There seems to be some question about this so the following is taken directly from the User Manuals.
Samsung's User Manual: Both the Blu0ray disc player and the discs are coded by region. These regional codes must match in order to play the disc. If the codes do not match, the disc will not play. The region code for Blu-ray discs is region A and DVD-Video the region is 1.
HD DVD's User Manual: Both the HD DVD player and disc are coded by region. These regional codes must match in order for the disc to play. If the codes don't match, the disc won't play. This player's code is region 1.
Don’t forget that the announced regions for Blu-Ray were different than the ones for DVD: Region [1] (Americas, East, Southeast and South Asia (except China)) [2] (Europe, Africa and Mid-East and [3]Russia, China and the rest.
However, this seemed to change (and given Robert’s post, the change must have occurred) to 3 somewhat different regions (and differently named: [A] (Americas and East Asia), (Europe, Africa & Mid-East) and [C] (Asia & Australia/New Zealand/Oceania (except East Asia)).
A couple of anomalies: US territories are region A regardless of location (e.g. Guam) and French territories are region B (e.g. French Guiana). East Asia means Japan, Korea & Taiwan)—not to be too political, but this means that China and Taiwan are in different regions.
On AVS, several members have stacked lighter DVD players on the Toshiba with no problems whatsoever. But I do think you make a good point, which is why I purchased extra long component cables from Monoprice.com. I may just put the Toshiba on a seperate table until I get a better shelf for my stuff.
EDIT: Fedex just delivered my Samsung! Time to play!
First impressions: The Samsung is a beautiful piece. I love the piano black look, combined with the silver. Don't have any BD's to play yet, so I popped in my SD DVD of SUPERMAN, a transfer I'm familiar with. I'm using component for the time being, so no upconversion, but this is the best 480p picture I've probably ever seen on my television. Very crisp, very nice black levels, saturated color. Sound is very nice and suitably bombastic when it needs to be the through coax digital. The remote is much more responsive than the Toshiba, and the load time seemed a lot faster to me, as well. Can't wait to get some BD's to play on this baby!
Larry on the opening scenes after the credits, when the camera dollys up to the red sun- how does the 'glow' around the sun look? are the gradiations very smooth or 'stepped' in noticeable bands?
This was one of the discs I used to audition my first progressive scan purchase, and was surprised that these gradiations looked more posterized on a Sony player (forgot the model number, this was 5 years ago). My display was a Sony 53HS10- I would have thought two products from the same mfg would be the optimal duo, but I actually liked it the least- go figure.
Thanks for that. Although "barely noticable" is still a step down from my Denon 2900 (I can't believe that a ram buffer hasn't been made standard for the next gen players). Looks like I won't be using a HD player for SD discs anytime soon. Still sitting this one out I think...
so, do we have official word or not, can samsung's BR player output 1080p via HDMI for either BR or SD-DVD?
if so, can someone compare it to SD-DVD upscaled to 1080p via the player vs. SD-DVD outputted to 1920x1200 resolution from computer (also via DVI output)? just very curious =).
Stacey Spears at AVS Forum confirmed the Samsung can output 1080p via HDMI, just that some devices don't play nice with it--- some sort of HDMI handshaking problem probably.
However, we don't know yet if the de-interlacer used after the Broadcomm chip can do motion-adaptive and inverse telecine re-construction of the 1080p signal on the disc.
Well, my player is in the house in the box... do I open it and add it to the rack for the time being, or do I just return it outright after the initial lackluster reviews.
It's your decision but don't you think you want to wait until a few more titles come out? Just because the first two are (reportedly) crap doesn't mean every other Blu Ray title will be as well.
At the very least, I'd wait until near the end of the period that you can return the player to see what's going on with the rest of the titles.