Captain Spaulding
Second Unit
I'm aware of the reported problems with some of Samsung's previous Blu-ray players, so I was expecting much less from the BD-P1500 than the stellar performance that I have seen and heard so far.
I picked one up at my local Wal-Mart for only $348.00 + tax. I've owned both Sony and Panasonic Blu-ray players and now own a PS3. Here are my initial thoughts on the Samsung 1500 after playing several discs.
I can confirm that it does bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD MA to my Yamaha RX-V663 receiver. The picture is gorgeous, certainly as good as and, to my eyes, even a bit sharper than the PS3. I do not have a Blu-ray test disc to actually look at resolution patterns, but it looks very sharp with great colors. My TV is a 60" Sony SXRD.
The biggest surprise? The disc loading times are much faster than I expected. I did not actually time them, but the discs I put in loaded at least as quickly, and, I believe, even more quickly than what I remember the Panasonic BD30 load times were. Even "slow-loading" titles such as Ratatouille loaded in a very acceptable amount of time.
If the BD-P1500 continues to perform this well, I'm considering returning my somewhat noisy PS3 and keeping the Samsung.
I'm looking forward to other reviews that would verify or nullify my observations, especially about the load times.
I picked one up at my local Wal-Mart for only $348.00 + tax. I've owned both Sony and Panasonic Blu-ray players and now own a PS3. Here are my initial thoughts on the Samsung 1500 after playing several discs.
I can confirm that it does bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD MA to my Yamaha RX-V663 receiver. The picture is gorgeous, certainly as good as and, to my eyes, even a bit sharper than the PS3. I do not have a Blu-ray test disc to actually look at resolution patterns, but it looks very sharp with great colors. My TV is a 60" Sony SXRD.
The biggest surprise? The disc loading times are much faster than I expected. I did not actually time them, but the discs I put in loaded at least as quickly, and, I believe, even more quickly than what I remember the Panasonic BD30 load times were. Even "slow-loading" titles such as Ratatouille loaded in a very acceptable amount of time.
If the BD-P1500 continues to perform this well, I'm considering returning my somewhat noisy PS3 and keeping the Samsung.
I'm looking forward to other reviews that would verify or nullify my observations, especially about the load times.