Samsung BD-P1400 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player by Samsung
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Digital camera reviews of Samsung BD-P1400 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player
Digital camera Review: It worked great right out of the box - Take that Sony!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had purchased a Sony DBP-S301 player a few months ago. Wouldn't play half of the movies I tried. They said - 'needs a firmware upgrade'. It had no ethernet port like my Toshiba HD35 so I went through this whole, burn a DVD upgrade, which took several hours. The unit was still buggy. Returned it.
Bought the Samsung 1400 because it supports TrueHD and other HD audio formats plus it has an ethernet port for upgrades like my Toshiba does. Much to my shock, it worked right out of the box, plays everything we have tried to play on it. Looks great, Sounds great.
With a player this good for this price there is no need to buy anything more expensive.
Note, the new BD-P1500 has given up some of it's audio capabilites for the second video processor - which no one will probably use. Didn't seem like a good tradeoff so I bought the 1400.
Digital camera Review: pause problems
Summary: 4 Stars
Everything works beautifully with the exception of the pause feature. This feature does not work as described in the manual. When I pause the disk during playback, if I go over about 3 minutes it switches to stop has to reload the disc and I have to search scenes to get back to where I was. It is supposed to have a push stop once and you can resume. If I push stop I have to reload and find my prior location using scene selection.Digital camera Review: Can I rate this item with no star?
Summary: 1 Stars
This is probably one of the worst engineered players out there. It pretty much tells you that Samsung is not yet an innovator and shouldn't put out anything that's cutting edge. Granted that Blu-Ray is a new technology and Sony has in multiple ways been telling customers that it's bleeding edge and it's not yet ready (they just sorta rushed it out because they are desperate, but that's a different story for another day), so I expect problems with some of the discs when I use this blu-ray players. What I don't expect is a firmware update that pretty much renders all my discs not playable. Every disc I have, I have to put it in 4 or 5 or 6 times before anything shows up, and once in a while, if I press some of the buttons on my remote too quickly, the player will freeze and I have to shut it off and turn it back on to reboot it. To add insult to injury, I am trying to download their latest firmware, and every time I do that, it takes at least 15 to 20 minutes for the download of a 32MB file over a very fast Cox cable modem and a moderately fast 802.11g WiFi only to have the verification process telling me there's data error with the firmware I downloaded. I got the same thing by burning a CD with the firmware. I can see having errors during verification once or twice, but not all the time for the last 3 days (I tried at least twice a day). So, it's telling me either Samsung does not QA their firmware (which is probably the case since the last one render all my discs unreadable) or they are too cheap to throw some more servers on their website for faster downloads. In any case, I started e-mailing them to complain about how great they are and this is what I get back from one of their customer support people -
"For most Blu Ray movies that are out,unfortunately,they do not play in our unit without a firmware installed. This is something that we are aware of and looking to fix. In the meantime we do have firmwares available for some movies that are not playing in the unit. The reason for it not playing is because the format of the movie companies are created differently from what the player is used to playing and reading. The firmware is for helping the compatiablity of both the player and the disc."
Gee. It's nice to know that most Blu Ray discs don't play on their Blu Ray Player. I wonder why I bought the player in the first place. I thought it said Blu Ray, not almost Blu Ray.
Let's just say if I have to do it again, I would just get the PS3 and use it purely as a Blu Ray player. Not that Sony is any better these days, but at least it's their technology.
Here the latest update on my BD-P1400. I called Samsung Customer Support to send me a disc. The disc doesn't work either. I still cannot update my player's firmware. I called them again to complain. They were nice enough to extend my warranty so I'll be covered. But they neglect to mention that the labor warranty, after the extension, comes to 6/30/2008. I file my complain to Samsung on 7/24/2008. So, I went and drop off the unit today at their service center. The guy there pointed out about the expired warranty and ask me to call Samsung for another extension on the warranty. Ended up talking to one of their executive customer relation (it's a joke), who basically said that since they have extended my parts, I should be thankful, and that they can't extend the labor any more. What a joke!! It's like having problems with your car and the car company telling you they will extend your warranty to last month, but they can't extend it any further to cover you this month. It is like, why bother? To think I pay some $350 for basically a door stop. I should have gotten a PS3. Less Grief.
Digital camera Review: Very Dissapointing...
Summary: 1 Stars
This product was bad from the get go. Amazon replaced the first one, but refused to replace the second one. The first time, it just quit powering up altogether. The second player would come on and work for 5 seconds then the signal would be lost. I thought it was my TV and had a service tech come and look at it. We established that it was the Blu-Ray player. I am dissapointed in Amazon and Samsung. I would not recommend this product at all. I still don't know how Blu-Ray movies look! I haven't been able to play one! It's been ridiculous! Hopefully, Samsung can work out the bugs. Digital camera Review: For new technology, it's pretty good
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first Blu-Ray player and I'm pretty happy with it. I also only paid $180 for it because it was an Open Box item at Best Buy. Having said that...
It is a little slow but after reading a bunch of reviews for many other players, it seems that they all are somewhat slow. I remember when DVD players were new and they were slow too, at first. So, in time, I imagine newer models will run much more quickly. I'm not in a huge hurry when I sit down to watch a movie so the fact that it takes a little while is REALLY no big deal. It just makes me appreciate the quality of picture and sound of the movie THAT much more when it begins to play.
I have a 1080P 42' Panasonic plasma tv and the picture this Blu-Ray player puts out is amazing. Very sharp and very clear. I also have a 5.1 Dolby Digital home theatre system, not the 5.1 Dolby HD, and the sound seemed better that my Sony 1080P up-conversion player puts out. So, I am thoroughly please with both the picture and sound.
This Blu-Ray player has an Ethernet connection which is awesome. Unlike some of the other Blu-Ray players on the market, you have to download the updates on your computer and burn them to a disc and then load them onto the Blu-Ray player. Now if I wanted to, I could do that with this model but Samsung designed it so that I don't have to buy and waste blank cds. The only downside to downloading straight off the internet using the Blu-Ray player is the fact that there is no status indicator showing me the progress of the downloading update. I just updated mine and it was very simple to do and it only took maybe 20 minutes or less to download and install the update. It just takes a little bit of patience. While I was waiting for it to let me know that I can update it, I just watched TV and flipped back to the Blu-Ray every 5 minutes or so to check up on it. I think the lack of status notification is the only true set back on this Blu-Ray player.
So, if you can buy this model for a good price, like I did, I would recommend buying it. It's a great Blu-Ray player. But if you can't find it for cheap and your forced to fork over $400... don't. Buy yourself the Panasonic something model 30. That's the one I would liked to have gotten but I just couldn't pass up on the cheap cheap price of the Samsung 1400!