LG BH200 HD-DVD/Blu-ray player

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Features

The main feature of the BH200 is that it can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Discs. In addition, it can play standard DVDs and audio CDs, plus it can read MP3s and JPEG files stored on data discs.

The logos on the front of the BH200 light up depending on what disc you play.
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One of the more frustrating issues with Blu-ray has been the confusion over Blu-ray profiles, which indicate what features a Blu-ray player supports. The good news if the BH200 supports Blu-ray Profile 1.1, which means it can playback picture-in-picture commentary tracks available on some newer Blu-ray discs coming out this year. It does not currently support Blu-ray Profile 2.0--which allows for Internet-enabled features.

HD-DVD hasn't had the same confusion with "profiles" because HD-DVD has tougher requirements to acquire the official HD-DVD logo. As we mentioned before, the BH100 did not feature the official HD-DVD logo because it lacked the ability to access interactive HD-DVD menus, which are powered by technology known as HDi. The BH200, however, does feature the official HD-DVD logo, largely because it has full support for HDi--which means it can do picture-in-picture commentary tracks, as well as stream content off the Internet on certain discs.

The BH200 has all the logos you could want, but falls short of delivering on their promises.
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Soundtrack support for HD disc players has always been confusing, but getting a handle on exactly what the BH200 can and can't do is mind-boggling. While the BH200 sports the Dolby TrueHD logo on the outside of the player, it's capable of only decoding Dolby TrueHD soundtracks to two-channel audio (PCM). You do have the option to re-encode it to DTS format to get multichannel, but Dolby TrueHD is essentially a standard feature on HD players now--there's no excuse for not having multichannel decoding. On the DTS side, the BH200 sports the logo for DTS-HD Advanced Digital Out, which means the player should be capable of outputting high-resolution DTS soundtracks like DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution in raw (bitstream) format. Unfortunately, when we connected the BH200 to our Denon AVR-3808CI via HDMI and set in "Primary Pass-through" mode, we got only standard DTS. The bottom line is that this definitely isn't the player for audiophiles, and home theater enthusiasts should study page 36 of the manual (PDF link) before making a purchase.

Overall, the connectivity of the BH200 is a bit disappointing. On the video side, the main output is the HDMI port, which supports high-resolution audio and 1080p video, but enthusiasts will lament that it does not output at 24 frames per second. For analog video, there's a component-video output (limited to 1080i for high-definition discs, 480p for DVDs), plus a standard-definition composite-video output. There's no S-Video output, but that doesn't matter to us--you're buying the BH200 because you want high-definition playback.

The lack of analog multichannel outputs feels a little stingy.
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For audio, there's the aforementioned HDMI output, plus stereo analog outputs and an optical digital audio output. It lacks multichannel analog outputs, which means anyone without an HDMI-capable receiver can't enjoy high-resolution audio (of course, the lack of soundtrack support limits your options as well). Rounding out the rest of the connectivity is a network (Ethernet) port, which can be used to stream content off the Web for some HD-DVD discs, and we had no problem loading the Web-based features off the Blood Diamond HD-DVD. On the other hand, the Ethernet port can't currently be used to update the firmware--you'll need to use a USB flash drive or burn a CD/DVD.

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