Reading first impressions of Samsung player in US (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

He says he has it stacked on a Toshiba HD. Load time is somwhat faster. Build quality is lighter and seems less substantial than the Toshiba. He couldn't get Fifth Element to load. Terminator loaded, though, and he says the PQ is superb, as close to film as he's ever seen. PQ of House of Flying Daggers less so. PQ of an upconverted SD is at least the equal of the Toshiba.

Second person says upconversion is "somewhat soft". He did have a problem with lockups. Looks like BD has its share of bugs.

 

[Alf S]

Who are these "he" people you speak of??

p.s. Why 4 identical posts??

 

[TonyD]

he?

looks like a response to another thread topic

 

[Rob_Walton]

This is from AVS (Audio Visual Sciences Forum). If my fellow Robert doesn't object here are a few links to the discussions -

Just got Samsund Blu-Ray Player and 4 Movies

Blu Rays at BB. Just picked up mine!!!

The second link has pictures, while the guy in the first link opened another Fifth Element box and the new disc loaded this time. Might have just been a dodgy BD.

 

[Austan]

Here's another blog site that rumored a pre-release..
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/15/s...eleased-early/

 

[John Stell]

This is just an FYI for potential buyers of the Samsung. I hooked up the player via the HDMI with a DVI adapter. When I turned the unit on I got a vertical 3-pane display of the welcome screen. I noticed that HDMI defaulted to 720 and I have a 1080i display so I figured if I fiddled around with the Setup Menu - Display I might get it to work. The problem was that, because of the panes, I couldn't read the doggone menus.

I then hooked the unit via component and everything was fine. Knowing where everything was located on the menu screen, I now went back to the HDMI hookup and used the Setup menu to select 1080i. The machine then "fixed" itself and the HDMI display now looks fine. (I didn't have time to really test this thing because by the time I took down my old audio stand, built and put up the new stand, unconnected/reconnected everything, and addressed the above issue, it was 3:30am. And I wanted to stop at Wal Mart around 7:00am on my way to work to get some new releases.)

Anyway, I'd be interested if anyone else had anything like this happen. My display is the RCA D52W20.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Interesting read, however the only thing you can compare both players with is SD-DVD scaled to 1080i. It will be difficult to compare both HD capabilities with different films.

 

[Dave Moritz]

Hey John Stell,

Does the Samsung have 1080p output capability or does it only output 1080i?

 

[Dan Hitchman]

1080p output (de-interlaced from 1080i out of the Broadcomm chip-- the same one in the Toshiba that can't do 1080p decoding).

Dan

 

[John Stell]

Dave -

The manual says it does have 1080p output capability. But my TV is 1080i so I can't comment on any differences in picture quality between 1080p and, say, 1080i.

 

[Felix Martinez]

A somewhat depressing take - over at Digital Bits... :frowning:

 

[TonyD]

i thought you were saying someone has taken over the digital bits.

 

[Felix Martinez]

Commas are important!

 

[Dave Moritz]

Just saw the Samsung player at Best Buys today. They had it hooked up to a small Samsung HDTV with a wimpy Samsung speaker system. It had a set of L&R, center and subwoofer and a cheap hdmi cable. They where using House Of Flying Daggers on Blu-ray HD. I was glad to see Blu-ray finally in the stores and movies to go with the player. But I expected the video to look sharper and for there to be more depth in the picture. I would expect this to change when the mpeg4 discs are released hopefully soon.

I have to say though I kinda thought the player was ugly when I saw the pictures of it. But after seeing the player in person, the Samsung is a sharp looking player. I dont think I could see myself spening $1k on a Samsung though. I will most likely wait for the Sony player to be available and buy Blu-ray titles until I have the player. I am also thinking of picking up an HD-DVD player next year depending on what titles are released on Blu-ray and if the Blu-ray titles are MPEG4 or not? I have to say that BB had a nice selection of HD-DVD titles available around the corner from the Blu-ray display. The funny thing was that the BB guy said the Samsung TV was 720p but there was a 1080p sticker on the front. Most likely a 1080p upconverting TV, and then he says something like "oh 720 1080 same differnece". Oh to hear some of the things a BB salesman will say.

The big difference with the Blu-ray player though was I had sales associates asking if I had questions. When no one came around or asked if I had questions about the HD-DVD player.

 

[Ryan-G]

I find it somewhat depressing as well. The bits has never steered me wrong, so I regard that mini-review with healthy respect.

Right now I'm thinking that the single layer size constraint combined with the older Mpeg2 codec is hurting quality quite a bit. Dual Layer may make a significant difference in quality, though I'd really be happier if they switched to VC1 or Mpeg4.

I'll find out tomorrow as I have a chance to go poke around BB and see a BR for myself, but I don't have high hopes anymore...

 

[Jerome Grate]

I love Digital Bits and that is depressing to say the least. What is really sad that BD is known to have the most disc space yet, they can't put extras on some of the disc because it could compromise video quality. Step backwards to me for BD. Not slamming BD, just disappointed.

 

[Walter Kittel]

If you mean that the perception is that Blu-ray has more eventual potential capacity, okay; but currently there are plenty of HD DVD releases that use dual layer for a 30Gb total which exceeds single layer Bd's 25Gb capacity. Everyone is still waiiting for dual layer 50Gb Bd discs. In October we'll see if Sony can deliver dual layer. Not trying to nit-pick, but 30 GB > 25 GB.


- Walter.

 

[RobertR]

I think everyone knows that BD has the potential to be the best format from a technical standpoint. My view has always been not to judge products by technical papers and marketing campaigns, but by products actually delivered. What are the ACTUAL features, performance and prices of the players? What is the ACTUAL video and audio quality (which is THE indicator of an actual COMMITMENT to quality)? What is the ACTUAL price of the discs, especially the top quality ones? Just SHOW me what you have, instead of TELLING me. Early in the game, HDDVD shows me better. We'll see how hard BD wants to work to SHOW that they're really better.

 

[Craig W]

I have been thinking the same thing since BD was going single layer, MPEG2 and uncompressed 5.1 audio. I got slammed for suggesting quality was going to take a hit. Well it appears I was pretty accurate in my assumption.

I really just want this format war to end so we can move on. I don't care who wins at this point, but I want Blu-Ray to prove Dual layer and VC1 will be the standard release and not the exception. Otherwise I won't buy in if they win.

 

[Felix Martinez]

I remember - geez, almost 10 years ago - that my first dvd player, a Sony 500D, had a strange, hop forward glitch that was unbelievably difficult to troubleshoot and communicate to Sony's repair facility. It was such a pain in the ass, that I documented as much as I could about the "Vibration Hop" and Dvdfile even posted it on their web site way back then, in their "Glitch Gallery". IIRC, it had to do with a flaky optical pickup and the mpeg-2 stream. It was a subtle enough glitch, but once you saw it, it was unacceptable. Digital Bits' description of:
Sounds a lot like the build-up to the "hop," when the mpeg-2 stream snaps back into sync.