WEll I finally broke down and entered the Blu ray camp with the purchase of a Samsung BD-P1600
My initial impression is that I think the machine is great. I tried the streaming netflix last night for the first time and it was a good experience (Watched Heroes SEason 2 episode 1). There were a few minor issues with pixelization but I attribute that to the newness of the technology and not the player.
The picture quality and the sound is fantastic although there does seem to be a minor issue with the center channel output - it is significantly lower than the HD DVD I am running but that could be a myriad of issues and I need to explore a bit more.
I have a few questions comments complaints about Bluray though:
1) Why can't I access menu's while in the film? Granted, the Blu's I have bought are "older" titles although FF Silver Surfer is pretty new but you have to stop the film to get back to the menu like in the old SD DVD world. Is this common with all Blu titles? I watched Gran Torino last night (from Netflix so maybe that is the issue) and I couldn't even access the menu, i had to take a back door route to get to the sound options. Are Menu "problems" common on Blu or is this a Samsung problem or what? The functionality on HD DVD was much better.
2) What is with the forced trailers? Is there no way to bypass these without fast forwarding? Are all Blu ray disks like this?
Curious if there are some answers to the above.
Thanks,
Dave
My initial impression is that I think the machine is great. I tried the streaming netflix last night for the first time and it was a good experience (Watched Heroes SEason 2 episode 1). There were a few minor issues with pixelization but I attribute that to the newness of the technology and not the player.
The picture quality and the sound is fantastic although there does seem to be a minor issue with the center channel output - it is significantly lower than the HD DVD I am running but that could be a myriad of issues and I need to explore a bit more.
I have a few questions comments complaints about Bluray though:
1) Why can't I access menu's while in the film? Granted, the Blu's I have bought are "older" titles although FF Silver Surfer is pretty new but you have to stop the film to get back to the menu like in the old SD DVD world. Is this common with all Blu titles? I watched Gran Torino last night (from Netflix so maybe that is the issue) and I couldn't even access the menu, i had to take a back door route to get to the sound options. Are Menu "problems" common on Blu or is this a Samsung problem or what? The functionality on HD DVD was much better.
2) What is with the forced trailers? Is there no way to bypass these without fast forwarding? Are all Blu ray disks like this?
Curious if there are some answers to the above.
Thanks,
Dave
