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"best performance of any blu-ray or hd-dvd i've owned" on by ltunedgs
Pros: HQV processor, ethernet port, quick load time
Cons: non so far...
Summary: 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.
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"Would be perfect if they'd fix the audio issues!" on by Raptor_007
Pros: All formats in one box, 1080p/24, quick load times, amazing HQV Reon upconvert
Cons: HD audio support is basically missing... NOT as promised!
Summary: This player boots up quickly, loads discs quickly, and provides some of the best HD and SD video quality available. The convenience of a single player for three formats is wonderful. 24Hz mode gives a more cinematic feel to motion (on compatible displays).
Now, the bad part... this player does NOT decode advanced audio formats onboard, and does NOT even allow them to be bitstreamed! The only fully-functional audio formats are core DD, core DTS, and PCM.
If Samsung comes through with a firmware update to fix the audio issues, this player will deserve a 10/10. Its video quality is superb. However, the audio support is quite feeble compared to available (separate) HD-DVD and Blu-ray players.Updated
I previously gave this unit an 8/10. Now that Samsung has released this player's firmare 1.3 udpate, the BD-UP5000 really is the do-it-all player we've all been hoping for! It deserves at least 9.5/10.
For the best in video, this player supports playback at 1080p/24 for Blu-ray and HD-DVD. No telecine judder or interlacing artifacts here, just perfect video. SD-DVD gets a wonderful treatment as well from the HQV Reon video processor, upscaling nicely to 1080p.
The latest firmware finally brings the audio up to date, with onboard decoding of all Dolby formats and bitstreaming of every format. This player is the perfect mate to an HDMI 1.3 receiver, and has plenty of options available for older receivers as well, including 7.1 analog outs and both coax and optical versions of SPDIF.
Boot and load times are quick compared to most Blu-ray and HD-DVD players out there. You won't find yourself waiting much.
Blu-ray profile 1.1 is now fully supported, if you care about that sort of thing.
The only real downside is that other owners report no playback of burned Blu-rays. I don't have a Blu-ray burner yet, but I suspect I'll be a little disappointed if BD-R/BD-RE playback isn't added to this unit by the time I do get a Blu-ray burner. Burned DVDs play just fine. -
"For me the format war is over" on by Beery1
Pros: Plays both BD and HD-DVD perfectly
Cons: Region coding is annoying
Summary: I got this player for Christmas and it's the best $800 I've spent in a long while. The biggest advantage is that I no longer have to worry about the high-def DVD format war - I'm already on the winning side no matter how long the war lasts or what format wins. I now have both BD and HD-DVD movies in my collection and they all play wonderfully with perfect picture and sound. The only bad thing is that there's still that annoying region coding that prevents me from watching my British DVDs, but every high definition DVD player has that problem, so it's not really a flaw confined to this product.
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"Rating is tentative pending firmware update" on by MiketheD
Pros: duo player; Reon chip
Cons: BD 1.1 disk issues - ambiguous support
Summary: I have been waiting for this player for some time. Main theater has a Tosh A-35 and Panny BD30. This was for the bedroom setup where having one player is a big plus. Video is stunning over HDMI. Bedroon setup does not have TrueHD or DTS-HD MA support, so that was not an issue for me right now (both main theater players do have this as does my pre-pro). I realized that Samsung said the firmware update for BD 1.1 would be in January 2008, and so there is still time to live up to that promise. My concern is the lack of any response from Samsung as ot the status. Given the rather universal (no pun intended) problems being written about on the net as to the issues this player has with new Blu-Ray disks (Resident Evil:Extinction comes to mind) I would think that samsung would be providing info to its customers about the status of the update, but their site is devoid of any news. Will wait and hope that they live up to their representations. The Panny plays the Resident Evil disk flawlessly. If the firmware update works as promised, this is (or will be) a fantastic player.
Updated
After experiencing a number of problems with little or no response from Samsung and the failure of the recent firmware update to correct any of the major problems this player presented to me (audio dropouts on all SD disks, still no True-HD/DTS-HD-MA multi-channel support, problems playing multiple Blu-Ray disks) I gave up. Returned it and got the LG-BH200. So far, none of the issues that plagued the Sammy. Will report back after more use, but happy so far. -
"Very good, but misleading about Dolby TrueHD" on by MSDougherty
Pros: Excellent Blu-ray and HD DVD reproduction
Cons: Misleading specifications
Summary: I purchased this player to replace an LG BH-100 hoping to solve all that player's problems. I succeeded to a great degree, however, the BD-UP5000 taunted it's ability to decode the newer Dolby TrueHD codec a bit too soon. The BD-UP5000 manual has this nasty little note at the bottom of page 10: "When playing a Dolby TrueHD disc, audio will only be heard over the front left and right speakers."
If that isn't misleading I don't understand the meaning of the word. When I played a disc that had Dolby TrueHD and selected that output I got an on-screen message stating that the player "does not support Dolby TrueHD output, please select another source."
Now I know that this player was late to market and that they already supposedly have the BD-UP5500 in the works, but to release a product that states in all the literature that it has a certain capability and then retract that in the "fine print" is inexcusable.
Samsung BD-UP5000 user reviews
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