Time to check out the product page and some solid reviews (4.1 out of 5.0) over at bestbuy.com
Item Preview:
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**Item: **Philips Blu-ray Player with Wi-Fi & Apps
Price: $29.99
Shipping Options: $5 Standard
Condition: Factory Reconditioned
Read the Blog - Buy It
[Search Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=Philips Blu-ray Player with Wi-Fi +%26 Apps)
[Search Google](Philips - Google Shopping Blu-ray Player with Wi-Fi +%26 Apps)
So is it just those few apps, or is there like an app store to get some more? Because I’m currently looking for a new Blu-ray player that also runs apps to replace my PS3 which was pretty much destroyed by a firmware update. Netflix is at the top of the list, but so is HBO Go.
Might want to get an android stick - gets all the apps and plugs into an HDMI port.
I’m not a techy…can i use my hulu on this or will i still need my roku?
I don’t think this supports Hulu, and even if it did- the Roku is a much better device for all the online streaming stuff.
Bad news when you can’t even receive a decent rating on your own site (Philips)…
Can someone explain to a non-video-techie the difference or relationship between Compression Format and File Format?
I know what file format means, but what is the relationship between the two, if any, and why does it matter which compression format is supported? If it does matter, how can you tell what comp format a file uses?
File Format: AVI, DivX, M2TS, MKV, MP4, MPEG, MPG
Compression Formats: DivX Plus™ HD, H.264, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, XviD
Seems like the bad reviews are related to wifi. Most of the ones I skimmed over said that blurays played fine. If, like me, you are just looking for a barebones bluray player and don’t need the streaming it’s a good deal I would guess.
most of it is to due with who came up with what, who owns the rights to what, and what method is used to compress video/audio to what extent and with what loss. A lot of it is for ‘purists’ who think they know best. But I think its safe to say that MKV/H.264 are the most preferred as they are the most (completely?) open source solutions and give the best bang/$ in terms of overall quality/file size. Any device worth a hoot will support those 2.
I want a device that will play video files from my network server, much like the PS3 did (because for some reason it doesn’t find my server now…) I like to be able to browse the directory tree, and not just a list of every video file on the server, so I don’t have to sort through 200+ Season 1 Episode 1, etc.
Anyone know if this will work?
Does anyone know if this works with Amazon Prime streaming video?
Looks like the majority of the negative reviews stem from playback of streaming content. Perhaps the latest firmware addresses that:
Software history
(BDP2105/F7 and BDP2185/F7
Version: 2.10
•
Add
PCM option in HDMI audio setting
.
Version 2.15
•
Fix bug related to wireless network & LAN network
.
Think of the file format like a box. You put whatever in it. Some boxes can contain anything, some only fit a certain type of thing. MP4, MKV, and AVI are the main formats I see today. They can hold multimedia “streams”, either audio or video (and in the case of MKV, subtitles too). Why are there so many boxes? Well, some boxes only allow one video stream and one audio stream, others may not allow separate subtitles to be put inside the box, and some are optimized for streaming (since you don’t get the whole box at once) rather than local playback if you have the whole file.
The compression formats are the actual streams. MP3, for example, is an audio compression format (full name, MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio). It is an algorithm used to take a large amount of raw data (in this case, audio) and squeeze it into a smaller size. Why do we have so many? Because compressing something smaller and smaller almost always makes it less and less like the original. Many of those formats are advances in compression algorithms that can get smaller with less reduction of quality. AAC has some tricks that it uses to decide what data to throw away that is in many ways an improvement on the way the MP3 algorithm did it. The same with MPEG, MPEG-2, and DiVX/XViD, x.264, and such.
So, lets look at an MKV file. It’s a container, and a really nice one. You can put any number of video, audio, and subtitle streams in it, of different types. Your video player, if it knows how to handle MKV files, can select some of those to display. By default, it may play the first video and audio stream it finds in the box. It may also contain the commentary track as an additional audio stream too - your video playback software should let you switch to it and hear it instead. Maybe there are subtitles built in that you can turn on - it’s all up to the person making the file what streams to put in there. There may be an x.264 video stream, a couple of AAC (or MP3) audio streams, etc.
So, in summary:
File Format (really should be Container Format): is nothing but a box that you put the actual stuff in. It has a label that the video player can read that lists it’s contents, and the player figures out what to do with it.
Compression Format: Actual video or audio data squeezed down to be of a reasonable size.
Also - the file extensions can be confusing. A .avi file may contain DivX compressed video and MP3 compressed audio. A .divx file might be the DivX container format, containing the same streams. There’s even two different DivX compression formats: the original DivX MPEG4-2 format and the new DivX Pro HD H.264 format. The upshot here is that any player must understand both the container and any compression formats stored inside - the first just to open the box and the second to know what to do with the contents.
This has been hinted at a couple of times, but all I need is a Blu-ray player that plays Blu-ray’s and DVD’s. I have a Roku player so I don’t care about the apps, and my router is close to the tv (wifi issues wouldn’t be a big concern). Is this player a good solution for me?
I’m trying to figure out the same thing! Based on Amazon’s own website, though, it doesn’t sound like it.
that is all it has. no option to get more apps for it and it freezes up all the time. its worth $30 if you dont mind unplugging and replugging it on a regular basis. the blu-ray aspect is sufficient and the app on it work well enough most of the time. but you cannot get hbo or amazon or crackle or epix and so on
no amazon on these things.