Samsung BD-P2550 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player Review

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(More customer reviews)I was sold on the LG BD300 since I first heard about it a year ago and have been waiting for it ever since. I was planning on getting it until I heard about the Samsung BD-P2500 and figured I should at least research it a little before buying the LG, and boy am I glad I did!! That's when I found out Samsung made a sister model to the 2500, the BD-P2550. The 2500 and 2550 are identical except except for one feature, the 2550 adds Pandora Internet Radio. A small difference, you might think, but Pandora takes the purchase to a whole other level of enjoyment! As you can deduce, I ended up buying the Samsung 2550 and absolutely LOVE it! But since the 2500 and 2550 are so similar, and I've encountered a lot of people trying to decide between Samsung 2500/2550 and LGBD300, I figured I'd add my 2cents.
The main things that turned me off LG and onto Samsung were:
1- Samsung BD-P2550 has Pandora. I wasn't sure if I'd use this service or not so went to the website to check it out. I have to say, I really like the service and have been making good use of it via the Samsung. Sure, you can listen to Pandora on your computer, and maybe even hook up your computer to your home stereo system. But having it there and ready to go on the Samsung has been great! I really love it and love that I can listen on my home theater setup. I also have TVersity streaming to my home theater setup via my DirecTV receiver, and its possible TVersity can pick up Pandora too, but it would be lacking the same interface available on the Samsung BD-P2550, and the menus look great on my plasma TV. The Pandora feature alone beats the LG BD300 in my opinion, and the little extra money for the Samsung is more than worth it to me.
2- LG has NO internal flash memory while the Samsung has 1gb flash. This is useful for BD Live features and makes the experience easier and more enjoyable.
3-Samsung's video upscaling of regular DVDs is SUPERB! I'm very picky about video quality and I thought the picture looked spectacular. This is due to the superior chipset inside the Samsung, which LG is lacking. And naturally, Blu Ray disks look awesome too.
I admit, I never tried the LG so I'm not making a true test-drive comparison here. All I can say is I was totally sold on the LG and waiting a year for its release, but in the end, I'm glad I picked Samsung BD-P2550 at the last minute.
A word about Firmware updates:
Updates are easiest if you hook up your player to the internet via the network port on the back. This is also the only way to get BD Live content, so you may want to hook it up that way if you can. The player automatically configures the network settings and connects to the internet automatically. My player did need a firmware update, but the process was very simple. Just select the upgrade from the player's setup menu and it takes care of the installation by itself. The upgrade only took about 20min, then the player rebooted and I was good to go. No issues. No hassle. No sweat.
I have to give the Samsung BD-P2550 Blu-Ray player top marks. It's truly awesome and I'm glad I got it. I bought a Toshiba HD player last year before the bottom fell out on HD-DVD and then returned to Amazon for a full refund. I didn't mind returning it since most the disks I tried playing locked up and wouldn't play. But I was disappointed HD-DVD died. But in the end, everything worked out for the best and I'm very happy with this Samsung. And no disk lockups as with the HD-DVD I tried last year.
Incidentally, Netflix streaming actually looks pretty good considering it's not HD. And soon they'll be streaming HD quality, so that'll be cool to try. Maybe I won't even need to rent disks anymore and will just stream everything. Also, the player's menus and interface are clean and easy to use and it was a breeze to setup the player with my Harmony 1000 remote.
So between Netflix, Pandora, superior DVD upscaling and superb Blu-Ray picture, it's hard to beat the Samsung BD-P2550. It's a giant leap into future technology and will remain cutting edge for years to come. It's awesome!! Go for it!!!!


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Experience thrilling high-definition from Blu-ray Discs and even convert your standard DVDs to high-definition with this 1080p Blu-ray disc player. Ethernet and USB 2.0 interfaces allow you to access firmware upgrades. Also this Samsung BD-2550 Blu-ray disc player is NetFlix Internet streaming service capable, so you can stay home and enjoy movies at your fingertip.

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LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have to say that I'm impressed with this unit. The wait times are not too bad at all, and as others have said, the picture quality is excellent. Standard DVD upconversion is excellent. There are a few minor issues that I've found, which I'll get to.
Setup out of the box was quick and simple. I plugged it in and set a few audio options, video needed no adjustment from the defaults.
The network setup wasn't too bad, but I did have some issues with encryption. I also purchased a new wireless router (the Netgear RangeMax WNDR3300 Wireless-N Router) to replace the near-decade-old Linksys I have. I tried two different encryption types, and both both times the player could connect after entering the key, but refused to obtain an IP address. Disabling encryption on the router caused the player to obtain an IP address quickly, and setup was complete. Currently I'm running without encryption but with MAC address filtering. I'm okay with that, but I might go back and try encryption again now that I've downloaded a firmware update for the router. Other reviews state no problems setting up with encryption, so the problem might be specific to my setup.
Netflix functionality took a few seconds to set up. Anything in your "Watch Instantly" queue is displayed in the Netflix menu and you can rate any of them from the player. Unfortunately, at this time there is no ability to browse or search for anything that's not already in your queue. With the right connection, the higher quality video is quite good - as good or slightly better than standard definition cable. At this point, audio doesn't get any better than stereo, and while it's not crystal clear, it's not bad. Hopefully some new features will be added in future firmware updates.
The YouTube player is nice too. This supports searches, "Top Rated", "Most Viewed", "Recent Videos", etc. It's fun to play around with, and I'm glad the feature exists on this player, even if the novelty might wear off a little over time.
I did a firmware update this morning (it wasn't available yesterday), and now there is a new menu item for CinemaNow. I haven't messed with it much, but apparently you can "rent" a movie for around $3.99 or "buy" a movie for $15-$20. There's a section for TV, but it merely says "Coming Soon". I don't see the point in this really, since Netflix covers the rentals (for much cheaper), and the movies seems to be the same price as going out and buying the DVD. I'd rather have the DVD than an over-compressed soft copy for the same price.
I can't get the Media Server stuff to work at all [fixed! -- see updates below]. So far, I've dedicated about 6 or 7 hours to getting this to work. None of the other reviews have mentioned a problem with this, so I guess it must be me. I installed the included Nero MediaHome 4 Essentials software, and added a directory to share. I started the server fine, but the player constantly tells me "No Server Found". I have tried two different wireless routers and an infinite number of settings adjustments. My firewalls are off. I just can't get a break. As a software engineer with a degree in the field, you can bet that it's pretty frustrating for this to beat me. I'll update the review if and when I get it working. Others have not had the same problem as me, though. So I imagine that this is NOT a problem with the player.
There are also a number of little features related to the playing of DVD's and BD's that I like. The player remembers each movie's last position when it was stopped and/or removed. So the next time you start up that movie, it will resume where you left off.
The video settings are reasonably full-featured as well. Brightness, Contrast, etc. are all adjustable, and you can adjust colors manually (just the reds, just the yellows, etc.) Upconverted DVD's have a couple of NR options, and there's an auto-contrast feature which seems to work pretty well. There's also a zoom feature that let's you zoom in on a part of the screen to get a closer look. That's cool.
Overall, this player was definitely worth the money for me. I'm looking forward to the day when I can get the media server working, but even without that feature, I love this player. It's worth every cent. Great video, great audio, and instant Netflix that doesn't involve me using composite cables to mirror my laptop screen to the TV. Progress!
---------------- Update 05/27/2009 ------------------
Now I seem to be having an additional problem. I tried two DVD's that have an alternate picture-in-picture track that can be enabled. They pop up with a small video in the corner of the screen every so often when the option is turned on (like a video commentary track). I can't get either of them to play with sound. The video shows up but you can't hear anything. There is no mention of this in the manual, and nothing that I can find online about it. One person with the same problem (but a different player) said that their player had a "Secondary Audio" option that was turned off by default, and turning it on fixed the issue. This player does not have that option. None of the standard audio tracks contain the PIP audio. I've just about given up. If someone can tell me how to fix this, I'd be grateful. Otherwise I'd knock this down to three stars until it's fixed in firmware. For reference, the two Blu-Ray discs I'm talking about are Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder and Groundhog Day.
---------------- Update 06/05/2009 ------------------
Following the recommendation of xoco (see Comments), I changed the audio from Primary Pass-Through to DTS Re-Encode. This fixes the PIP audio track problem. I'm satisfied with that, although I'm not sure if I have lost anything by making the switch.
---------------- Update 08/25/2009 ------------------
SUCCESS!! Finally, I can see my PC as a media server. Whatever issues I had were fixed with the latest firmware download (BD.8.08.498.B). As soon as I finished the download and rebooted the player, my PC was visible in the My Media section. Nero MediaHome 4 still does not seem to work, but the standard sharing built into Vista works fine. That's the (very) good news. The bad news? I immediately shared one of my video directories to try it out. I tried a couple of videos that I had scaled down to 720p to put on Flickr, and even scaled down they were horribly choppy and slow. I may need to start messing with router settings again to see if I can fix this. Currently, the streamed videos are completely unwatchable.
Additionally, one of the previous firmware updates added high definition support for Netflix streaming. And they seem to have fixed an issue where the video quality was always lower than it should have been, given the speed of the connection. With a 22MBps connection, I was previously getting generally 50-75% "bars" on the quality scale. Now I'm usually getting 100% (HD), and sometimes one or two steps down from that when I'm using at peak times. It's a vast improvement. And the HD quality is better than I could have imagined for streaming video.

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Blu-ray Disc Player w/1GB Memory, 7.1 discrete analog output, BD-P, Netflix HD, YouTube, CinemaNow Full HD 1080P Output via HDMI, DVD 1080p Up-conversion.

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