Review: Sharp BD-HP20U Blu-ray Disc Player
Late to the party, Sharp enters the Blu-ray fray
February 2008 By Greg RobinsonIn terms of audio, the BD-HP20U offers onboard decoding for Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD. It also supports DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio, but it can only extract the “DTS core” portion from those soundtracks. Audio can be output via HDMI or from its 5.1 channel analog outputs – a welcome attraction on the rear panel.
As a standard definition DVD player, the BD-HP20U is adequate but not exceptional. Although picture quality looked fine when playing a few episodes from Boston Legal’s third season, the BD-HP20U struggled with a few tests on Silicon Optix’s HQV Benchmark DVD. Specifically, the “jaggies” tests were disappointing and the 3-2 pulldown detection during the race car sequence had the grandstand area looking rather noisy.
Although I didn’t care for the front panel and its standard definition playback is only average, I was hard pressed to find fault with the BD-HP20U’s Blu-ray Disc performance. Watching Fox’s Live Free or Die Hard (my new favorite Blu-ray demo disc), I was utterly blown away by the vibrant colors and rich detail being served up by the combination of the BD-HP20U and a Panasonic PT-AE2000 projector. Backward compatibility with DVD is certainly appreciated, but once you’ve watched a few high def titles that look this good, it’s hard to watch a DVD and still feel impressed by the experience.
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