Blu Ray Player

This is a fairly potent machine, imho, and you should have no problems with any modern player that will bitstream or decode the HD codecs. I cannot make any specific recommendations for BR players as my knowledge is pretty much liimited to "universal" players that will also handle SACD/DVD-A and those may not be of interest to you.

My "least common denominator" recommendation these days is the Oppo BDP-83 but, for BluRay only, there are other options.

Kal

Hi Manta -

you are getting solid info from our most knowledgeable poster - let me try and clarify a bit by taking it from a newbie perspective

Usually people look for a BluRay player that can decode the new formats because they want to run a set of analog ICs to a non-HDMI capable AVR - in other words they want to add BluRay to their existing installation

IMHO, with an HDMI capable receiver like the one you have purchased, you will be very happy to when you realize that you only need one cable for both audio and video instead of a witches brew of audio and video cables between a BD and an AVR

Net this means that you can buy a BluRay player that doesn't decode locally so long as it is HDMI 1.3 which is required to carry that type of signal. In fact just don't buy anything but a HDMI 1.3 standard unit

I have an "older" Panasonic BD-30 which I am very pleased with. Newer BD players support the BluRay 2.0 standard which means they can be connected to the Internet and used for interactive content that the studios are expected to provide. I am not aware of anything compelling at the moment. If you have kids or are a devote added content person you might.

A couple of other considerations. One significant difference between various models and brands of players is how quickly they load the menus on each disc. The difference is measure in (a few) minutes not nano-seconds. Bugs some folks and not others.

Second many BD players have a bad reputation for the way that they handle DVDs. Based on this, and the fact that all this gear is very inexpensive, I purchased a dedicated Oppo to go with the Panasonic.

If I were doing it today I would purchase the Oppo BDP-83 and use it for everything. And too, as Kal points out it is a universal player if you are into the high end audio formats.

There's the most important piece of information missing here, your TV. Does your TV/LCD/PLASMA can displayed at least 1080p? or it's just a waste of money with Blu-Ray players. All the sounds that your Receiver can provide, any Blu-Ray players can do at least that and even more. The pictures quality only as good as your TV can be.

Nguyen357, you got a good point. My TV is the Samsung HL-S5086W. You can see the specs at the link below:

http://reviews.cnet.com/projection-tvs/samsung-hl-s5086w/4507-6484_7-31783170.html?tag=mncol;psum

After looking at the specs of my TV, do you still think I should get a blu ray or not? If my TV is not 1080p, than I probably should not get a blu ray player until I buy a new TV with 1080p.

I just looked that up, your Projection TV displays 1080i. Which is a tad under the Blu-Ray requirement. If you're not ready to upgrade your TV to LCD or Plasma, I said, get a high quality DVD player, as you can see their prices really gone under since Blu-Ray players came out. With your current TV, that will put on quite a nice display for standard DVD movies.