BD-P1000 Set-Up, Remote Control, and Standard DVDs

Hitting the 'Play' button on the remote powers up the unit and engages the disc... 50 seconds later. Stopping a disc and then resuming play takes about 12 seconds and, should you only press 'Stop' once, restarting play from where you left off is a breezy 2 seconds. Skipping chapters is responsive, but navigating menus had a very annoying one second delay, so you were always waiting for the player to "catch up" when selecting scenes or changing playback options. It's 2006 and the next generation formats still cannot allow access to the '(Player) Menu' without first stopping the disc playback.

While a disc was set in the tray, pressing the 'Play' button occasionally didn't initiate any player response. You'd have to hit the 'Open/Close' button before being able to use the disc. Other times it worked as expected. Some discs started with the primary feature, which I liked, and others are authored to drop you to the main menu. You still cannot skip past the legal warnings on most discs. This is almost childish, though it is a function of the software not the player.

Each of the BD discs we reviewed included a 5.1 uncompressed PCM audio track. The difference between this and the default Dolby Digital 5.1 track was often surprising. On one disc the uncompressed track was ~5dB louder than its Dolby Digital counterpart. We were also surprised to hear a difference in audio output from the S/PDIF coax jacks when selecting uncompressed PCM audio (not supported via S/PDIF). We'll address more in the viewing/listening evaluations.

Remote Control

Samsung isn't exactly known for its creative and ergonomic remote controls. With so many layouts to choose from and the fact that this player represents a major technology step and entirely new format, the choice to only slightly modify its existing display remote was puzzling at best. The remote is billed on the Samsung site as being a "universal remote". It isn't and I can't see why it should be since this is a transport and hardly the brains of anyone's AV system.

Four color buttons (red/A, green/B, yellow/C, and blue/D) are positioned near the bottom of the remote and are provided to "allow access to common functions of the Blu-ray disc player." Initially, the only function I found that used even one of the buttons was in the Player menu where red/A could switch between Memory Card and Disc options. Later, additional buttons became useful when playing audio CDs or Memory Cards.

Popup Menu System
One of the coolest aspects of the Blu-ray format is the ability to overlay menus (complete with their own sound effects) onto the movie and select options. The scene will play out in the background while the menu system allows you to select various audio and/or subtitle options. This came in handy later as we compared the uncompressed PCM audio to the Dolby Digital track.

One odd thing we noticed while watching the BD release of Memento was that the Popup menu sound effects were disabled when not selecting the uncompressed PCM audio - and this while using the S/PDIF coax output (which isn't typically spec'd to support uncompressed PCM audio). This held true in other Blu-ray titles as well and seemed to be a limitation either of the software titles or the implementation of Popup menu audio and high resolution output from the player. It could simply be that you cannot overlay the second layer of audio sound effects with Dolby Digital output, however what it was doing via S/PDIF remains a mystery (in The Fifth Element we also noticed some audio artifacts during S/PDIF playback when selecting the Uncompressed PCM track. The Popup menu has an automatic timeout function and disappears after 15 seconds if not used.

New Blu-ray Disc software menus

Most of the Popup menus I've seen so far are nicely designed, though I have yet to see one with integrated video motion menus - which may be a thing of the past given the new overlay system. That is unfortunate since motion menus were a cool way to preview a scene before selecting it. In either case, being able to instantly call up a menu without losing your place in (or even interrupting) a movie is something to write home about.

Subtitle
The 'Subtitle' button on the remote allows cycling or direct selection of subtitles for the current movie.

Audio
When selecting foreign languages, English subtitles are "automagically" enabled. In addition, you can bring up commentary tracks through this method of cycling tracks.

Marker & Repeat
The 'Marker' button allows users to store and recall up to 10 points throughout a disc. The Bookmark OSD will stay up forever until you disengage it by again pressing the 'Marker' button.

'Repeat' can replay the current title or Chapter, and the 'Repeat A-B' function works as expected so you can endlessly loop a contiguous passage.

Info
The 'Info' button allows access to title and chapter navigation as well as audio, subtitle and angle selection. The 'Info' screen will disappear from the display after ~30 seconds if not used.

The '(Player) Menu' and 'Disc Menu' buttons are inverted in our opinion, meaning that you are more apt to want to use the disc menu than the '(Player) Menu' button - though if you constantly bounce between disc and memory card this may not be the case. In case you haven-t yet figured it out, we-ve renamed the regular 'Menu' button to the '(Player) Menu' button as it controls the essential browsing and configuration of the player and media within.

CD Audio
The CD mode of the Samsung player displays the tracks on the disc in sequential order. You can repeat a song or album and there is a random feature as well. These are all accessed by cycling through modes using the Yellow/C button on the remote control. A playlist can be made using the function made accessible by the Blue/D button on the remote (the interface gives you all the visible cues you'll need). While in Playlist mode you can arrange the tracks anyway you want (including duplicate entries). Exiting or entering the Playlist mode stops the current song, unless you depart by pressing the Red/A button. At this point playback proceeds sequentially. Tracks can be skipped and paused and you can fast forward or rewind in 2X, 4X, or 8X speeds.

Memory Cards
The BD-P1000 cannot continue playback of a CD while displaying images from the Memory Card reader. To access photos from a card (we used an SD card) select the '(Player) Menu' and choose the Memory Card reader with the Red/A button. Navigate to the 'Photo' menu and hit the right arrow to see sub-folders and images on the card. You can select one image at a time or run a slideshow in Fast, Medium, or Slow speeds. Between the player speed and a slower memory card your pictures are likely to have a small hourglass in the middle of them for a majority of the time as the player loads up the next picture. In our opinion this is a major dropped ball and makes the player almost worthless for displaying photos in high resolution.

The pictures were shown in their proper aspect ratio and the clarity was impressive. On a 42" LCD screen the results were very pleasing. Bringing up the 'Info' menu during photo playback (or hitting the 'Zoom' button) allows you to zoom in on an area of the picture, achieving what appeared to be a pixel-to-pixel representation of the source resolution of the photo. Once zoomed, you could use the navigation buttons to, well, navigate around the photo. The 'Info' button also allows you to initiate a slideshow and lets you rotate images 90, 180, or 270 degrees (always clockwise to eliminate confusion). When rotated, an image can no longer be zoomed and slideshow mode must first be disengaged. Rotating is apparently a RAM-buffered event and no photos are actually rotated on the memory card. Weak support.

DVDs
OK, here's where I really think the Samsung needs to be evaluated. Let's do the math - Buy a $1000 (or more) high-end DVD player or get a next-generation format player for the same price? This is one of the markets that Blu-ray and HD DVD should really dominate. In my opinion, the video scaling and upconversion in this player are fantastic. The video output looked phenomenal and was quite comparable to my Denon DVD-3910 reference DVD player (which retails for $1499 by the way). So, when you take this angle, Samsung's BD-P1000 may actually be a bargain for high-end users. I took this into full consideration when delivering the final value rating to the player at the end of the review. While the hardware issues (EDID and 1080i/p) caused me to somewhat lower the overall rating, we can't forget that this is a pretty darn good quality upconverting DVD player.