TVs HDTVs DVD Players Recorders Home Theater Systems From Amazon

Excellent High Definition Player
I bought this product a couple weeks ago. This player is nearly a year old now, but the HD-DVD playback was an important feature to me. When HD-DVD officially called it quits, I picked up an Xbox 360 HD-DVD add on for and lots of HD-DVDs on clearance. I decided it was time to jump over to Blu-Ray, and for simplicity I wanted one player. I compared this against the LG BD200, and this one turned out to be an excellent choice. It has analog audio out, which I wanted so I would not need to update my receiver to take advantage of HD audio, this is something the LG player did not offer. HD-DVD playback has been flawless so far, and SD-DVD upscaling is great. Blu Ray movies look excellent as well, the only problem is firmware updating. This is the only reason I gave the player 4 stars and not 5. Samsung tends to take a couple of months to release firmware after problems, luckily they released an update for this player on Nov. 7 which fixed playback issues. From what I can tell, Sony players do better with the updates, but the PS3 is the only player that seems to have no problems with compatibility. I'm not a huge fan of Sony and definitely did not want a PS3, and I managed to pick this player up on clearance for 0, which I found to be an EXCELLENT deal. If you have an HD-DVD collection and want to switch to Blu without having multiple players in your house, this Samsung is the way to go. If you are just wanting to jump in to HD for the first time, I would suggest some of the great deals with newer Blu Ray players, which will be upgradeable to Profile 2.0

Wonderful player if you have all the right stuff!
I would like to add this most recent review to let everyone know that since the most recent firmware update and many long days trying to figure out how this component works, I actually got the player to play the full HD audio resolution on my VSX-94TXH Pioneer receiver I purchased recently. Wow, what a difference that made to my system! That receiver is amazing, especially because of its high amperage per channel, and believe me, that particular aspect is more important that wattage. Do not always rely on wattage in a amp/receiver component. Anyways, I was able to access the other audio by changing the settings on the player under audio to Bitstream(Audiophile) and that did it! I see the TrueHD and DTS Master Audio in the panel of the receiver. You really need the right stuff to fully benefit from this player. One more thing is that you need to have it all through HDMI to do this. Hope this helps anyone out there!

Blu-ray player (pre. 2.0 profile), but supports full HD-DVD and not 2.0BD
Okay, more a Blu-ray player (pre. 2.0 profile) than HD-DVD, but supports full HD-DVD. I have to say the HD-DVD was ready at release, BD, not so much. So, this machine will support full HD-DVD, but not as well as the xbox-360-HD-DVD player. Got this machine to back-up my 360 just in-case is fails, but since BD (total crap if you ask me) won the HD-DVD war, I will settle for less. Does good on both as far as 1080p, Wish the BD-Player was as good as the xbox (during play back w/ pip the xbox is full screen, the samy will shrink the main pic to incluce pip (only complaint). And so everyone knows early BD-DVD (that's Blu-Ray to all Y-all) tried to mimck HD-DVD with a seprate track with PIP (coulcn't turn on & off with in the movie and continue) during a movie so the entire movie was a seprate track with the movie (HD-DVD would switch w/o notice). So, over-all the player is excellent. Bluray, on the other hand, much to be desired (after the HD-DVD experience). We've been stuck with the lesser (thanks sony (note: not mfg of this player...)... but will accept the lesser with this player. If you can find your favorite moves on HD-DVD, get them. Otherwise move a long...

unrepairable
Unit failed after three months, was repaired, failed again.
Samsung service now says the unit is unrepairable,
they have no more units with which to replace it, and offer a 9 unit which will not play HD discs as replacement.
Other Thoughts: If considering this unit be prepared that if it fails it probably cannot be repaired and they have no replacement units.

Samsung support is atrocious.

An Instant Classic
Samsung has discontinued this product but at the same time updated the firmware on 5/30/2008 making it Blu-ray 1.1 spec. It handles DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray disks without problems. The issues with Dolby Digital playback have been resolved.

I had read Fox titles were particularly hard for this player to handle and that "Sunshine" was the acid test. I pushed it to the top of my Netflix queue. It played it perfectly.

I Love it!!!!!
I love this it is great! I am using it with my old roof top antenna. I get a lot more channels all in digital and they are very clear! The recorder is nice but you can only watch/tape one channel at a time and it has a few second lag if you are taping things back to back on different channels. But it is a BIG upgrade for me and I love it! No more VHS tapes everywhere!

Finally a solution for DTV with an antenna
I did a lot of research in preparation for the switchover to DTV. I have an antenna and no plans to move to cable or satellite and my antenna works just fine. I've been using VCRs, but to continue using them you have to have a decoder box for each one set to a single station. Expensive and annoying. All I wanted was a digital TV recorder so I could continue to record and watch programs at my convenience. Well this unit does just that. I had no problems setting it up. It was easy to program to record -- just like my VCRs. You can record while watching another program, and recording quality is very good even at lower resolution. This unit was exactly what I was looking for.

Just what I expected
Since Best Buy and Wal-mart have decided not to sell this item because of copyright concerns, I was pleased to find it at Amazon at a very reasonable price. It is replacing a DVDR by Polaroid, which was a piece of junk. Much better than VCR's. I was able to record 26 hours of Olympics and then put on DVD for playing later on my laptop. All in all a great machine.

Came with a defective issue
Came with problem with the hard disk. I returned. In the other hand the Amazon.com return service was very nice.

We Love It!
I've had this unit for about a year and I absolutely love it. I would never go back to a regular dvd recorder. It records quickly, it has tons of room, it has dubbing features, and it's reliable. 5 stars!

Some important features missing versus DVD players
I will say I am impressed with the audio/video quality of this machine. However, it seems that the more sophisticated user interface features depend upon the disk, not the machine, so some features like stop-resume described in the manual may not (and often don't) work. Furthermore, basics like resuming playback after switching off power are missing. This is a damn nuisance - each time you switch the power on you have to go through the entire disk initialization (quite slow at 30 seconds), and then through the forced copyright warnings, and then through the chapters to find your previous position - about 1.5 minutes total. The controls also seem to have a slow response (~1 second) in many cases. This is like going back to the stone age after using a recent DVD player.

Furthermore my DVD player has a 5-disk carousel (essential if different family members watch different films), and it can remember the last played position for up to 500 movies. When are they going to make carousel players for blu-ray? It may seem that I am unjustly picking on this player if others lack these same features - but it is my first player, and I can only write as I find.

My first Blu-Ray
This is my first Blu-Ray player. I purchased it after updating from a 27" CRT to a 50" Plasma. I bought this around the first of September from Amazon and I was very pleased with their customer service. Fast shipping on the product and no issues with it working. I chose this player based on reviews from [...]

The menus were really easy to navigate for set-up of first time features. Remote buttons are well labeled. I am most impressed with this player due to it's short load times. After putting in a movie I am at the main menu usually within 20 seconds. Some movies take a little longer but not much. I was really concerned about this when purchasing the player because I'd read several comments about some players taking minutes to load.

Picture quality and colors are great. This is my first HD television and Blu-Ray player so I cannot compare it to others, but for a first set-up I am more than satisfied. I've seen some upconversion of SD material that was really good, and some that was mediocre at best so I think the quality of the source material has a huge impact on upconversion quality.

Recently Panasonic has released the BD-35 so these units are going obsolete. The price of them should fall pretty low soon when the stores get desperate to close them out so keep an eye out.

Outdated technology, i'll stick to my 1987 VHS-C.
bought this player because it promised 'High Def' video... I have yet to see it! I wasted time and money on this junk product.

I'm going back to my VHS-C and putting on some 'Charles in Charge'.

blue ray is out dated and has horrible quality.

first blu ray
Does everything i wanted it for. right now it is just hooked to a tv, no surround. works great, easy to set up and use. later it will be hooked to a panasonic tv. would buy again. also compared prices and this dvd player was $[...] MORE at [...]- just fyi.

Excellent image, easy to use
Made my choice on this product over a SONY model.

First time set up is really easy -- plug in and change a few on-screen menu items, that's it! Only the audio part took another try to output Dolby 5.1.

Test the machine on BBC's Planet Earth, really crisp images and vivid colors.