Samsung Bd P1000 Blu-ray Player Reviews

Samsung BD-P1000 DVD Player/updates

The Samsung player is a great looking bit of kit and when it plays blueray disc they play them well, but unfortunatly it will eventually not play any Blueray Disc, as the machine does not have enought memory for you to update the firm wear for the 2.0 compliant discs. But they may be able to sort it out. SO BE WARNED.

Pros	Cons
Good looking player.	My not play blueray discs

Reviewed by alan pope on 3:44pm Mon 31st Mar 2008

Factor	Rating
Ease of Use	4/5
Durability	5/5
Style	5/5
Service & Support	3/5
Value for Money	3/5
Recommend	1/5
Overall	3/5

Don't Jump Yet

Stunning visuals sent to a Samsung LE40F71BX (see my other review) via HDMI. Absolutely faultless in this department as far as I'm concerned. Standard DVDs get upscaled and only look slightly softer than their Blu-ray cousins. You won't feel the need to replace your old DVDs if their titles eventually come out on Blu-ray. However, there is a caveat which I will come to at the end. One of the key advantages of Blu-ray's immense storage capacity is that no audio compression is needed. This means the sound track can be of the very best quality. Samsung therefore provide outputs for hooking up to your Hi-Fi or directly to a 5.1 speaker arrangement. It is disappointing then that the menu does not include a sound delay/timing function. On standard DVDs the sound and vision drifts out of sync by as much as quarter a second. It may be due to the processing required to up-convert the picture but whatever the reason I would recommend waiting until Samsung fixes this particular bug.

Pros	Cons
Standard DVDs look fantastic too.	No sound delay/timing function.

Reviewed by Nick on 3:27pm Tue 16th Jan 2007

Factor	Rating
Ease of Use	4/5
Durability	5/5
Style	5/5
Service & Support	3/5
Value for Money	3/5
Recommend	1/5
Overall	4/5

Samsung Blu-ray BD-P1000 DVD player

Design

There’s no denying the Samsung BD-P1000 is a good looking piece of kit. The 16.94 x 3.11 x 12.8 inch casing comes in a lovely glossy black finish with a split front that has a black top and silver stripped bottom. The top half has the disc tray, a small open/close button as well as a LED display which is invisible until you turn the machine on. On the bottom silver half you’ll find the power on button on the far left hand side and a large, round four-way wheel on the right that operates the play, pause, stop and skip functions. When the Samsung Blu-ray player is turned on this wheel, the display and the disc tray are illuminated in that lovely blue colour you find on the Samsung NV digital camera range. There’s also a hidden panel in this section that hinds the memory card reader and a button that skips between HDMI, component video and standard definition outputs. All the sockets are around the back. There’s also a remote control which is pretty plain and boring.

Features

Toshiba bought out the Toshiba HD-A1 which is the HD DVD player. While Samsung have gone the Blu-ray route with the Samsung BD-P1000 the problem is at the moment they are not compatible and one disc won’t play on the other player. So straight away there’s an issue with discs, you have to have Blu-ray DVDs to play on your BD-P1000. Obviously the reason why you’d spend so much on your Samsung BD-P1000 would be to get high definition footage on your large plasma or LCD and you do this because the BD-P1000 up-converts DVDs. Using the HDMI output you can output 1080p video, however it’s a bit more limited with the component video. The Samsung Blu-ray player comes with both optical and coaxial digital outputs and a set of 5.1 channel analog audio outputs. The Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player comes with two card readers which will accept any of the10 flash media cards: Compact Flash; Micro Drive; Memory Stick; Memory Stick PRO, Duo, and Pro Duo; SD; MMC; Mini SD; and RS MMC and will either play high definition digital photos or your MP3 files. We liked the menu feature on the Samsung BD-P1000. You could use it without stopping the movie you were watching, allowing you to browse different scenes and check out the special features which have been raved about as part of the allure of Blu-ray. So when you’re watching a movie through the menu system you can do a search for a particular scene, character or actor and you can also bookmark your favourite scenes.

Performance

There’s no doubts that the Samsung BD-P1000 is a bit like the England cricket team, it misses on a fair few rounds and hits pure sixes on others. When using a Blu-ray disc through HDMI or component video output the picture quality was fantastic and much, much better than normal DVD – but that’s no surprise really. On some DVDs the picture quality was really sharp and lifelike and the colours were unreal – giving an almost 3D affect where you felt things were leaping out of the screen. However on others it was a softer image with a bit of noise. We also tried out normal DVDs as well. The up-converting of these at 1080p HDMI was very smooth and manage to retain a lot of detail. However it was the loading time and the actual mechanics of the Samsung DB-P1000 that let it down. Opening the door was akin to watching paint dry – it just took an age for the door to open or close from the time you pressed the button. And then once you’d inserted the disc it took almost a whole minute to get to the main menu, perfect for boiling an egg, not so good when you’re getting ready for an evening of HD entertainment. Also sometimes when you put the Blu-ray disc in the machine would eject it saying it can’t be played even though moments beforehand it had played it perfectly and also it the P1000 seemed to get heated and needed to be rested for half an hour before it would play discs. Sound quality was pretty good though and when plugged in to some speakers you got good surround sound.

Overall Opinion

On the whole if you’re looking for the whole HD experience in your living-room and can afford it, then be one of the first in the UK and get yourself the Samsung BD-P1000 first generation Blu-ray player. But you really do need a good high definition plasma or LCD with good resolution to do it complete justice. Also the fact that there is only a limited library of Blu-ray discs means your viewing will be restricted.

Pros	Cons
Great menu Good image True High Definition Nice design	Slow start up Takes a long time to load Random disc rejection

Reviewed by on 10:36am Fri 27th Oct 2006

Factor	Rating
Ease of Use	3/5
Durability	4/5
Style	4/5
Service & Support	3/5
Value for Money	3/5
Recommend	1/5
Overall	3/5