- Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"more than you think...."
Pros: looks, looks, looks
Cons: quite a few (read below)
Summary: To start with the good:
- the looks are awesome and everything has a good quality feel to it. Video quality is very good.
- For "international" people it is important to know that it can be hacked to be region free and that the player itself can handle 110V/60Hz as well as 230V/50Hz. Unfortunately the subwoofer is limited to 110V, so you'll need a converter for that when you want to take it abroad. Plays both NTSC and PAL just fine.
- Interesting enough there is also a European version of this system and in Europe Samsung advertises it of being able to play DivX, too. No word about that in USA. So I just tried it - and bingo - the US-version does play DivX, too. No clue why this feature is not documented. I tried different versions and they all played just fine.
- MP3 and JPEG playback works flawlessly
- nice auto-calibration function
- two additional optical inputs
About the bad things:
- sound quality is only mediocre. I can confirm cnet's opinion that it misses mid-bass. Sound is a bit thin. And yes, this is especially true for Audio-CDs, for movies the sound is ok.
Other annoyances:
- the player has a little fan which is QUITE noisy. Samsung really screwed up here. I'm still looking for something to do against that fan.
- The menues (or is it the remote) seem to be quite slow. Nothing serious but a little bit annoying.
- if your TV is old and does not support progressive scan (480p or higher) you can only connect it via composite (Yellow). To use the component (Pr,Pb,Y) your TV has to be able of 480p or more. I understand this restriction for the HDMI interface but why for the component?
- no S-Video connections at all
- there is no button on the remote to toggle the DVD-language. If you want to set/change it you have to do that *before* you start the movie
- if you press "menu" during DVD-playback you come to the DVD-menu but can not exit from there back to the place where you've been in the movie (at least I haven't found out how)
Summary:
can I recommend it? Yes, but let me drive a screwdriver into this stupid fan first...
