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HD-DVD playback has been flawless so far, and SD-DVD upscaling is great. Blu Ray movies look excellent as well, the only problem is firmware updating. This player is nearly a year old now, but the HD-DVD playback was an important feature to me. I'm not a huge fan of Sony and definitely did not want a PS3, and I managed to pick this player up on clearance for $200, which I found to be an EXCELLENT deal. This is the only reason I gave the player 4 stars and not 5. If you have an HD-DVD collection and want to switch to Blu without having multiple players in your house, this Samsung is the way to go. Samsung tends to take a couple of months to release firmware after problems, luckily they released an update for this player on Nov.
I compared this against the LG BD200, and this one turned out to be an excellent choice. 7 which fixed playback issues. From what I can tell, Sony players do better with the updates, but the PS3 is the only player that seems to have no problems with compatibility. I bought this product a couple weeks ago. It has analog audio out, which I wanted so I would not need to update my receiver to take advantage of HD audio, this is something the LG player did not offer. When HD-DVD officially called it quits, I picked up an Xbox 360 HD-DVD add on for $40 and lots of HD-DVDs on clearance. I decided it was time to jump over to Blu-Ray, and for simplicity I wanted one player.
If you are just wanting to jump in to HD for the first time, I would suggest some of the great deals with newer Blu Ray players, which will be upgradeable to Profile 2.0
Do not always rely on wattage in a amp/receiver component. You really need the right stuff to fully benefit from this player.
Anyways, I was able to access the other audio by changing the settings on the player under audio to Bitstream(Audiophile) and that did it. I see the TrueHD and DTS Master Audio in the panel of the receiver.
I would like to add this most recent review to let everyone know that since the most recent firmware update and many long days trying to figure out how this component works, I actually got the player to play the full HD audio resolution on my VSX-94TXH Pioneer receiver I purchased recently. One more thing is that you need to have it all through HDMI to do this.
Wow, what a difference that made to my system. That receiver is amazing, especially because of its high amperage per channel, and believe me, that particular aspect is more important that wattage.
Hope this helps anyone out there.
So, over-all the player is excellent. 2.0 profile) than HD-DVD, but supports full HD-DVD. And so everyone knows early BD-DVD (that's Blu-Ray to all Y-all) tried to mimck HD-DVD with a seprate track with PIP (coulcn't turn on & off with in the movie and continue) during a movie so the entire movie was a seprate track with the movie (HD-DVD would switch w/o notice). but will accept the lesser with this player. Does good on both as far as 1080p, Wish the BD-Player was as good as the xbox (during play back w/ pip the xbox is full screen, the samy will shrink the main pic to incluce pip (only complaint). If you can find your favorite moves on HD-DVD, get them. Bluray, on the other hand, much to be desired (after the HD-DVD experience).
We've been stuck with the lesser (thanks sony (note: not mfg of this player.). Okay, more a Blu-ray player (pre. Got this machine to back-up my 360 just in-case is fails, but since BD (total crap if you ask me) won the HD-DVD war, I will settle for less. I have to say the HD-DVD was ready at release, BD, not so much. So, this machine will support full HD-DVD, but not as well as the xbox-360-HD-DVD player. Otherwise move a long.
Other Thoughts: If considering this unit be prepared that if it fails it probably cannot be repaired and they have no replacement units. Unit failed after three months, was repaired, failed again.Samsung service now says the unit is unrepairable,they have no more units with which to replace it, and offer a $399 unit which will not play HD discs as replacement. Samsung support is atrocious.
I pushed it to the top of my Netflix queue. The issues with Dolby Digital playback have been resolved.I had read Fox titles were particularly hard for this player to handle and that "Sunshine" was the acid test. Samsung has discontinued this product but at the same time updated the firmware on 5/30/2008 making it Blu-ray 1.1 spec. It handles DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray disks without problems. It played it perfectly.
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