Samsung BD-P1600 Blu-Ray Player

My trusty old regular DVD/VHS player recorder gave up the ghost so it necessitated a visit to some store for a replacement.  I decided that Blu-ray was the way to go even if it didn't record or have VHS.  After all, the quality is much better and I'll have to buy one in a couple of years anyway.  Once I decided on Blu-ray, I looked around at available units and headed off to the store with a little sense of what to look for.  The store was having a sale on BD-P3600, the big brother to this unit, so I thought I might end up with that.  Scanning over the specs, it looked like the biggest difference is wireless-N.  Since I have GigE wired at my television, I figured I could live without that option for an additional $100 and opted to get the P1600 instead.  I thought streaming Netflix might be important even though I don't subscribe, I might.  I could also stream from the internet or my computer.

The instruction book is rather cryptic and the unit requires a little setup.  I read the bare minimum to get the thing up and working and it played the title page from an old DVD.  The picture wasn't a whole lot better, if any, than my old player, but this unit is supposed to have 1080P upscaling.  It should be noticeably better.  Well, I'll come back to that issue later.

Then I decided to program the remote to my 2-year old Panasonic HDTV.  Fumbling through the manual finally led me to a page that said how to program to the TV: hold the on-off button and type in the code for your TV.  Well Panasonic has four codes listed, and it said try them all to find the one that works.  None of them worked!  You would have thought I had a 20-year old analog TV, not a fairly new HDTV.  Ok.  All the codes are two digits, how long can it take to try them all?  I started from code 00 and punched in every code up to 99.  When I got to code 13, the TV turned off!  Aha!  Maybe they just didn't list that code.  I tried the other buttons, and most of the functions seemed to work, including some of the obscure ones like function (DVI, HDMI, antenna).  So apparently my code should have been listed as 13.  But wait a minute-- none of the number buttons work.  Channel up and down work, but I can't select channels by number.  I guess that's why my TV is NOT code 13 and why it's not listed for Panasonic.  At this point I broke for dinner.

When I bought the P1600, I bought some Blu-ray titles so I would have something to try out the unit.  So I decided to go back and do that.  First, I switched on the power with the standard DVD that was still in the unit.  No picture.  Wait a while.  Still no picture.  Fiddle with the unit for another hour trying everything imaginable.  No picture.  The thing died while I went to dinner!  Dead!  Fortunately I bought it at the store, not on-line so I was only out the gas to take it back which I did.  I don't have it any more.  Gone.  zip.  nada.  Dead.

So now I'm looking for another player and reading up on features again.  I discover that the picture on this unit has gotten poor reviews.  Apparently the processor is not quite fast enough for what it has to do so it cuts corners.  That probably explains the upscaling not working so well.  As I read a little further, I discover that it is not just missing wireless-N.  It also lacks 7.1 sound that its big brother has.  In fact, in its price range it seems to be about the lowest rated unit.  That will teach me to change my mind at the store.

So I can't give much more evaluation of this unit because I never got to see it.  I can say the reliability of my one-unit test sample was pathetic.  It seems to be about the same speed as my old analog DVD player, but that's really quite fast for Blu-ray, I've heard.  But then my sample was not on a Blu-ray disc, but a regular DVD and apparently most units are fast at that.