Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray Player Review 8/8
Bluetooth 5 Nov 2006

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Conclusion (Pricing)

Samsung has done it again by delivering one of the first Blu-ray player to the market. In our few weeks playing with the unit, we find that the image quality of Blu-ray BD-P1000 is definitely way much better than my current DVD player. This is so even though the display is only 1366x768, thus it is not FULL HD display LCD TV that we paired up with. The sample Blu-ray movie and sample disc showcased some of the best of best titles readily available when this review is out.

Setting up the unit is easy. Something to note that this unit uses 110v, a transformer is needed. The voltage rating should also be made to support dual voltage of 110~220v instead of just 110v. Attach the HDMI cable to the LCD TV and hook up the audio cables or digital out to your AV AMP. To play the title, just load it in just like any DVD player. The first time I loaded the Blu-ray demo disc, I would see an hour glass while reading the disc. It took quite around 10s before it started playing. That is probably due to the large amount of digital data that is processed. To compare, we used the Terminator 2 DVD Extreme edition and found that it took less than 5 secs to read and main menu gets displayed.

Playing back of DVD seems good quality as I was thinking that it might look pixelated. In fact, when the movie "Terminator 2 Extreme edition" gets upscale and playbacked on the 40" LCD, it definitley lose some details but overall picture quality is still excellent. This can be reaffirmed with the HQV test we did.

As I have a number of movies compressed in divx format, we tried to play it. The player just couldn't recognise the disc and files inside. In fact, throwing in a DVD+R/RW just couldn't get recognised.  Another DVD-RW that we had with MPEG1 files (DAT) didn't get recognised as well. Although it is a high end set, I think that such features should be backward compatible. This is something missing and needs to be addressed in future firmware updates.

On the features, the player comes with a 10 in 2 reader. The 10-in-2 Multi Memory Card Interface Play movie clips, view digital photos or listen to MP3 music files through a Combo Player-using any type of memory card. The two slots on the BD-P1000 accept virtually every popular memory card format-Multi Media card, Secure Digital card, Compact Flash and Micro Drive directly, as well as Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro Duo, RS MMC and Mini SD with an adapter. This is really a good feature that Samsung has integrated into the player.

In conclusion, Blu-Ray is here to stay for sure. With the 1366x768 1080i , it can already display stunning images. I would foresee that when full HD 1920x1080 resolution LCDs are on sale, the quality will get better since there is no need to rescale it. I look forward to seeing newer models that supports for media format.

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