With HD DVD on its last legs, it seems like a pretty good time to do a round up of some of the best and most interesting Blu-ray players on the market. Of course, it’s not all a bed of roses for Blu-ray. Despite having a lot of studio support, the players come in a variety of capabilities and not one of them supports the same specification.

For example, Sony’s own BDP-S1E doesn’t support Profile 1.1, which means that if you buy it, you won’t be able to enjoy enhanced interactivity and picture-in-picture support. A sniff around and you might get it for less than £500, but that’s still more expensive than Sony’s own PlayStation 3.

The good news is that if you want a PS3, it’s a good Blu-ray player. Some say it’s the best — and they might be right — because it’s upgradable, has all the features of Profile 2 and Profile 1.1, and can also play PS3 games. You can pick one up for about £300 these days, which means it’s one of the better valued high-end players on the market. Of course, this is because the PS3 is being subsidised by Sony. So if 20 million people bought one and never bought any games, Sony would go bust in three minutes flat.

If you don’t want a Sony player, then how about going for either the high end or the low end? At the bottom of the range, there is the Sharp BD-HP20H, which at just £300 really is quite cheap for a standalone. It doesn’t support Profile 1.1, but then again neither does the Pioneer BDP-LX70 and it costs quite a lot more.

When compared to other Blu-ray players on the market these four are by far the best available.

Despite a seemingly endless stream of consumer enthusiasm for those sleek, super-model-thin plasma television displays it seems that Plasma Technology is no longer needed. With LCD and OLED becoming the more popular choices, Plasma which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year is slowing becoming something of the past.

The reasons in why this is happening is due to quality of LCD and OLCD. Not only do these TV’s seem to deliver a lot better quality in picture they last much longer than the Plasma. With OLED now available it seems that Plasma will now become less used as these two new technologies improve more and more.

Some manufacturers are also experimenting with extending color reproduction of LCD televisions. Although current LCD panels are able to deliver all sRGB colors using an appropriate combination of backlight’s spectrum and optical filters, manufacturers want to display even more colors. One of the approaches is to use a fourth, or even fifth and sixth color in the optical color filter array. Another approach is to use two sets of suitably narrowband backlights (e.g. LEDs), with slightly differing colors, in combination with broadband optical filters in the panel, and alternating backlights each consecutive frame.
Fully using the extended color gamut will naturally require an appropriately captured material and some modifications to the distribution channel. Otherwise, the only use of the extra colors would be to let the viewer boost the color saturation of the TV picture beyond what was intended by the producer, but avoiding the otherwise unavoidable loss of detail (”burnout”) in saturated areas.

Current sixth-generation panels by major manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, LG Display, and the Sharp Corporation have announced larger sized models:
• In October 2004, 40″ to 45″ televisions became widely available, and Sharp had announced the successful manufacture of a 65″ panel.
• In March 2005, Samsung announced an 82″ LCD panel.[1]
• In August 2006, LG Display Consumer Electronics announced a 100″ LCD television[2]
• In January 2007, Sharp displayed a 108″ LCD panel branded under the AQUOS brand name at CES in Las Vegas.[3]
• In November 2008, Silicon Mountain announced Allio, a 42″ High-Definition LCD TV with an integrated Blu-ray player and full function media center PC.[4]
Manufacturers have announced plans to invest billions of dollars in LCD production over the next few years, with televisions expected to be a key market.
Improvements in LCD technology have narrowed the technological gap, allowing producers to offer lower weight and higher available resolution (crucial for HDTV), and lower power consumption. LCD TVs are now more competitive against plasma displays in the television set market. It is noted that LCDs are now overtaking plasmas, particularly in the important 40″ and above segment where plasma had enjoyed strong dominance.[5][6] TVs based on PVA and S-PVA LCD panels deliver a broad viewing angle, up to 178 degrees.[7] They also deliver an adequate contrast ratio for viewing bright scenes, as well as dark scenes in bright rooms. The dynamic contrast technique improves contrast when viewing dark scenes in a dark room. Alternatively, some manufacturers produce LCD TVs that throw light on the wall behind it to help make dark scenes look darker. PVA and S-PVA panels generally have difficulty with ghosting when going between different shades of dark colors, however in new televisions this is compensated to some degree using a technique called overdriving.

Moving pictures on a CRT TV do not exhibit any sort of “ghosting” because the CRT’s phosphor, charged by the strike of electrons, emits most of the light in a very short time, under 1 ms, compared with the refresh period of e.g. 20 ms (for 50 fps video). In LCDs, each pixel emits light of set intensity for a full period of 20 ms (in this example), plus the time it takes for it to switch to the next state, typically 12 to 25 ms.
The second time (called the “response time”) can be shortened by the panel design (for black-to-white transitions), and by using the technique called overdriving (for black-to-grey and grey-to-grey transitions); however this only can go down to as short as the refresh period.
This is usually enough for watching film-based material, where the refresh period is so long (1/24 s, or nearly 42 ms), and jitter is so strong on moving objects that film producers actually almost always try to keep object of interest immobile in the film’s frame.
Video material, shot at 50 or 60 frames a second, actually tries to capture the motion. When the eye of a viewer tracks a moving object in video, it doesn’t jump to its next predicted position on the screen with every refresh cycle, but it moves smoothly; thus the TV must display the moving object in “correct” places for as long as possible, and erase it from outdated places as quickly as possible. LCD televisions are also a good component for video games.
Although ghosting was a problem when LCD TVs were newer, the manufacturers have been able to shorten response time to 2ms on many computer monitors and around an average of 8 ms for TVs.
There are two emerging techniques to solve this problem. First, the backlight of the LCD panel may be fired during a shorter period of time than the refresh period, preferably as short as possible, and preferably when the pixel has already settled to the intended brightness. This technique resurrects the flicker problem of the CRTs, because the eye is able to sense flicker at the typical 50 or 60 Hz refresh rates.
Another approach is to double the refresh rate of the LCD panel, and reconstruct the intermediate frames using various motion compensation techniques, extensively tested on high-end “100 Hz” CRT televisions in Europe. LCD technology is based on manipulation of polarized light. Two thin polarizing sheets are laminated to two glass substrates containing a thin layer of liquid-crystal. A regular 2-dimensional grid of electrodes allows each pixel in the array to be selected and activated individually. Several LCD technologies are used for the realization of large format television screens (e.g. TN, IPS, PVA, FFS), all in combination with active-matrix addressing.
It had been widely believed that LCD technology was suited only to smaller sized flat-panel televisions at sizes of 40″ or smaller. Early LCDs could not compete with plasma technology for screens larger than this because plasma held the edge in cost and performance. However, LCD TVs can now offer acceptable performance in larger sizes.

A2000 are the first UK manufacturer of Cable Management Systems for your Plasma/LCD TVs. The idea is to hide all the cables from your TV, DVD, Digital box etc. and for it to still look modern.

All our Cable Managements are made from a mild steel which is painted in an industrial powder coating, which are then fitted with 8mm toughened glass. There are currently 3 different Ranges of Cable Managements available; The XPC, The Mini-XPC and The Standard Cable Management, all of them coming in different colours to help you find the right one for you. While being a lot different from each other they are all easily fitted, able to hold all the cables from your equipment aswell as a 4 plug extention lead and all look great. All of our Cable Management Systems can be fitted with any TV and any TV bracket wether you have brought it from us or not, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to call on 01438 747 202.

A2000 Top 5 Cable Managements

1. Ebony Cable Management
2. 3 Tier XPC - Black
3. Stainless Cable Management
4. Onyx Cable Management
5. 2 Tier XPC - Black

A2000 Systems have new Stands and Furniture on the way to give you a wider selection on mounting your Plasma /LCD TV.

With the Stilexo Stands quickly becoming a popular choice we had are adding to new stands to our product range.

We are also adding to our S&C Group products we have here with six new items. 4  of them are made from various types of wood which makes these tables seen more as an item of furniture rather than a Plasma/LCD Stand. The others are made from the same materials as the current stands but look a lot more stylish and one has more to offer than just its looks. The Universal 6.1 Home Cinema Speaker Stand has its own sound system fitted inside the unit. It can be used with your existing equipment - TV, DVD etc. by simply connecting them to the stand.

All of these stands will be available on our website by December, enough time for you to enjoy at Christmas.

What Hi-Fi have recently voted the Sony KDL40W4500 as the best LCD TV of the year.

The rather well-populated new generation of 4000-series sets has banished the age-old criticisms of the technology, like poor black levels and unrealistic colours, by being supreme in these areas, while also retaining the established LCD qualities of punch and detail. The KDL-40W 4500, along with its 4in sibling, is the king of this crop

We thought the W4000 had mastered the art of combining dark blacks with punchy whites and colours but this 40in W4500 takes that particular ball and runs with it right to the end-zone. Try the ‘I am Legend’ Blu-ray for a great example. As Will Smith looks for his dog in the unlit est, the petrifying darkness is inky black, with the occasional sweeps of the flashlight cutting through the scene with brilliant pure whiteness.

The truth is, this was an easy decision to make-the W4500 beats everything else in its class, including Panasonics new plasmas. Even Pioneer must be looking over its shoulder at this little beauty.

OLED (organic light emitting diode) is the newest technology in the lively TV/display market and my opinion is that it will be a viable alternative to LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs in the future. So which is better, LCD or OLED TV?

Despite their similarities, the two technologies are very different in the way they deliver the image to the viewer.

OLED TV color information is produced using organic carbon-based compounds, which emit red, green and blue lights in response to electric current. OLED differs most from LCD in that there is no backlight and no “twisting” crystals. There is no additional light source needed to energize the organic color compounds, therefore they use considerably less power and can be manufactured with an extremely thin profile. OLED TV panels come with either two or three layers of the organic compounds which are located in one super thin layer of the “glass”. The panel is supported by a hard plexiglass material which also protects the sensitive inner materials. Remember CRT (cathode ray tube) TVs? OLED displays use a cathode layer to introduce electrons to the first layer of organic molecules. Whether spread across a flat-panel screen or placed in the heart of a projector, all LCD displays come from the same technological background. A matrix of thin-film transistors (TFTs) supplies voltage to liquid-crystal-filled cells sandwiched between two sheets of glass. When hit with an electrical charge, the crystals untwist to an exact degree to filter white light generated by a lamp behind the screen (for flat-panel TVs) or one projecting through a small LCD chip (for projection TVs). LCD TVs reproduce colors through a process of subtraction: They block out particular color wavelengths from the spectrum of white light until they’re left with just the right color. And, it’s the intensity of light permitted to pass through this liquid-crystal matrix that enables LCD televisions to display images chock-full of colors-or gradations of them.

The LE32M86BDX model features SAMSUNGs 100Hz technology which converts the amount of images intelligently from 50 to 100 frames per second by inserting a frame between each two frames. The inserted frame maintains the detailed motion characteristic of the video, and goes through motion estimation and compensation processing. Therefore compared to a mere duplication and insertion of frames, more natural motion can be realised without undermining other characteristics such as clarity, brightness and colour. At A2000 we can supply wall mounts, stylish stands, cable management systems and other types of furniture to the same high standards of Samsung. In 2009 we launch a brand new cable management system for the Samsung series 6 & 8. We hope to have stock early January.