David Vaughn
LG Electronics has proven itself to be the most innovative manufacturer of Blu-ray players in the world. It was first to market with an HD DVD/Bluray Disc combo player (BH100), a player with Netflix streaming (BD300), and a player with 802.11n Wi-Fi (BD390). To continue its string of firsts, LG’s BD590 is the first standalone Blu-ray player to include a builtin 250-gigabyte hard drive. It provides storage for BD-Live interactivity and can store movies purchased from VUDU, plus you can rip your favorite CDs for easy access. The player also lets you access Gracenote’s vast database of movie and music metadata. You can look up information by pushing a button on the remote. Let’s take a look and see how the BD590 stacks up to LG’s previous efforts.
Stream, Stream, Stream
Streaming movies was a fixture on last year’s LG BD390, a Home Theater Top Pick. However, the BD590 is the first player we’ve tested with VUDU service, and it’s mighty impressive. Netflix’s 720p HD streaming with stereo audio pales in comparison with VUDU’s HDX films. Most of these are in 1080p resolution with Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (640 kbps) soundtracks. Granted, you need a minimum of a 4.5-Mbps Internet connection to take advantage of the service. Luckily, my Comcast Internet clocks in at a blazing 16 Mbps. [Braggart!—Ed.]
I love the Netflix subscription model. For less than $12 per month, I can have one Blu-ray Disc at home and stream an unlimited number of additional movies and TV shows. Unfortunately, VUDU is a pay-per-title service. Rentals range from $1 each (standard definition) up to $6 each (HDX), and 720p HD streams cost $4 per title. When you rent a movie, the LG will store it in a queue for 30 days unwatched. Once you press Play, a 24-hour viewing period starts. If you’re so inclined, you can also purchase movies and store them on the included hard drive; prices range from $5 to $25. Personally, if I like a movie enough to own it, I prefer physical media. Call me old-fashioned.
In the past, VUDU offered its own hardware, but it’s now being built into a variety of consumer electronics devices such as HDTVs and Blu-ray players. Walmart purchased VUDU in late February. While this provides a strong future for VUDU, the parent corporation eliminated VUDU’s After Dark section, which offered a wide variety of adult content.
The BD590’s other streaming services include CinemaNow, YouTube, Pandora, Picasa Web pictures, and AccuWeather forecasts. It’s also a DLNAcertified digital media player that can display movie, photo, and music content from any DLNAcompatible digital media server.
If you have thousands of MP3s, photos, or video files stored on networked computers, the LG can stream these files to your family room for everyone to enjoy. Just don’t expect repeat visits from friends if you insist on showing all of your latest vacation pictures.
A Little Off the Top
The BD590’s look and feel are different from the previous-generation BD390. It’s shorter by nearly half an inch, and it sports a sleek flip-down front panel that hides the disc tray and most of the control buttons except for Eject and Power. The hidden controls include Play, Stop, etc., as well as a USB port. But be advised that if you insert a USB stick, the front panel won’t close. A modestly sized display rounds things out. It’s bright and clearly readable from across the room, although I wish LG had made it dimmable.
Rear-panel connections include HDMI 1.3a with x.v.Color. (The BD590 isn’t Blu-ray 3D ready and isn’t upgradable.) The back panel also includes component video and composite video outputs. Audio connections include TosLink, coaxial digital, and stereo analog. There are no 7.1-channel analog audio outputs, so if you own a legacy AVR that doesn’t have HDMI and you want to enjoy Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, you’ll need to look elsewhere for your Blu-ray fix. If you have Ethernet run to your equipment rack, you can take advantage of the supplied Ethernet jack or use the built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi to go wireless. There isn’t a second USB port on the rear panel, but the built-in 250-GB hard drive makes external storage less of an issue.
The BD590 internally decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio and transmits them over HDMI as PCM to an A/V receiver or surround processor. If you have a new AVR and prefer to use its onboard decoding, the player can send the raw bitstream. I compared the two options and didn’t hear any difference in audio quality. However, with bitstream, you do lose the secondary audio with PiP commentaries and the clicks and beeps in Blu-ray menus.
User Interface
Apparently, virtually every Blu-ray player manufacturer assumes that the consumer uses a universal remote because I rarely find the stock remotes the least bit useful. Sadly, that trend continues here. The remote that comes with the BD590 isn’t backlit, but at least the buttons for the main functions are larger than the rest of the buttons, and they glow in the dark for a few minutes. After I’d lived with the remote for a couple of weeks, I learned the positions of the commands I use most, but I still kept a penlight close by just in case. I prefer to watch my movies in a pitch-black room, as I suspect most HT readers do.
I spent quite a bit of time with the LG BD390 last summer, and I fell in love with its simple and speedy menus. For some reason, LG overhauled its new batch of players with middling results. The BD590’s responsiveness is much slower. Its menus feature a stark white background and floating ice-cube icons, which are labeled Movie, Photo, Music, Home Link, Netcast, and Setup. This seems pretty straightforward, but it isn’t. For example, you’d think your photos and music would reside in the applicably named folders—and they do, but only if you’ve loaded them onto the built-in hard drive or attached a USB device. If they reside on your PC or somewhere else on your network, they’ll be under Home Link.
In order to use Home Link, you must have compatible DLNA software on your home network. I have a Windows Home Server. I found that even though the BD590 could see my server, it couldn’t stream any music or video (although it could read the file names). I had to install a third-party DLNA client (Asset UPnP) in order to utilize the streaming capabilities. Strangely, I could access all of my photos without the use of a third-party client.
Player setup and network configuration is a breeze, with the usual assortment of options for Display, Language, Audio, and Network. The player defaults to a 1080i output, but you can easily change that in the menus. You do have to stop the disc and enter the setup menu to change the resolution, however; you can’t do it on the fly. The BD590 supports video outputs of 1080p (24 or 60), 1080i, 720p, 480p, and 480i (component output only), and there’s even an HDMI Color Setting (Y/Cb/Cr or RGB). With HDMI connections, the Auto setting will communicate with your display (acquiring the EDID information) to determine the best video output. In my case, that was 1080p. You can press the remote’s Info button to access customized picture controls while a movie is playing. I found the default settings to be the most accurate.
Configuring the audio for an HDMI-equipped system is a simple matter of choosing PCM Multi-Chan for internal decoding or Primary Pass-Thru for bitstream. If you use either the TosLink or the coaxial outputs, the BD590 offers a DTS re-encode feature that decodes the lossless formats and re-encodes them as a high-bitrate lossy DTS output to your AVR. If you’re in this camp and are blown away by the video on Blu-ray Discs, do yourself a favor and upgrade to a new AVR or surround processor so you can experience the full benefits of lossless audio.
Wireless connection to my equipment rack is spotty, but the 802.11n Wi-Fi found my network without any issues. Unfortunately, due to the reception patterns in that area of my house, the signal was too weak to reliably stream video, so I went old school and used wired Ethernet. During my time with the player, LG issued two firmware updates. Each took about three minutes to perform. Fortunately, you don’t have to reset the player to its factory settings like you do with my reference OPPO BDP-83.
In order to utilize many of the player’s Netcast features, you’ll need access to a PC or Mac to register for the various online services (Netflix, VUDU, and CinemaNow). I’m a longtime Netflix subscriber, so I’m familiar with the drill of registering the player to my account. I’ve reviewed players with CinemaNow support in the past, and I think its service is outdated. Most of its content is in standard definition, although it does have a few HD offerings. Still, there’s no comparison to the selection from VUDU and Netflix.
Tests and Real-World Performance
The BD590 performed well on most of our benchmark video-processing tests. It only failed the Chroma Resolution test on the Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray Edition, where the highest-frequency patterns showed roll-off. However, this wasn’t noticeable with real-world material. Standard-definition tests didn’t reveal any shortcomings, although the player is only average at scaling DVDs. Any time there’s a bright background with a dark object in the foreground, I saw prevalent ringing around the foreground object. Although it’s slightly slower than the BD390, the BD590 is very fast. Load times with Java-intensive Blu-ray titles were right in line with my OPPO BDP-83, which is fast. Unfortunately, I ran into some playback issues. When I tested the layer change on the DVD of Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones, the player refused to advance to chapter 28. Whenever I tried, the disc drive made laboring sounds and placed me in chapter 29. I tried to access each preceding chapter with similar results and ultimately made it into chapter 24. But at the 0:57:52 mark—about 3 minutes before the layer change—the disc froze. I tested additional DVDs and couldn’t re-create the problem, but the Episode II disc layer change does work in my other players.
I also started to have some perplexing issues with Blu-ray Discs, particularly Pixar titles. When the player was set to 24p output, discs like Up, Toy Story, and Toy Story 2 jumped forward at various times that were repeatable. As a workaround, I set the video output to 60p. This wasn’t ideal, but not the end of the world. Fortunately, an LG firmware update (BD 8.31.211.C) fixed this playback problem. Still, the player was on the market for well over a month before LG issued the fix, and the Internet forums were abuzz with complaints. While I commend LG for fixing the issues, too much time elapsed, and it’s left a stain on the company’s customer service. The last thing consumers want is to be unpaid beta testers for manufacturers.
Another minor quibble is that the disc mechanism is quite loud, especially when the player boots up and when it first loads a disc. Initially, I thought this was the hard drive spinning up. However, after a few on/off cycles, I realized it was the optical drive that was making such a ruckus. The latest firmware didn’t affect this issue.
After the firmware update, I watched a wide variety of discs, and the Star Wars DVD was the only disc that continued to malfunction. The picture and sound were great—as they should be. Whether it was Perseus struggling to save Princess Andromeda from the clutches of the Kraken in the 1981 Clash of the Titans or whistle-blower Mark Whitacre playing 0014—because he’s twice as smart at 007—in The Informant!, the audio/video quality nearly matched that of my reference OPPO BDP-83 player. Only the OPPO’s slightly superior DVD upconversion set it apart.
Streaming services are a compelling addon to any consumer electronics device, and I’ve grown used to Netflix being as common as a power cord. The Netflix stream’s video quality from the LG is on par with my TiVo Series 3 DVR, although it does take about 5 seconds longer to start a title.
One new feature the LG offers (as does the PlayStation 3) is the ability to add films to your Netflix queue without having to venture onto your computer. The tabbed interface has several options, including New Arrivals, Comedies, TV, etc., that you can either add to your Instant Queue or immediately stream. While there’s no search function, each tab offers more than 100 titles. With all of those choices, there’s bound to be something worth watching.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about VUDU, so it was one of the features I couldn’t wait to try. First up was an HDX stream of The Fellowship of the Ring with 1080p video—although the audio for this movie was limited to Dolby Digital Plus 2.0. Surprisingly, the video feed was quite good—not as good as a Blu-ray, mind you, but it was pretty darn impressive. With static images on a normal-sized display, most viewers would be hard-pressed to distinguish between the two. However, this wasn’t the case in scenes with plenty of action, which showed some instances of macroblocking. The stereo audio pales in comparison to the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track on the recently released Blu-ray, but I got to watch Fellowship in HD nearly eight weeks before the Blu-ray was available.
I got similar results with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 track didn’t live up to the disc’s lossless mix, and the climactic battle at Hogwarts left me wanting. It was the same with Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker. When the team of Sergeant James, Sergeant Sanborn, and Specialist Eldridge detonate roadside bombs in the desert, the explosions weren’t as full-bodied and realistic as they sound with lossless audio. Granted, this was an on-the-fly A/B, and if I hadn’t performed this direct comparison, I may not have been as disappointed.
Quibbles aside, I can see why people would choose to use the VUDU service. It’s convenient, it offers a plethora of choices, and for a lot of genres—specifically comedies and dramas—the vanilla audio doesn’t matter. I know a lot of people who don’t use Netflix because they only watch one or two movies a month and can’t justify paying a subscription. VUDU may be a compelling choice for the casual viewer who wants near Blu-ray video quality.
Conclusion
Initially, I was very disappointed by the various playback issues I experienced with the LG BD590. I was set to not recommend the player, but thankfully LG came through with a firmware update that fixed the bugs. I get to use a lot of different Blu-ray players. While I preferred the speedy menu navigation in last year’s BD390, the VUDU HDX streaming is mighty impressive. It makes the glacial menu system almost tolerable. My only reservation is that the BD590 isn’t 3D compatible, which may or may not be a big deal in the near future. If you’re perfectly happy with 2D, then the BD590 is worth a close look for its solid Blu-ray performance and array of streaming services.
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