Notwithstanding its $400 price tag, the LG BD390 Blu-ray player is undoubtedly a step ahead of the competition and of its predecessor, the BD370.
Sporting an outstanding feature set including Netflix, YouTube and CinemaNow, the BD390 has amazing image quality. The menu you see when you first turn the unit on is the fairly straightforward. The seven icons include Movie, Photo, Music, MyMedia, Netflix, YouTube, CinemaNow and Setup.
We tested the movie, "Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl". Load time was pretty fast at a little over 60 seconds. The Samsung BD-P3600 had close to the same load time as the BD390 at around one minute thirty-seconds. Resolution details during fight scenes in "Pirates" looked crisp with only minimal image stability issues and mininal jagged edges.
I wasn't particularly impressed with the streaming CinemaNow access, which is no Amazon Video On Demand. If you don't know much about CinemaNow, it provides pay-per-rental pricing, similar to satellite and cable video on-demand services.
As with the BD370, the BD390 is YouTube-compatible and has Netflix Instant streaming, which means you can stream anything in NetFlix's "Watch Now" section. As I mentioned in my review of the BD370, I am addicted to YouTube and this feature allows you to browse the featured, most viewed and top-rated videos. You can either view them on a minimized screen or maximize the screen for enhanced viewing.
The BD390 is Profile 2.0-compatible, which means that there are BD-Live features on some Blu-ray movies. If you were looking to download extra content, there is no need to plug in a USB card since there is 1GB of onboard storage available. The player is also equipped with an Ethernet port and built-in WiFi.
There is a variety of included media formats including video, music and photo files. Supported formats include MP3, JPEG, PNG, AVI, WMA, DivX-HD, XVID and MKV.
Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio is the supported onboard decoding for the BD390. Soundtrack formats can be played back on any HDMI-capable receiver.
The HDMI output is the main port on the unit and can output 1080p HD video and multi-channel high-resolution audio. There is a component video output that can output Blu-ray movies at 1080i and DVDs at 480p. There are 7.1 analog outputs for audio and both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs.
The BD390 is definitely a step up from the BD370 and the Samsung BD-P3600 with its superb image quality, quick disc load times and upgraded feature set. I'm not crazy about the price point as it's around $100 more than the BD370, but overall I thought it did it's job and did it well.
Companies Mentioned:
 |
|
|
|||
|
