Samsung BD-P2500

Pros: - The blue ray picture was excellent
- Upscaling regular dvds was quite nice
- The netflix instant watching feature was great
- Very good sound
- Pretty easy to set up (including connecting to the internet for Netflix & BDLive)

Cons: - On day 16 out of the box, unit had to be shipped to Samsung for repair
- Relatively slow loading times
- Remote is not the best & was unable to sucessfully program Panasonic 1080p TV to use (so you need two remotes - to change volume etc.)

Summary: As touched on briefly above, this was a Christmas gift that has been fully set up by the pm of 12/26/2008. It is now 1/10/2009 and I have just returned from visiting our local UPS store when I had to ship my unit to Samsung for repair (I guess I should be "greatful" that customer service provided the shipping label).

Until this morning, I would have given this product a 4.5 - now I will have to rate it a 1.5 and agree with what appears to be the countless other Samsung customers that have been "burned" by a shoddy product and poor customer service.

This unit was completely up and running for the past 16 days (with all the bells & whistles - HDMI cables, connection to the internet and service from Netflix watch instantly feature). Then all of a sudden about 1/4 way the blu-ray disk for the movie "Cars" (a "new" disk that it has played perfectly 3 or 4 times) the picture froze & then the entire screen went green. I consulted with the manual...nothing on green screens or problems with disk play-back. So I called Samsung customer service. After waiting 5 minutes I was connected to a phone center rep with marginal english skills. Honestly, I don't mind overseas call centers...but is it too much to ask for a basic command of english? After spinning my wheels with this rep...whose best tech advice was 1) Turn the unit off and then 2) unplug the unit, I got a magenta screen. WOW! So...I finally get transfered to another rep (add another 10 minutes of wait time for the transfer) and he asked that I try to "reset" the box - per the manual...(Hello...I already tried all the fixes suggested in the manual). After that failed AGAIN, he concluded that there is something materially wrong with the unit and that it would need to sent to repair - and would take 14-21 business days to be repaired.
I queried as to whether a new replacement unit might be provided since it was a little ridiculous to be having these problems after 9-10 uses. The reply...Samsung "may consider that option" only after 3 repair attempts have been made for the same issue. So that means you need to be without the unit that you paid nearly $400 for at least 42-63 business days! And - read between the lines - if there is more than one issue to be addressed, the guideline is 3 "bites at the apple" per issue.

My advice, if you are looking for both Bly-Ray and the instant Netflix option, is to go with Cnet's recomendation for the Blu-Ray that best meets your needs and then go with the stand-alone Roku box . I sure wish I did.
Samsung, you burned me once...but never again...