Does anyone have their's yet?  I have one waiting for me when I get home and was curious as to how people people like (or dont like) it.

Looks like it might be Feb at the earliest i've had one of these on order for months.

Invelos Thread

Quoting cvermeylen:

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Btw, any news on region hacks for at least the DVD side of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?

I haven't tried it, but both the Toshiba E1 and XE1 can be "hacked" by installing firmware 2.5.1.

And of course, the HD DVD side don't require a hack. 

Hi there!
I got mine in the most unexpected way: walked into the nearest Best Buy looking for anything but this, spotted the unit on the shelf, grab it with both hands, fought my way through some confused Best Buy salespeople that mistakenly took the unit as the Samsung Blu-Ray Player twice (until it rang differently at the counter, to their amazement), came back home with waaay less money than when I left...!

Anyway, I got it because I want the movies, not the format war, which the studios in their infinite wisdom can now go at it as they like, I don't care. I'm definitely in the "red' camp, but I do admit that there are and will be movies that I want which will be available only on BR (and no, I don't have the patience to import their HD-DVD equivalent from Europe).

Now I can't really answer all 5837 questions about this player (especially since I don't have an HDMI receiver... yet; Onkyo here I come) but the general impression is that any not-so-recent disc on either format starts in around 30 sec, the recent ones a bit longer. It does have a few navigational glitches (could only speak for Planet Earth on HD-DVD - indeed no episode selection) and apparently it does only 2.0 for the lossless codecs but I expect all of these to be fixed with the new firmware update, whenever that happens.

Fox titles on BR are too expensive right now so, I didn't quite tested if it's true regarding the problems with the BD+ discs. So all hopes on a firmware update.

No, I'm not returning the unit.

Quoting kovacs01:

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There is a firmware update available on the samsung site.  It wouldnt not load the 3:10 to Yuma BD until i updated.  I updated via CD since my router isnt close to my tv.  Which brings up a question.......why cant they put a wireless card in these things?

Ya, I was a little irked with the lack of wireless support in these things, but I just run a cable from my router to the player whenever there is a firmware update.  I don't really care about downloading wallpapers or ringtones or anything so don't care about the online features.

That firmware update you got has been available since Mid-Janurary or so.  It fixes some of the movie incompatibilities, but there's still many issues.  Sunshine still won't play properly unless you insert the disc and just let it play on it's own.  As soon as you decide to bring up any menus or anything it will hang up.  Probably some hinky java code in the menu system.  That's just one example as there's a laundry list of Blu-ray's and HD DVDs that have some issue or another.

There's rumor of another firmware update coming out this Friday to fix some more compatibility issues.  Guess we'll have to just wait and see.

As a new owner you should keep up with this thread on the AVS forums.  It's up to 90+ pages by now, so if you don't feel like reading all of it, you'll probably want to atleast read the last 10 pages or so to get caught up.  I check it daily to see if there's anything new going on with other owners.

Quoting Agrare:

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to combat the lack of wireless support you can use a wireless bridge. basically it picks up the wireless single and then gives you an ethernet jack that can then plug directly into the device, or if you have more than one device you can plug it into a switch and then plug your devices into that. could be useful for getting internet access over by your tv without having to run cable.

-Agrare

True.. and I did actually try one of those but I couldn't get it to work.  Though, the only one I had handy was one meant for gaming (hooks up to the Xbox) and it was a different manufacturer then my main router, so I had some things working against me.  I've heard of others having better luck though so I may give it another shot at some point if any of the online features become worth it.

Quoting kovacs01:

Quote:
There is a firmware update available on the samsung site.  It wouldnt not load the 3:10 to Yuma BD until i updated.  I updated via CD since my router isnt close to my tv.  Which brings up a question.......why cant they put a wireless card in these things?

Why is BR firmware still not fixed?  Will it always be buggy ??

Quoting tas314:

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Quoting Battling Butler:

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Why is BR firmware still not fixed?  Will it always be buggy ??

From what I've read it seems more of a Samsung thing then a general BR problem.

Sunshine seems to be a real pig. I had to overclock my computer to play it. 2.13 GHz didn't cut it, had to bump it up to 2.4.

Definitely not just a Samsung thing.  And it's also not a Blu-ray only thing.  Every HD player (HD DVD or Blu-ray) on the market has had firmware updates to either add features missing at shipment or (mostly) to fix disc compatibility issues.  Though, there are definitely more firmware updates required for BR just because most of the current players are profile 1.0.  Some of them are being updated to Profile 1.1 which is causing some headaches.  And then you have the new discs being released now that are profile 1.1 causing certain players to choke on them.  On top of that, since BR is java based, we have Studios getting cute with their java code and doing god knows what with their menu systems or something which is causing even more problems.

So, ya.. expect many more firmware updates in your future, no matter what make/model player you purchase.