if you were buying now

[pace508]

if you were buying now,do you go for tried and tested C200 or the new A300,not ever owned a popcorn before would like to know the good and bad of both machine.ps thinking of buying before christmas

[Dave_D]

If you play retail BD or full backups, C200 is still better because it has a bluray license for BD Profile 2.0 compliance.

If you only use downloaded stuff, stick to the A300 or even the A210 if it's on sale now.

[pace508]

i have quite a few blu rays,does the A300 play ripped blu rays,does the new chipset in the A300 make any difference in performance against the C200

[Dave_D]

Yes it does play ripped blurays but not all features will work like BD-Live and even BD PIP audio. The menus work though.

The A300 uses a faster chip with a L2 cache. I'll hold off judgement for others who actually own both units.

[chris57]

I dont think you are comparing like with like.

The A series is a small sized player that fits one HDD and has 2 USB sockets and an IR remote. The C series is a full sized hifi width unit that has space and internal sockets for 3 devices, mixture of SATA and USB. It has an RF remote and can play actual discs if you use a ROM drive as one of your 3 internal devices.

A true comparison would be the C300 against the C200. Now the C200 can be bought for £175 on ibood, the C300 will be at least $299 plus shipping plus taxes (approx $400) £260 and is not yet available.

On Bluray playback any backups for playing on the A series must have encryption and region coding removed. Then you can play the backup but wont have things like PiP or BDLive. The C series can play full 1:1 backups with encryption and region coding and will give PiP and BDLive.

[KevG123]

(11-26-2011 03:52 PM)chris57 Wrote:  On Bluray playback any backups for playing on the A series must have encryption and region coding removed. Then you can play the backup but wont have things like PiP or BDLive. The C series can play full 1:1 backups with encryption and region coding and will give PiP and BDLive.

Hi Chris
This has worried me a bit…

My BluRay rips are MKV movie and soundtrack only – will these play ok ? They are all Region 2

My biggest worry is that I have ISO and .dvdmedia (RipIt on the Mac) of around 200 of my Region 1 DVD’s. Will this be a problem on the A300 (when it arrives!)

Thanks

[chris57]

If your Bluray's have been remuxed into a single MKV then it will not have any region protection and it will play fine. The only thing to watch is if you have subtitles. Make sure that they are srt or pgs not HD sub/idx, if they are sub/idx then use BDsup2sub to change to srt.

On DVD and regions I backed up two DVD's yesterday using AnyDVD, one a Region 1 DVD and the other a Region 2. I left all region protection intact and both played. It seems that the A300 may ignore any DVD region coding.

You set the BD Region by entering settings and pressing |< (slow), 1,6,6,3 and then select 1,2,3 for region A, B , C.

[KevG123]

Cheers Chris

As always, thanks for your help

Dont have any subtitles on my BRay MKV's so sounds like I should be fine

Also sounds like I will be able to play my R1 DVD backups so chuffed about that

Will let you know once I get the chance to have a play !

(hoping I'm in the 2 Dec batch this week )

[xeddog]

Just thought I'd throw this in. If you are considering venturing into the 3D foray, The A200/210 will not play 3D Blu-ray images (.iso files), and if I understand the technology correctly they will not play 3D disks from an external 3D player either. The A300 will. If you have ripped your 3D movies (.mkv files) then the A210 will play them.

I cannot address the C series, but since they are blu-ray licensed I would "assume" they would play image files as well.

Wayne

[chris57]

(12-01-2011 06:58 PM)xeddog Wrote:  Just thought I'd throw this in. If you are considering venturing into the 3D foray, The A200/210 will not play 3D Blu-ray images (.iso files), and if I understand the technology correctly they will not play 3D disks from an external 3D player either. The A300 will. If you have ripped your 3D movies (.mkv files) then the A210 will play them.

I cannot address the C series, but since they are blu-ray licensed I would "assume" they would play image files as well.

Wayne

You don't understand it right im afraid.

The A300 will NOT play FULL resolution 3D, be they discs or other format. There is no Sigma chip that can play them out yet.
There is NO difference between what the 200 and 300 series can play in 3D land. They both play SBS or TAB half resolution 3D files in MKV and containers.

There is a Realtek chip that can, however no Realtek player has a Bluray license so only backups can be played and tests results are that most don't play even when backed up.

The only player that can do FULL 3D is the far more expensive OPPO players from $499 onwards.