Samsung BD-P 1000

Now this is a very special piece of equipment, it is the first Blu-ray disk player out so it is a really cool piece. It's really a bit for the show offs out there (like me) though. It costs a lot of money and is really not worth it unless you will be showing it off a lot because it costs twice as much as Toshibas HD-DVD players. It looks really good with a glossy black finish over the top of it and looks like a really well finished product and would ...
...of gadgets and gizmos. One bad thing is that the remote is really quite bad in comparison to the actual player it's just not as cool but it is easy to use and I have managed to memorise the positions of all the buttons I use on it. As you turn on the player it is illuminated in blue light and looks really quite smart with a blue display and blue buttons on it to go with the Blu-ray name.

FEATURES

The main selling point ... more

Now this is a very special piece of equipment, it is the first Blu-ray disk player out so it is a really cool piece. It's really a bit for the show offs out there (like me) though. It costs a lot of money and is really not worth it unless you will be showing it off a lot because it costs twice as much as Toshibas HD-DVD players. It looks really good with a glossy black finish over the top of it and looks like a really well finished product and would fit in well with a modern looking house hold full of gadgets and gizmos. One bad thing is that the remote is really quite bad in comparison to the actual player it's just not as cool but it is easy to use and I have managed to memorise the positions of all the buttons I use on it. As you turn on the player it is illuminated in blue light and looks really quite smart with a blue display and blue buttons on it to go with the Blu-ray name.

FEATURES

The main selling point of this is that it can play Blu-ray disks, which is a very good selling point but Blu-ray disks might not do well and HD-DVD disks might win the battle going on between them, meaning buying this product may end up being a waste of money. HD-DVD players offer pretty much the same sort of quality and features but at the moment the HD-DVD disks have better quality but I am sure that Blu-ray will catch up really very soon. The difference isn't even noticeable though unless you have a really big TV with the capabilities to use these types of players to their full potential. If you don't have a TV like that then it's not worth getting this because spending £500 or so on a Blu-ray player to use on a TV worth less isn't worth it at all.

This player won't play HD-DVDs just like HD-DVD players won't play Blu-ray disks so you at the moment you don't have that wide a range of titles but in not long everyone will be selling Blu-ray disks and HD-DVD disks until one prevails and the other looses out which I'm not sure will happen ever because people will choose one and stick with it (I could be wrong though. I think I will stick with Blu-ray for the moment but in the future I may change my mind. The player also plays pretty much every type of DVD you can get hold of (DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, DVD RW, and DVD R) but if it didn't it wouldn't be worth getting at all.

One of the cool features of the player is you can scan through special features or scenes on the disk while the film is still playing in the background. So the menu is on the side and the rest of the screen is full of the action of the film really quite cool but not all titles have this feature enabled on them so don't expect that. You can also bookmark favourite scenes and parts in the film so you can quickly jump to your favourite part which is quite cool because I can now bookmark the action scenes from my favourite films and then quickly flick onto them. HD-DVDs also have this feature though so it's not unique.

Another feature this particular Blu-ray player has is the two card readers on the front meaning you can show photos on the cards on your player without any extra cables or burning them onto a disk. It can also play Mp3 files off of the cards as well. It can read loads of different types of memory cards (Compact Flash; Micro Drive; Memory Stick; Memory Stick PRO, Duo, and Pro Duo; SD; MMC; Mini SD; and RS MMC). It is quite bad though as it can take a while to read the cards and change from photo to photo or from track to track.

The Blu-ray payer is technically better than HD-DVD players because it outputs at 1080p which is technically better than HD-DVDs 1080i but it really isn't that much different and it's really just something for nerds to argue over. The only way you get to use it to its full potential is by connecting it up properly into a very good TV. The video quality is just amazing though it's is definitely better than DVD's and it can only get better from here and I can't wait to see what companies come up with next. The sound quality is really very good and works brilliantly with my home cinema system which is pretty much the only way you will get to use it to its full potential. The sound quality that you get out of it is really great and goes along with the amazing video quality.

PERFORMANCE

It easily exceeds DVD players in video quality and sound quality but you expect that when paying half a grand for it. It also has better quality than your HDTV with Sky or whatever. That said it isn't as impressive as HD-DVD's were at first but there are bugs in everything when they are first released and I say once again things can only get better. You have to remember though the first titles that are released for Blu-ray are only single layer disks meaning that they can hold 25GB and once dual layer disks start to get used more can be stored on a disk so you can have a better quality of video with more space. It is very likely that compression types on Blu-ray disks will change as well meaning better quality for the amount of space used on the disks.

The main point about Blu-ray and HD-DVD is that quality is much, much better than before and it definitely is. I found that while watching films with buildings within them they look sharp and very detailed. I bet if you looked close enough to a tree in the background of a film you could really see the detail on it and see all the different colours as well. All in all the background image quality is a lot, and I mean a lot, better. That's not all though while watching films with close up on characters you can really see all the detail on their faces and you can feel as if they are there right in front of you at times, it really is just amazing. Colours are great on the screen and there is not lagging at all and the player is just wonderful and does what it was made for. The quality does differ between films though. Some are significantly better than DVD versions while others are not as much better but still better. While watching normal DVDs the player is great and it looks better on this player than it does on my normal DVD player which I'm not sure what I will do with now that I have this, I'll probably just hook it up to another TV in my house.

PROBLEMS

This is not without it's bugs and problems its not all pretty pictures and brilliant sound quality. Disk load times can be very slow and are definitely slower than my normal DVD player. Sometimes it has taken over 20 seconds for a Blu-ray disk to load which for me is a bit long.

I also noticed that the subtitles stay on for a bit too long when watching films so words are spoken and the subtitles come up but then they stop speaking and the subtitles stay up and don't keep up with the audio but this will be smoothed out over time. I have also found that once after I got a movie started the remote control wouldn't work at all. It just stopped dead until after the credits had finished and it started to work again. I have only had this problem once though and I don't expect it to happen again because I use it pretty regularly.

One of the more annoying problems is that some disks that it has played numerous times before it doesn't take and spits them back out with an error message saying "This disk cannot be played" and after a few more shots sometimes it still wont go in. In the end it will usually take the Blu-ray disks and continue working like it should. I also had one more major problem when I put a slightly dirty Blu-ray disk in it with a fingerprint on it and it decided not to play it. The player didn't play anything else for a while, I think it just went in the huff with me and decided not to play anything because I had given it a dirty disk. This has also only happened once but this could be because I am more careful with the disks I put into it. So it's not the most reliable machine ever.

IS IT WORTH IT?

This is a product for the sort of person that likes to have something just to say they have one. It's really quite expensive and you can get pretty much the same quality with a HD-DVD player for roughly half the price. Prices on Blu-ray players will drop dramatically though and they will become better in most ways. It is not all that reliable and there are a few bugs that need to be fixed but I think it is still very good. If you are planning on buying one make sure you have a decent TV and a good sound system or you won't be able to appreciate it to its full potential. So buy it if you are a show off and have all the other equipment but don't buy it just to watch films on, wait a while for prices to drop and for these machines to become more reliable.
 

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