Philips has a launched a line up of Blu-ray players. Here is the review of Philips BD3000, an entry level product from them.
First look:
Looking at its price (Rs 16,990), one would mostly expect some compromise In quality as compared to the other products available in the same range. But not In case of the Philips BD3000. as Its design religiously follows the form factor of the other higher priced products from the same range (namely the BD7500 and the top end BD9000). The delicate black that flows throughout the curvy exterior and the cautiously embellished front panel gives It a very classy appearance. What caught the attention is the large display on the front panel. The build quality is also praiseworthy as the strong metallic casing makes it feel more substantial than what you would expect from a small disc player like this.
Technical aspects:
Though Philips has managed to put through a classy looking player,
what has affected their budget constraints is the features that the BD3000 comes with. While it comes with all the basic amenities to enjoy your Blu-rays, it still lacks in some aspects which could make your experience even more Interesting. For instance, the 3000 can decode a 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD soundtrack but cannot deal with the DTS HD Master Audio stream. That leaves you with no choice other than watching Blu-ray discs with Dolby TrueHD soundtracks only.
On the connectivity front, it does offer the conventional options like the HDMI, component, composite and coaxial out for audio. But the BD3000 lacks a multi-channel analogue output. It does have a USB port, but unfortunately that's on the rear side, which usually is considered to be awkward. But looking at its small size, the BD3000 does not look like you will have to take much effort to plug In the USB drive. Also, once you have plugged in a USB drive, you can only use it to store any downloaded content using the BD Live feature (Profile 2.0). Unfortunately you cannot play any media files like MP3, WMA, DivX and JPEG. If you want to play any of these files, you will have to burn them onto on a DVD or CD first.
On the brighter side, the player also offers a range of presets (Vivid, Cool, Action and Animation) plus an enhanced black level setting for you to tweak the picture according to your liking.
Remote control convenience:
It couldn't be any easier to control the BD3000 with the supplied remote thanks to its carefully arranged buttons. A tad smaller than the normal Blu-ray remotes,
It accordingly houses relatively fewer buttons than what you would see on a lot of other remotes for Blu-ray player. The best part is that the controls are intuitive and thus very convenient to use, especially the menu and playback controls being close by, that enables easy navigation.
BD 3000 – viewing experience
You will be impressed by the cheerful startup menu. The large text fills the screen with the eye-catching icons that mark the options, whereas the cursor zips around quickly unlike a lot of other players, where the cursor needs a couple of minutes at least to process the signal that it is supposed to move.
While playing the Blu – ray disc you will notice the screen is even more colorful than what it was for the menu screen. Not overpowering at any time, the colors were rightfully balanced with optimum temperature throughout the entire movie.
Another element that will make your experience sensible was the sharpness that the player executed in its transfer.
It is quite easy for most of the players to reproduce the picture sharply in animation, which the BD3000 perfectly executed, but fascinatingly, it maintained the sharpness even for some very fast paced scenes from the Blu-ray of 'Tokyo Drift', and that is really admirable. The transfer is swift and smooth as it do not show any trace of judder or latency at any point of time, particularly in the car races and constant fast motion sequences on the screen.
What's more, the player exhibits good detail throughout the movie, especially the shadow areas in the night scenes.
There will be times at which you will experience substantial noise, which will be aggravated when the player attempts to upscale standard definition content to HD quality i.e. 720p, 10801 or 1080p.
Bottom lines:
BD3000 is an entry level product from the range of Blu-ray players that Philips has launched recently. So accordingly, its price is quite competitive as compared to other Philips players and also most of the other manufacturers. Naturally it comes with a disadvantage of having fewer features than most of the other players like the DTS Master HD decoding or, a 5.1 analogue out or media playback through USB device. Nevertheless, the best part of BD3000 is that it does its standard tasks effectively, and the price is also one of its major advantage.
