Samsung BD-P1000 was the first stationary Blu-ray player to be launched and together with the first Blu-ray movies it was suppose to be a real reply to HD DVD’s early launch. Unfortunately the Blu-ray camp did not get the good start it wanted when several testers and consumers complained over the Blu-ray format’s image quality. Blu-ray, which on paper, is superior to HD DVD technically had a hard time to reach the quality of the competing format, even less overshadowing it. Some indications told us that Samsung’s Blu-ray player was the source of the problem and now it seems this was very much the case. For some reason the noise reduction filter found in Samsung BD-P1000, Genesis scaler, is activated when leaving the factory, which results in some unwanted side effects.
The noise reduction filter will according to information result in both worse sharpness and contribute to image artefacts. According to Scott Wilkinson at The Perfect Vision Lab which has evaluated Samsung’s player the same player with an deactivated noise reduction filter doesn’t have these problems and the pictures quality is considerably better.
“Reports indicate that playback of BD titles in a modified player (with the noise reduction turned off) looked much closer to the master video tape and far better than an unmodified player, such as those currently available on the market.”
Samsung is currently looking over the firmware of its BD-P1000 player and change the setting for the noise reduction filter. The question is how it will solve the problem with all the players that have already been sold, something we in Europe don’t have worry about though.
