Finally stepped into the Blu-ray world

[digiblur]

I've been holding out on buying a player for quite some time now....had my own reasons. I needed a DVD player for the living room but didn't want to purchase a DVD player since Blu-ray was coming down in price. I can play DVD's on the HTPC or the XBox360 when the kids are not on it...I have the 360 setup to feed video to two rooms. I got lazy and just wanted a dedicated DVD device.

I check the closeout racks at Wal-Mart just about everytime I go in there...gives me something to do anyways when the ms.'s is doing her thing. We went to another Wal-Mart that I normally don't go to and low and behold I'm glad we did!

I saw these two Samsung BD-P1590's sitting on the shelf. I saw the tag was $60. I laughed and said yeah right, someone put them in the wrong place. I looked at the tag and it said Samsung Blu-ray, I compared the numbers and boom that matched the UPC on the box! I pulled out my phone and Googled the product and found a couple of reviews and decided to pull the trigger.

I picked one up and sure enough...scanned as $60. I figured if the thing was garbage I could return it right?

I brought it home and hooked it up...updated the firmware, tested out Pandora, Youtube, and Netflix. So far I was impressed even without putting a DVD in it. I didn't have any Blu-rays. Everything worked great!

What did I do next? What do you think a techy in their right mind would do? I picked up my wallet and keys, and went to get the last one I left on the shelf! My daughter needed a new DVD player for her room and she'd be delighted to have Pandora and Netflix to boot.

I'm still shocked that I got these suckers for $60 a pop.... The Netflix and Pandora streaming within it self is worth the money! The ability to play BR is just icing on the cake.

So far I've watched two Blu-rays on it on my 57 inch. I don't have a 1080p display, just a 1080i one. So far I'm some what impressed.. I ran the same blu-ray against a DVD and synced them up pretty close and switched back and forth. You can see the difference between the two but nothing crazy for me to have plunked down $300+ for a player...definitely worth the $60 though. Maybe one day my cheapo self will buy a 1080p display and see what all this hoopla of 1080p BR is all about.

And here's a good laugh for ya... the second blu-ray player is hooked up to a SD CRT in a bedroom set to 480i.

 

[teachsac]

Congrats Digi. I love the Pandora feature on the SAmsung. Netflix has worked well for me, also. Just waiting for them to get a larger selection of HD. Right now it's pretty pathetic.

S~

 

[tigerfan33]

Yea. Congrats. I have the same Samsung but I paid a bunch more!!!!

I use the Netflix steaming a lot too. That alone is worth the money I even paid. LOL

 

[digiblur]

Yea. Congrats. I have the same Samsung but I paid a bunch more!!!!

I use the Netflix steaming a lot too. That alone is worth the money I even paid. LOL

Considering a Roku is $100 plus shipping... but you do get quite a bit more streaming with the Roku, but to be fair it is a streaming box and this a blu-ray player. Wish Samsung had Revision3 streaming and I'd be set!

 

[digiblur]

Congrats Digi. I love the Pandora feature on the SAmsung. Netflix has worked well for me, also. Just waiting for them to get a larger selection of HD. Right now it's pretty pathetic.

S~

I watch the Netflix instant watcher page every couple of days and they seem to be adding a ton of movies lately that I recognize....quite a few in HD.

NetFlix Instant Watch Tracker

 

[cybok0]

Congrats. I just bought my first player a couple months ago, I love it, I use my Xbox for Netflix streaming.

 

[navychop]

Bu Wah Ha Ha!

to the Dark Side! Would you like some 3D brownies with that kool-aid?

 

[mdonnelly]

This seems like the best thread to resurrect for my Blu-Ray story. I've never been an early adopter of new technology. The closest I've come is getting an HDTV in 2003. Even that was a little ahead of the curve, since HD was pretty sparse for a while afterward. But my 6 year old DVD player just wouldn't play anymore without enough skips and halts to make watching it a pain, so Saturday night the wife sent me out to get a new player.

Of course, the shopping choices for 10pm Saturday are pretty limited, so I went to Walmart. There were some DVD players on the shelf that would have replaced my old player and made the wife happy, but I decided to look at the Blu-Ray players too. I was surprised to see where the prices had come down to now, and saw that most were network ready for Netflix and others. So I picked up the Sony BDP-S270 for $129, and Walmart threw in a $20 shopping card.

I brought it home, hooked it up that night and we finished watching Sherlock Holmes, without the painful skips and jumps. The first thing Sunday morning I decided to check out the network video capabilities of the box. It was a bit challenging to configure the network interface, but I managed to find the MAC address, put an exception for that into my router, and assigned an IP address to the box.

Then I went to Netflix and signed up for the 30 day free trial, and tried getting my BD player registered with them. That was also challenging, since I had to first register it with Sony, then come back with the code Sony gave me for Netflix. With that done, I was able to put a Netflix movie into my instant queue, and it started playing almost instantly. Magic @party. Beyond that, clips are available from Amazon, You-Tube, e-How, ... This box is a hoot. I never knew what I was missing.

 

[navychop]

Welcome.

And I notice, those brownies are done.

 

[Ramy]

Welcome to the 21st century.

 

[Tron]

I picked up my first standalone Blu-Ray player in August (I've had BD capability via PC-based drives for awhile). I chose the Sony BDP-570 due to its 3D capability, and the fact that Sony finally got around to redesigning that recessed rear USB port ...

Anyway, I love the new toy, and getting HD Disney Blu-Ray releases for under $10 is icing on the cake!

 

[DarrellP]

Hi guys, I've joined the revolution as well, but have a BD Live question:

Question: I've had my Panasonic BD65 for about 3 weeks now and have watched mainly Netflix Blu Ray DVD's & Netflix Streaming. I also bought a new Panasonic 42" 720P Plasma and am amazed at the PQ on this thing.

Anyway, my first BD Live experience is with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. This is the first Blu Ray disc I've encountered with BD LIVE on it and when I try to access it, I get an error after about 10 seconds of downloading: "An error occurred in downloading your update. Please try again. " This is as far as I ever get, except the very first time, I was told I lacked enough memory for this application.

Is the BD65 BD Live capable? BTW, I have DSL and the max speed I can get where I live is 3 MB/S (thank you very much Qwest). Netflix streaming looks awesome, comparable to a DVD.

Feedback appreciated. Thank you.

 

[riffjim4069]

I'm not sure, but welcome back to the forums Darrell...

 

[teachsac]

Hi guys, I've joined the revolution as well, but have a BD Live question:

Question: I've had my Panasonic BD65 for about 3 weeks now and have watched mainly Netflix Blu Ray DVD's & Netflix Streaming. I also bought a new Panasonic 42" 720P Plasma and am amazed at the PQ on this thing.

Anyway, my first BD Live experience is with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. This is the first Blu Ray disc I've encountered with BD LIVE on it and when I try to access it, I get an error after about 10 seconds of downloading: "An error occurred in downloading your update. Please try again. " This is as far as I ever get, except the very first time, I was told I lacked enough memory for this application.

Is the BD65 BD Live capable? BTW, I have DSL and the max speed I can get where I live is 3 MB/S (thank you very much Qwest). Netflix streaming looks awesome, comparable to a DVD.

Feedback appreciated. Thank you.

The 65 is BD-Live capable. You need at least 1GB SD memory card. I use a 4GB SDHC card. You can pick them up for cheap.

S~

 

[DarrellP]

Thanks for the tip, I put a 2GB card in and it's working. I should read the manual more carefully next time, it's on page 18.

Thanks again.

 

[DarrellP]

So much for BD Live, I thought it was tied to the disc it's on. All I could find is a bunch of trailers from Sony. Wasn't really worth my time to go in there.

Is it ever any different in there? Or is it just a place for Sony to showcase stuff?

 

[teachsac]

BD-Live is disc/studio dependent. Each studio will have their own c***, and most of it is c***. I don't use it 99.9999% of the time.

S~