Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55983 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: BD-P1000/XEU
• Released on: 2006-11-01

Manufacturer's Description

Today's high-definition televisions (HDTV) are capable of displaying a far greater amount of movie realism than a DVD can deliver. That's why Blu-ray DiscTM (BD) technology was developed. Samsung presents the highest-definition playback in the world: the BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player. Be among the first to view Blu-ray format discs on your HDTV. You'll marvel at the clarity and full-color spectrum of every scene, while multi-channel sound puts you in the center of the action. The Samsung Blu-ray player gives you full 1080p native output and up-conversion for your current catalog. This player also offers backwards compatibility to current dvds and CD playback. So get ready to take the next step in superior technology with Samsung!

Play movie clips, view digital photos or listen to MP3 music files through a Combo Player-using any type of memory card. The two slots on the BD-P1000 accept virtually every popular memory card format-Multi Media card, Secure Digital card, Compact Flash and Micro Drive directly, as well as Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro Duo, RS MMC and Mini SD with an adapter.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Over rated
First off, let me say I hate Warner. Before they took the BR side (after an alleged 500 million dollar payout by Sony), Warner were very much in favour of HD-DVD.

Technically, the specs for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are pretty much identical, the codecs used for sound and picture are the same i.e. there should be no difference in picture quality between either formats. The only benefit of BR was it's higher capacity. HD-DVD had more than enough for it purpose though.

Unfortunately, most Blu-Ray disk released to date are production upscaled which basically means that you are not watching a TRUE hi-def picture, but rather an interpretation of what it could look like. In order for a film to be in Hi-Def, it has to be filmed in Hi-Def, and sadly most of the early films released on BR were not filmed in a Hi-Def resolution.

Last time I looked (around end of december'07), 75% of the Blu-Ray filmes released so far were in MPEG2 format which is the same as normal DVD. At the same time, only 10% of HD-DVD was at the same low format.

HD-DVD was a better format for the consumer too. Less encryption and licensing digital rights management meant that you had more control over the media that you have bought. Unfortunately, Blu-Ray's higher encryption and seriously bad licensing crap mean that if you go Blu-Ray, Sony owns you. They have the power to put they like on their disks, including root kit virus's as they had in the past.

One of the reasons why I was hoping HD-DVD would win.

Anyways, Blu-Ray looks to be the format of choice, so I went along with it and purchased this Samsung player.

I have to say, it looks nice asthetically, and plugs in easily on my 42" toshiba LCD, but I wouldn't say it was worth £300. Firstly, the limited collection of BR disks we have, are mostly MPEG2, so it's basically just an upscaled DVD picture and for that, it was no better than my cheap £40 'made in japan' upscaling DVD player. On a true Hi-Def disk, it was a better picture, much sharper and more defined lines, but again, I wouldn't say it was that huge a step from upscaled DVD. It's on a par with my Sky HD setup.

Quite disapointed really, I was expecting to be blown away, but I was left feeling rather cheated to be honest.

1 star for the look of the unit.

beware of update
loved this machine when i first got it

then suddenly it needed a firmware update to play any of the newer disks (spiderman 3 etc) and now on some disks it keeps stalling for a second or so every 4 or 5 minutes of playtime as if it is having to load to its cache before continuing. lack of support from the samsung website makes this machine a good doorstop now

Agreement

I have just set up a Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray disc player. I applied my usual criteria - can I unpack it, plug it in and play a disc WITHOUT referring to the user's manual? The answer is a resounding YES - power and HDMI to TV (+ batteries in remote controller) and I was watching S.W.A.T - which was so stunningly different from anything a DVD can produce, I watched it through until the end. As well as HDMI, there are various other connections you can choose from, all the better ones with supplied leads.
Next came the non-Blu ray Lord of the Rings - watching this through a normal DVD player on my Samsung 50" plasma screen had been a little disappointing because of the jagged edges on curves and loss of quality in panned shots - all have now disappeared.
Now I have to wait for Blade Runner to get here from the US to see if I can play Region 1 discs - I have heard that making the player multiregional is not recommended.
The unit is glossy black and brushed chrome with blue LEDs and matches my TV and base perfectly. The firm I bought mine from (WS Inspire) had the unit in stock and it was with me within a couple of days of being ordered through Amazon.
I have nothing but praise for the way my upgrade to Blu-Ray has gone so far. If you're hooked by HDTV through your set-top box then this is certainly one of the best ways of getting that sort of quality from discs.