Samsung BD-UP5000

After plenty of research and reading reviews on a ton of players both hd and blu-ray this unit seemed to be the best of both worlds. The cost was slightly higher then buying an hd and blu-ray player seperately but it's well worth the extra money. The HQV processer makes the upconversion of regular dvds flawless. The ethernet jack is huge for updates and most blu-ray players lack this. I've already owned a Toshiba A-2, an xbox 360 hd dvd player and a Samsung bdp-1200. This player blew them all out of the water!! Buy this unit and you don't have to worry about the which format might prevail.

For a player at this price point, it should be flawless. One thing I totally have a distaste for is when a product is sold and then it has to be "updated" when you first turn it on to work correctly. It is as if they never designed or programed it correctly in the first place. They are in such a hurry to get it to market the product is flawed. I do not have an RJ45 internet connection in my media closet to update the thing!
All of that doesn't matter when it won't even work.

Brand new player would not play blurays--it just locked up and froze. Unwittingly, I followed the Samsung's Tech advice and sent the product in for repair instead of returning to place of purchase. They recommended it be sent in the original box. When I received it back in the mail after repair, it was packed in a generic box--not the original. The repaired player came back with scratches all over the back in the vicinity of the HDMI out. It appeared as if a blind man had attempted to connect the HDMI cable and missed several times putting scratches through the paint into the underlying metal. The player would play blurays, but the picture quality at 1080i HDMI was horrible--fuzzy, halos, artifacts. Changing the output to 720 on component cables improved it immensely. The HDMI/1080 part of the player was inoperative. Also, while it was in for repair, Samsung never updated the audio either. It still does not decode the DTS-HD or True HD.
The Samsung is so bad, I just wanted to return it for either replacement or refund. I attempted to do this--when Samsung returned it in a generic box, the place of purchase would not accept it for return (less than a month old at this time) without the original box. The manager told me that companies never return the items in the original box for just that reason--so that you cannot return them for refund.
Now, after the second unsucessful repair, I am stuck with a $600.00 paper weight. I have owned it for a month and a half, of which it has only attempted to play a bluray once and locked up, sent in for repair, returned with video and audio problems, sent in again--and returned with more scratches and still unfunctional.

I bought two Sony BDP-S350s (about a third of the cost of the Samsung) which work flawlessly and have the latest codecs. They can be updated as well, but if you do not have an internet port in the vicinity of the player, Sony will send you an updated DVD for free!

I guess I will keep sending the Samsung in for repair. There are still 11 months left on the warranty--and as long as they keep paying the postage--I will keep sending it back.

From the reviews that others have written, I may have received a lemon. If that is true, and it is not a defect in design, then why can't their repair center fix this thing? Are they that incompetent? It seems to me, that after several unsucessful attempted repairs, as a manufacturer--especially with a player that is this high-end, I would just replace the item with a new one. Here it goes again, back for repair.

PSS
I am in the process of increasing some of our flat screen TV's with larger models. I need 4 TVs 32" or larger and was considering Samsung. The pictures and the prices of Samsung TVs were very appealing, but after the hassle of this Bluray player, I do not want to have anything to do with Samsung.