Review of the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player

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In his comparison reviewof the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, DVD Town's Dean Winkelspecht wrote that he had mixed feelings about the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player. After spending a week playing around with mine, so do I.

Part of the problem is the high expectations that we have. Sony promotional materials promise that the new Blu-ray discs can deliver up to five times the detail of a standard disc (SD-DVDs). SD-DVDs are scanned at 480p horizontal lines, while the new Blu-ray discs are reproduced at 720p, 1080p (progressive scan) and 1080i (interlaced scan) lines. Even with playback at 720p, that's still quite a leap on paper, which leads all of us movie fans to expect that we'll see the same dramatic visual difference we noticed when we scrapped our enormous VHS collections and upgraded to DVDs. All the pre-market hype also favored Blu-ray, with press releases touting the fact that Blu-ray discs can store about 5-10 times the capacity of a DVD (25 GB single layer or 50GB dual layer), so naturally we're thinking more extras. They're also designed to support the highest quality HD video currently available in the industry (up to 1080x1920 at 40 Mbit/sec), and on paper, that's better than HD-DVD. If I were a technophile first and a movie-lover second, I'd concentrate on a review that gives you enough numbers to satisfy a baseball statistician. But I'm a movie-lover first, and I happen to think that seeing is believing. Show me.

The Samsung BD-P1000 looks gorgeous and comes with packaging that suggests this is a classy, top-of-the-line player. But it's the first Blu-ray player to reach consumers, and you have to wonder if the rush to market may have come with a cost. As always, that cost—and I'm speaking here of flaws, glitches, inconsistencies, and inconveniences—is passed on to consumers. So if you want to be the first kid on the block to own a Blu-ray player, the cost is greater than the $999.99 sticker price. If you want the bottom line on what I think about the BD-P1000, skip to the end of this review. Otherwise, I'm going to start at the beginning and work my way there.

Packaging: The Samsung BD-P1000 comes in a shiny black box which contains the shiny black player and another sturdy smaller black box that houses the cables that are included: an HDMI cable (for connecting the player to an HDMI-compatible TV in order to get the best picture and sound), a component cable with red, green and blue jacks for getting the second-best hook-up, and video cables (with left and right audio plus a video jack) for bare-bones TVs. It strikes me as curious that while this is a new and, let's face it, elite format, Samsung was making an obvious effort to make this player work with just about any TV hook-up—though to experience High Definition playback you'll need an HDTV, plain and simple.

General Features: The 50-page manual that comes with this unit lists the following player features and specifications:

• Digital Photo Viewer (jpeg), so you can enjoy digital photos on your TV.
  
• MP3 Playback, with the unit capable of playing MP3 files from CD-R/-RW, DVD-R/-RW/-RAM and Memory Cards.
  
• Memory Card Capability, with the unit compatible with 10 types of memory cards: Compact Flash, Micro Drive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo, Secure Digital, Multi Media, Mini SD, and RS MMC.
  
• Disc compatibility: BD-ROM, BD-RE, BD-R, DVD-Video, Audio CD, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, and CD-R/-RW, DVD-RAM/-RW/-R.
  
• Video resolutions of 1920x1080 HD and 1280x720 HD.
  
• HDMI outputs of 1080p, 1080i and 720p (Blu-ray) and the same plus 480p (SD).
  
• Disc reading speeds of 4.9917m/sec (Blu-ray) and 3.49-4.06m/sec (SD).
  
• Audio output of up to 32 streams in frequencies of 48kHz and 96kHz, 100db dynamic range.
  
• Universal remote.
  
• 16.9(W) x 12.8 (D) x 3.1 (H) inch unit that weighs 9.3 pounds.
  
• AC 120V-60Hz power requirements, 51 W power consumption.
  
• One year warranty on parts, 90 days on labor.
  

The units are coded by region, and mine plays Region A/1 NTSC color system products only.

The Samsung BD-P1000 is NOT compatible with HD-DVD, DVD+R, DVD+RW, LD, CD-G, CD-I, CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM. I found that it's also not compatible with other discs as well, but more on that later.

Design: If you look at the player from the side, the front V's in like half of an X-wing fighter, which sets it apart from other electronic components in your system. The case is high-polished black metal and plastic, with silver metal trim (including a long band across the bottom front) and nifty blue lights that accessorize the unit when it's turned on. Cool blue lights form a circle around the on/off button and around a large tuner-shaped knob that houses the play/pause, search/skip, and stop buttons. It also lights up a Blu-ray insignia on the front of the unit. It looks awfully classy.

In terms of functionality, the design of the front panel is similar to other players. The tray is off-left with the power button to the far left, and the open/close button for the tray is just to the right of the tray. The thing is, anyone who uses the button on the unit may fumble a bit, because the tiny, shiny black button tends to get lost against the black casing. Under the disc tray there's a flip-out panel that gives access to two memory card readers (more on that later). The only other features on the front are the display panel and a smaller video out indicator that allows you to select or change the HDMI, Component, or Video/S-Video output.

I have just two design-related complaints. The first is that the open/close tray button gets lost, and the second is a display panel that's too small. If you're like me, you like to see how far along in a movie you are and check the playing status, but it's hard to read from the distance we're told is best for surround-sound couch-potato viewing. My couch is eight feet from the unit, and I have to squint to see the numbers.

The back of the unit is well-designed, with all of the connections to the left so that a fan placed slightly off-center to the right can operate unencumbered. Back connection options are 5.1 channel analogue audio out, audio out, video out, S-video out, component video out, HDMI video out, and two digital audio outs (coaxial and optical).

Disclaimers: Inside the manual it says, "Blu-ray Disc is a new and evolving format. Accordingly, disc compatibility issues with new and existing format discs are possible. Not all discs are compatible and not every disc will playback." It gets worse. A sticker on the plastic bag that protected the unit warns "a) that Samsung does not warrant disc compatibility with new and existing format discs, and b) that Samsung shall not be liable for any data loss recorded in your discs." What? I'm thinking. Are they talking about the rewritable discs, or factory-issued discs? So being the paranoid movie collector that I am, I phoned the tech people at Samsung. I was going to have to do so anyway for this review, in order to report on how friendly, knowledgeable and willing to help they were. So I had a nice long chat with a young fellow who did not know that I was reviewing the machine. He seemed as disturbed and confused by the disclaimer as I was, and put me on hold while he went to check. When he returned, he apologized and said he didn't know why that sticker was there. He assured me that my standard disc collection was perfectly safe. What's more, though I didn't need to call again, I was given a number to use to expedite my next call. The man never rushed me and seemed willing to answer all questions, no matter how paranoid or dumb they seemed. If you're like me and can never find anything in a manual, or if you want to save a day of experimenting and looking for the answer, it's a real plus to have good and apparently unlimited tech support at a time when some companies are restricting support by number of calls or limited time periods.

Here's a disclaimer of my own: I suspect that the picture and sound quality will vary with this player depending upon the connections and configurations. People using HDMI-to-HDMI connections with TVs that support the full resolution of Blu-Ray (1080x1920) or people with smaller TVs with video component connections will have a different experience than I'm having with my 42" Hitachi High Definition Widescreen Plasma television (1024x1024) and HDMI-to-DVI connection. So please keep that in mind as you read further. The Hitachi tech people told me that my TV will display 95 percent of the information on Blu-ray discs, with 5 percent treated as overscan. The tech people at Sony confirmed that 1024x1024 resolution was so close that there wouldn't be a noticeable loss of detail or image resolution as the display images were downsized to fit my screen. But if you go much lower than that resolution, they say you'll begin to see a difference.

Set-Up: This unit came with a quick set-up guide and clear diagrams, but there's an underlying assumption that everyone will know already what hook-up is right for them. The options are presented as though they were equal. The manual doesn't clearly state that the best (and easiest) connection for HDMI-ready TVs is to simply hook up the HDMI cable from the unit to the TV. Nor does it state that the second best (and easiest) connection is if your TV has a DVI (digital video input), so that all you need is an adapter for the HDMI cable that's provided with the set. But if you use a DVI adapter, you need to connect the sound, and your options are to use an optical cable connection, a coaxial cable connection, or 5.1 analogue connection. Again, no comments on what hook-up provides the best sound.

I hooked up the cables in a matter of minutes: HDMI with DVI converter for video, and digital optical for audio. Had the quick set-up guide told me more clearly how to set the audio options on the menu, I would have been ready to watch my first Blu-ray movie within 15 minutes of opening the box. As it is, I got picture but no sound until I flipped through the manual and found out how to change the audio settings from the factory. Once you realize that you get zero sound if the settings are wrong (so don't automatically assume it's a bad cable connection), the audio set-up menu is easy enough to figure out. Roughly two hours later (okay, so I'm a slow reader), I had changed the digital output from PCM to Bitstream (because I had a receiver with a DTS decoder), the PCM Down Sampling from "On" to "Off" (because I had a receiver that's 96Khz compatible) and I turned off the subwoofer (my main speakers get down pretty low) and set the mains to "large" to compensate. And I set the rear surrounds to "large" because that's the way I prefer it. What was important to me was that each option was clearly identified, so if you knew (or, in my case, could look up in my other component manuals) what systems you were running, you knew instantly what options to select on this unit.

It took me longer to figure out what setting to use for the video. The factory pre-set is 720p, which played okay on my television, but I wondered if I could do better. The guide says that if the screen is "blocked" (blackened) it means your TV doesn't support that resolution, so I had the choice between 720p and 1080i for my set. I looked to the manual for help, but there was nothing about whether the progressive scan at 720 would give me a sharper picture or the 1080 interlaced scan. While I was on the phone with the Samsung tech people I asked them which setting would give me the best picture and was told "that's actually a bit debate right now" and that "it's really difficult for the human eye to detect a difference." In other words, my guess was as good as theirs. Through trial and error I convinced myself that more movies played sharper at the 1080i, possibly because it's closer to 1024 than 720, and the images looked more natural with the black level "off" (which the manual says is the standard black level versus "increased").

I should mention that so I could compare my standard disc player to the Blu-ray, I did not do a replacement hook-up. I just added this two-cable player hook-up to my existing system so that I could use both my SD player and the new Blu-ray player. Technology is just running away from us these days. My TV is less than three years old and provides a fantastic HD picture, but it doesn't allow me to calibrate color settings for different video inputs. For that reason and because the Blu-ray discs I've tried thus far display a huge range in color, I decided not to mess with the color adjustment on my TV set. "Hitch," for example, has a more natural (but, some might say, washed out) color in Blu-ray than the intense (some might say, artificial-looking) color of the original SD release. But "The Fifth Element" has identical color saturation and intensity to the most recent High Def release in SD. What does that mean? Frankly, we consumers aren't given enough information to know. I do know that a SD of a sepia-toned "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" retains the same color on the BD-P1000 as it does on my SD player, and so far so have all the other SDs I've tried—which leads me to believe that the issue of color may reside in the discs themselves at this point, and that the BD-P1000 is doing just fine reading them. All the more reason, though, for there to be a color adjustment feature on the unit, where now there is only the black level adjustment. Are you listening, Samsung?

A word on other connections. I had an S-Video cable lying around, so I hooked it up and popped in the Blu-ray player. After all, there was a half-page of instructions for this connection listed under "choosing a connection" section. No signal was detected. Then I read the fine print. "Blu-ray Disc Playback is not available with this connection." Why is it even there, I wondered? Apparently, like the left-right audio/video jack connection (which also doesn't support Blu-ray playback), it exists to play standard discs for people who can't resist buying a Blu-ray player but don't have the TV to support it yet.

I also tried the RY/PR, BY/PB and Y video and red/white audio component connection and had the flipside of what happened to me with the HDMI to DVI connection. I got sound, but no picture. I phoned the tech people and they said to make sure my TV was set to Channel 3 or 4, and get back to them if I had problems. The tech people made it clear that they would welcome as many calls as it took to get it figured out, but since I've already spent a week with this unit I'm needing to move on, especially since the name of the game is Blu-ray playback, and the component connection doesn't support that. Back to my HDMI to DVI connection and my optical audio hook-up.

Blu-ray Playback: Okay, let's turn this baby on and see what it can do. Press the power button, and what seems like an eternity later (make that 16 seconds) the player is done "loading" and you get a "no disc" prompt. The tray itself opens and closes as quickly as a standard player, but as Dean already pointed out in his review, the Samsung BD-P1000 is annoyingly sluggish otherwise. And as if to draw attention to that sluggishness, the Samsung engineers force you to watch a computer-style bar fill up bit by bit across the bottom of the screen to see the loading progress, and then there's this hourglass icon that pops up next in the middle of the screen. I personally would prefer black nothingness. Watching these icons does little to help my patience. And it's not just on start-up, either. Every time you click on a menu function and there's a gap between hitting the button and an image appearing on-screen, you get this drive-you-nuts hourglass icon.

After putting in a disc, it takes the player between 21 and 23 seconds to load the contents of the disc. Press "play" and you're almost relieved that the film begins after just a second delay. But wait. Let's say you forgot to check the set-up options or for another reason wanted to go back to the main menu. Press that button and seven seconds later (while being forced to watch the hourglass again) the menu pops up.

The scene selection menu is pretty well-designed, with scene frames spread across either the top or the bottom of the screen (depending on the disc's menu design) the way that icons on the Mac computer "dock" are arranged. The plus to this is that it's easier to navigate and you can see up to 16 scene selection frames at a time. And it looks cool. The trade-off is that the frames are considerably smaller than usual, but that's offset by the fact that when you highlight a frame it appears what looks like 50 percent larger in a frame that floats in the middle of the big screen. But brace yourself for that ubiquitous hourglass. When you click on a scene, it can take 7 seconds to load, during which time you have to watch digitalized grains of sand shift from top to bottom again.

Quality of picture? I know the numbers say I'm supposed to be able to easily see more detail, but the first time I popped in "The Fifth Element" and "Hitch" I was frankly disappointed. Some frames there's all kinds of impressive detail, while others are as vague as on a standard disc. I expected a huge difference, and didn't see it. It was only by comparing a standard disc frame by frame with the Blu-ray that I could see the Blu-ray was slightly sharper. But as my wife pointed out, as I flipped back and forth for a good half-hour trying to gauge picture quality, if you have to look that hard and that long, it's not a significant difference. The more Blu-ray discs I pop into the player, the more I can see that it may well vary disc by disc, and that it's no fault of the player. I tried the resolution at 720p and 1080i, and as I said, it appears as though I get a better picture at 1080i. The more I watch the discs, the more I like the look—which leads me to suspect that high expectations may have been driving my initial impressions. The picture looks certainly as good as the best High Definition transfers we've seen on SD, and technophiles may be able to see an even bigger difference than we mere movie-loving mortals.

One petty annoyance I should mention is that my aspect button on the TV remote will not work on this Blu-ray player, apparently because it automatically selects the right aspect. But there were times when I switched aspect ratios for a reason, and I'll frankly miss being able to do so. I also expected more controls to allow me to adjust the picture to my preferences, but aside from basic aspect, resolution, and black level, there's nothing that would allow me to alter the visual look on the BD-P1000.

As for other features, in "Pause" there's a loss of picture quality, but there's a nifty slow-motion playback option that's easy to operate and it looks as sharp as the picture played at standard speed. There's also a step-motion play option that goes frame-by-frame, which film students will find useful. It too retains its sharpness, but in both modes, as with fast-forwarding, no sound will be heard. Another nifty feature is the bookmark function, which teachers will find useful. You can bookmark sections of a DVD in order to find them quickly rather than being dependent upon scene selections. For parents, there's also a locking function that works with Blu-ray discs only, with up to eight rating levels encoded on a disc. Scene search, skip, subtitle, audio, and angle buttons work pretty much the way they do on standard players. No complaints. But a new twist is a pop-up menu button. When I pressed this as "The Fifth Element" was playing, the menu popped up on the screen while the film was still playing, rather than taking me out of the film to the menu screen. I was able to then select pop-up trivia as an option without missing a beat of the action. This button will work whenever the function is encoded in the disc. Some discs apparently will not have the option.

And the sound quality? Blu-ray supports a maximum audio stream of 32 streams. With uncompressed PCM sound, 5.1 channel audio sounds far superior than on a standard machine—and this is true even with standard discs played on Blu-ray. I also tried several DTS discs, and the player read them just fine—though with DTS there's not as noticeable of a difference in sound quality between my standard player and the Blu-ray. One glitch is worth mentioning. I popped in "The Matador" SD and got only video the first time I tried to watch it on the Blu-ray player. A day later, I tried again and got full (and glorious) sound. Go figure.

I used an optical connection but also tried the 5.1 analogue option. The 5.1 delivered a fuller and perhaps richer sound, but the optical connection produced a livelier, brighter sound overall, plus more rear surround speaker detail. So far, my ears have preferred the optical connection, but you can use old component cables you have lying around and keep both hook-ups to switch back and forth. Know, though, that the 5.1 analogue connection replaces the DTS, so if you try to select that option on an old SD-DVD it won't play.

Standard Disc Playback: Here too my expectations were high, but in a number of cases I felt that the standard disc almost looked better in the standard player. I tried around a dozen discs, and while the sound on them was better—clearer and more resonant—the picture quality was disappointing. I expected a much better picture because of upconversion, but it was like the Blu-ray discs compared to Hi Def standard discs: only a slight improvement in those cases where it looked better. The biggest difference you'll notice is if you pop in some of the first DVDs you purchased, before studios began mastering in High Definition.

The Remote: Dean was more bothered by the remote than I am. It's distinctive in that the hand-held end is fatter and angled in an echo of the unit's front-panel design. The remote has Braille spots for the "stop" and "play" buttons that are in the center, as well as by the power/open-close and number 5 button among the number buttons that are included at the top. Curiously, there's just one page devoted to a "tour of the remote control," with no detailed explanation of what all the buttons do. For "Repeat A-B" button, for example, it simply says "allows you to repeat playback of the A-B section. You're on your own to play with the buttons and figure out how to use them. Or what A and B are, for that matter. It's allegedly a universal remote, but for whatever reason I've always preferred to have full function use of all my remotes, which line up in a coffee table drawer like another collection.

Personally, I think the placement of buttons on this remote is questionable. All of the minor operational function buttons are placed at the bottom (audio, subtitle, repeat, zoom, marker) while above those is a row of buttons for disc menu, info (which shows an on-screen display about the disc playing which isn't technical at all—just title, chapter, playing time, audio, subtitle, and angle—and which disappears when you press "info" again), cancel, and a popup title menu. Above that is the central navigational circle of "enter" surrounded by the arrow keys, while above that is the player menu button and return button. It's the space above that, devoted to TV volume and channel operation, that I wish were replaced by the "stop" and "play" and forward/reverse/skip buttons, to keep all the disc playback options in one area.

Audio CD/MP3 Play: I am probably the only person on the planet who doesn't have any MP3s, so I wasn't able to test this function, so I'm unable to comment on this feature. According to the literature, CD-R/-RW, DVD-RAM/-RW/-R recorded with UDF, ISO9660 or JOLIET format can be played back. Only MP3 files with ".mp3" or ".MP3" extension can be played in a bit range from 56 Kbps to 320 Kbps. Playable sample rate is only 32 Khz, 44.1 Khz and 48Khz. The manual says that the BD-P1000 can handle up to 1500 files and folders under a parent folder. One disclaimer is added: for MP3 files recorded with VBR (variable bit rates), the sound may cut in and out.

Memory Reader & J-peg Photo Discs: I was pretty happy to see this added function, because like most people these days we have several digital cameras. The instruction manual touts compatibility with 10 types of memory cards: Compact Flash, Micro Drive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo, Secure Digital, Multi Media, Mini SD, and RS MMC. Four of those types (Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo, Mini SD and RS MMC) need an adapter (no info provided on what type or where one gets it!) but the others slide in the same as they do at drugstore kiosks.

Great, I thought, popping our Compact Flash card into the memory slot. But it came up that the unit couldn't read my card. I tried another (same brand) and it worked. There was the same inconsistency with jpegs on CD-R. The player wouldn't read any of the photo discs that came from Walgreen's, nor would it read any of the discs I made using Maxell CD-Rs. But, go figure, it did read all jpegs that I put on Audiobahn CD-Rs.

Now, a word on beaming photos up on the big screen. It's neat to be able to take a disc right from your camera and pop it into the TV in order to see what you've got. The pictures look great and they fill the screen at what appears to be 1.45:1 ratio. I remember the great production it took to set up a carousel slide projector and screen and turn off the lights while the relatives huddled to see blurred images that wavered on the screen like heat rising off blacktop. This, folks, is a huge improvement. But aside from the inconsistency of what will work and what won't, there are other annoyances. The menu is slow to navigate, and while there's a button to rotate shots and a really great option to zoom on a photo, you can only use one of those buttons per photo. And if you're in slide-show mode, you can't access the rotate button to fix errant shots, can't zoom, can't use any buttons. Another annoyance is the display that pops up in the middle of the screen instead of top or bottom (it took me a while to figure out that if you press ">play" the display disappears) and the slide show itself can't be stopped unless you hit "return." You can push "off" and "menu" till you're blue in the face and it won't do any good. And the final annoyance with the photo reader? It takes 7-10 seconds for each new photo to pop up on the screen, while the second you press the "next" button you get that damned hourglass right in the center of your photo! Other glitches? On one disc the tops of the photos lingered before another photo replaced it on the screen.

Bottom Line: I agree with much of what Dean said in his comparative review. We need to remember that the Blu-ray player and Blu-ray disc technology is truly in its infancy. There are currently just 14 Blu-ray discs available for purchase. Can anyone even remember when there were only slightly more than a dozen DVDs on the market?

Dean's list of pros and cons is remarkably similar to mine. Great looks, great sound, the idea of memory card slots, and HDMI connection are the strengths. And, of course, the higher resolution playback that's there even if the human eye is having a hard time detecting it. The weaknesses are the inconsistent visuals on playback, the unit's sluggishness, the hiccups that seem more noticeable and frequent than on SD-DVDs, and disappointing upconversion. But this is Round 1 in the Blu-ray and HD-DVD fight, and the two big heavyweights are still feeling each other (and the public) out. It's almost as if you can feel the hesistancy as the studios try to gauge market interest and decide how much money to sink into R&D, marketing, and production for these new products. As Dean says, the first wave of Blu-ray discs has been crammed onto a single layer, so there isn't as much room for extras as we've been led to believe. There are plenty of hiccups and glitches, and the detail is all over the place. Some of the problems are clearly with the discs, but there are kinks in this player that also need to be worked out.

IMPORTANT: By January 2007, my Blu-ray player has started to misread more and more discs. It's no longer a minor glitch. At least one studio told me it's a problem with the Samsung unit, and perhaps that's why they're already coming out with a "next generation" player. But now, just about every disc that I pop in will pop right back out with the message, "This disc cannot be read," or else it sits there and I get a "no disc" reading. Only after 4-7 repeated attempts can I get a disc to load. The bottom line, now, is that I cannot recommend the Samsung BD-P1000.

Rating the Samsung BD-P1000
Ease of Set-Up—7 out of 10
Instruction Manual—6 out of 10
Tech Support—9 out of 10
Design—8 out of 10
Remote—7 out of 10
Blu-ray Playback and Options—originally a 6 or 7 out of 10, but now I have to say 3 out of 10
SD-DVD Playback—6 out of 10
Audio (MP3) Playback—Unable to review
J-peg Playback—6 out of 10

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