Our philosophy in our forums, reviews, podcasts and feature videos is to promote audio and visual excellence by gathering and sharing the best information and resources available.
Reviewed by David Mackenzie
The price, coupled with the fault-free 1080p/24 playback, fast boot-up time, and additional networking features, make it yet another affordable Blu-ray player which offers great value for money. Read the full review...
Good review, but I'd have liked to have seen some comment about it's mkv and avi playback capabilities and file system support, as it's these extras that make this machine stand out from the crowd for me.
I for one am quite pleased that this review didn't transcend into a USB fest.
The BD390 Owners Thread is all MKV this and download that, and it has become quite removed from being a Blu-ray player thread. It almost belongs in the PC forums.
Well done to LG for picking up on the popularity of downloads and incorporating it into their player (and their TV's), but thanks go to the reviewer for not dwelling on that aspect, and concentrating on what is actually important from a disc player; It's disc playback.
Call me a dinosaur in this digital age, but I'm quite fond of optical media and believe, as an A/V enthusiast, that the best looking titles can still only be found on disc. With the advent of Blu-ray, this is even truer today.
I do believe that solid state media is the next step, coupled with fast, high quality downloads and streaming, but I feel they have a way to go before it reaches the quality of disc based media.
It's quite subtle, but if you have a disc of test patterns, go to the Greyscale ramps and you'll see that instead of staying still, the ramps appear to grow outwards from the centre a few seconds after they come on screen.
This player definately interests me, I have an old (and just begining to play up) Toshiba 210e. Having said that I would like to see, when avaliable, a review on the latest Marantz BD player the BD7004, of which the 5004 sibling is pictured in the latest copy of HCC at around £450.
I appreciate that the 7004 is in the £700 bracket as opposed to the LG's £200ish price, but given their pedigree it would make for an interesting comparison given that the Blue Ray picture should be the same. As with the LG player this model also has the 7.1 analogue outs, the 5004 does not have this, which is important to me as I own the Denon AVC11XVA amp (pre 1.3). In the mean time a quality review of LG's baby based on its' Blue Ray picture processing and sound quality playing capabilities which is my main criteria.
I would like to stress that the review is somewhat wrong in assuming that 50Hz is just a typo mistake, it is not: unlike BD370, with BD390, all mkvs and divx avi that have native 24fps framerate are played back at 50Hz resulting in a skip every second...no native 24Hz support for those...just BD and DVD...
also many mkvs having DTS sound stutter and the pattern is as of yet undetermined since some do not exhibit this problem...
just a word of friendly warning for those aiming at this player...being a reviewer myself, I understand that one should be using a device for an extremely prolonged period of time in order to detect and reveal all of its little quirks that do not become obvious right away...
otherwise it's a great BD player, it's just not an accomplished media player...
Great Review! I had the BD370 before and i liked it alot but it used to clip the blacks & whites which made it difficult to set the picture correctly using test patterns, also it was only FAT32 which was silly. So the 390 was a much better option for me, thanks to your review i bought it due to the media streaming and picture controls (as my tv only has brightness/contrast/colour and thats it!) Picture PQ is on par with 370 but the extra's the 390 has made it much better for me, And it does not clip!
Although my AIX records calibration disk does not work on it for some reason.
I am looking closely at this player now. BUT take a look at the reviews of it from customers on amazon.com I have never in my life seen so many people with reliability issues. There are literally dozens of them that mention the player dying in under 4 months (and going via lg means you wait 4 weeks at a time for any replacement). Now the mention of 24fps divx being played at 50hz and having a skip every second also has me worried.
The sole reason for getting this over the s760 is the fact that the s760 has no divx support (and after the early sony dvd players lacked that feature, i would have thought sony had learnt their lesson by now!!). But for divx playback, id have already ordered an s760 and be in no doubt what so ever that it is what i wanted.
I currently have an oppo dvd player and have hated the thing since day 1. The pq was no better than my very old sony 725 player which it replaced (purely due to needing divx). The remote is terrible with its button layout. The player takes an age to load compared to my old sony 725. The player does not save your position on a disk, except by pressing the eject button!! I contacted oppo about it and was basically told the player isnt capable of saving position on the disk and they had no intention of releasing a new firmware to solve it..... fantastic given that the thing was about 7 years newer than my sony 725 which never had any problem remembering the position. so basically i wont touch oppo again with a barge pole.
so my dilemma is i want the s760 due to having the best sound and picture going. but i will not buy it due to no divx plaback. id go for the bd390 but have major concerns over reliability (and past lg reliability) and now concerns over how well it actually plays divx since many are 24fps.
so back to being stuck again. i may end up waiting until sony includes divx playback in a new version of the s760 (i dont really need streaming, JUST basic divx playback off a dvd would do as a minimum). or i risk going for the bd390 and hope the 50hz playback isnt a problem, and the player doesnt drop dead on me.
I'm very weary of reliability since the reason that i am looking at a new BR deck is that my samsung is dying for a second time and this time after 13 months.
Fortunatley it seems in a good mood at the moment, but i'm sure it will die in the new year. This is poor and ill think twice before buying a sumsung again. The last thing i need is for more nonsense on the next deck - especially now i might watch a few more films as the Mrs doenst have the X factor to watch !
David, I got the LG BD390 and the Panasonic PT-AE4000 projector.
I´m wondering to know if you test that combination. I tested both out of the box and look great, but I want to get the best performance of this married. could you give me some advices??
BD Playback
E. & O.E.