's a damn good machine. So given that everyone is that happy with the LG image, you all have inspired me to dig a little deeper tonight with my equipment. Here's what I have discovered. My 2+ year old RX-V2600 Yamaha receiver (nearly top of the line) is partly at fault. In all the time I've had it, I did not think to try turning HDMI conversion off in the menu for HDMI sources. And sure enough I have just discovered that the processing within the amp seems to soften the picture a little bit. So using passthrough/no processing on HDMI has given the LG image a little bit more sharpness and it looks even better now. Even DVDs seem to have better contrast/sharpness and a more balanced image also. There you go, 2+ years and I never tried doing this - how about that. Prob still leave processing on - it's not that big a difference but the convenience of everything upconvered via HDMI just outweighs the small drop in PQ. The LG is a bit better than what I was seeing previously but not quite perfect. And for the record, Yamaha's video processing needs some work. Interesting.
peterjcat Posted October 14, 2008 Posted October 14, 2008 Heh -- I just got the Godfather on Blu-ray from Amazon, and the first scenes are crazy dark on the LG. I know it's a dark movie but the guy talking about his daughter to Don Corleone looks like a skull. It's the first time I noticed the gamma was off but yeah, it looks like it is Normally it's not so pronounced but I guess it has a lot to do with what you're used to. I'm actually not using the LG so much anymore, mostly for rentals and special features -- all of the main features I own get ripped to the NAS and played through the Popcorn Hour A-110, which I would recommend as another solution for playing our HD DVDs into the future. Though it has trouble with DD+ and some TrueHD so recoding to AC3, DTS or PCM is a must.
LopezYY Posted October 14, 2008 Author Posted October 14, 2008 Heh -- I just got the Godfather on Blu-ray from Amazon, and the first scenes are crazy dark on the LG. I know it's a dark movie but the guy talking about his daughter to Don Corleone looks like a skull. It's the first time I noticed the gamma was off but yeah, it looks like it is Normally it's not so pronounced but I guess it has a lot to do with what you're used to.I'm actually not using the LG so much anymore, mostly for rentals and special features -- all of the main features I own get ripped to the NAS and played through the Popcorn Hour A-110, which I would recommend as another solution for playing our HD DVDs into the future. Though it has trouble with DD+ and some TrueHD so recoding to AC3, DTS or PCM is a must. Ahh, I heard about the popcorn - apparently this machine is one of the few that plays .MKV files with out repackaging. I know exactly why you bought that unit. Ok, I'm about to get all controversial on this. The Godfather remastered SUCKS...BIG TIME. I have read countless reviews online and I'm convinced these idiots are blind praising it. It is one of the most hackeyed botched up remastering efforts I've ever seen and Coppolla is a dimwit if he approved it. He either has no idea about visual balance or is going senile. Picked up the DVD version of this in the states. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse (sorry)...US$35 while the Blu Ray was $80. And I got that special book of Godfather quotes with it. Here are my observations: 1) The shadow detail sucks. Esp pronounced on the LG where the gamma is off, they screwed up the gamma big time on the transfer. 2) You want contrast?...BANG...It's a bit like this. Take a normal movie, turn the chroma down around 30%, Take the contrast up to 120% and leave brightness low. And behold. Blooming whites that will blow your retinas out the back of your head (check out the wedding scene and the background / sky tones). It's WHITE...REALLY REALLY WHITE. There's also this bit where Tom walks just in front of the camera where his face is so overblown on contrast that it's unwatchable. This transfer is a mess and everyone involved should be castrated... Sorry - I was just so excited about getting a remastered version of this movie that I was heartbroken to see what they did. I compared against the original PAL version of the godfather box set. The picture was flatter on the original but far more balanced, the color muted but more natural. I don't even know if i will bring myself to sit through this version. Hope the Blu Ray is a bit better, but i now hesitate thinking about upgrading to the blu ray. Maybe I'll get to rent/borrow it sometime when it comes out here. The sound if i remember was improved, but i can't recall as my eyes were hurting so much. I guess the point is made. Njoy.
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