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Blu Ray movies look excellent as well, the only problem is firmware updating. I bought this product a couple weeks ago. When HD-DVD officially called it quits, I picked up an Xbox 360 HD-DVD add on for $40 and lots of HD-DVDs on clearance. 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
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 $200, 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. 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. 7 which fixed playback issues.
I compared this against the LG BD200, and this one turned out to be an excellent choice. Samsung tends to take a couple of months to release firmware after problems, luckily they released an update for this player on Nov. This player is nearly a year old now, but the HD-DVD playback was an important feature to me. This is the only reason I gave the player 4 stars and not 5.
HD-DVD playback has been flawless so far, and SD-DVD upscaling is great. I decided it was time to jump over to Blu-Ray, and for simplicity I wanted one player. 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.
That receiver is amazing, especially because of its high amperage per channel, and believe me, that particular aspect is more important that wattage. I see the TrueHD and DTS Master Audio in the panel of the receiver.
One more thing is that you need to have it all through HDMI to do this. You really need the right stuff to fully benefit from this player.
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. 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.
Hope this helps anyone out there. Wow, what a difference that made to my system.
Do not always rely on wattage in a amp/receiver component.
but will accept the lesser with this player. Bluray, on the other hand, much to be desired (after the HD-DVD experience). 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. If you can find your favorite moves on HD-DVD, get them. 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). Okay, more a Blu-ray player (pre.
So, this machine will support full HD-DVD, but not as well as the xbox-360-HD-DVD player. We've been stuck with the lesser (thanks sony (note: not mfg of this player.). 2.0 profile) than HD-DVD, but supports full HD-DVD. So, over-all the player is excellent. Otherwise move a long. I have to say the HD-DVD was ready at release, BD, not so much.
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).
Samsung support is atrocious. 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 $399 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.
I pushed it to the top of my Netflix queue. 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. It played it perfectly. 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.
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