Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player
Samsung was the first company to market the Blu-ray disc players and hence, it also had to feel the heat when its own product does not live up to the expectations of its consumers. Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player was its first model and let us have a look at how this first ever Blu-ray player works. Since this is the only Blu-ray player in the market at that time (2006), BD-P1000 was lucky enough that it was not criticized by comparing it with any other Blu-ray player in the market at least for a few weeks after its release. After this model, Samsung had released BD-P1200, BD-P1400 and BD-P1500 models which are far superior to this model.
Design:
Body design:
The player looks sleek and beautiful in a glossy piano black finish. But because of the glossiness, beware of smudges. The player has a black top and an angled silver bottom. The face of the player has a LED display that is hard to notice until you switch on the player. The front mounted controls are blue back-lit, making this hi-def player look even more lustrous. Though there are options to dim the LED display, there are no options to switch off the blue lights which may turn to be annoying at times.
Remote control:
This Samsung BD-P1000 DVD player comes with a universal remote control. The remote is thin and can be held comfortably. A few centimeters below the centre of the remote, is a circular navigational pad and surrounding it are the player or the set-up menu functions. The menu control buttons are oddly sited. Four colour buttons are placed right below the navigational pad. They are the red/A, green/B, yellow/C and blue/D in which the red/A button can switch between the memory cards and disk buttons while the rest of the buttons come to action when you want to use the audio CDs and memory cards. It would have been better if there were more than five glow-in-dark buttons for such a high priced player.
For Samsung, its introduction of the BD-P1000 is a major milestone in its history but it was extremely puzzling and disappointing to see that it has made only a few changes to its existing display remote control. The claim that it is a universal remote control is not justified as it is not the brain of anyone’s A/V system.
Connectivity:
When we turn to the rear side of the player, we can see that the Samsung has made provisions for HDMI component video outputs, composite and S-video, both optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs and a multichannel audio output in addition to a mixed L/R analogue out.
At that period, since the studios were releasing the formats in uncompressed PCM formats enabling them to be played through the HDMI and 5.1 outputs, that was good for that time alone, but this player surely cannot survive with this alone in the current second generation players.
Memory card slot:
The BD-P1000 also has a ten-in-two multi-format memory card slot for playing video clips, digital stills and digital audio files from just about any Flash card. This memory card reader is hidden behind the hatch in the silver panel.
Media types:
The player supports the following media types: BD-ROM, DVD+R, CD, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, DVD and DVD-R.
Performance:
A slow starter:
The player takes about 50 seconds to start and after you stop it, the player takes around 12 seconds to resume playback. In order to restart the play from where it left playing the last, the player takes just 2 seconds.
Good upscaling:
The video scaling and up-conversion capability of the player is fantastic. When played, the output was phenomenal and was in par with the other successful DVD players.
When you place the disk over the tray and hit the play button, the player occasionally did not respond and was expecting you to press the open/close toggle again which seems to be very childish. The BD-P1000 will occasionally reject a Blu-ray disc, requiring you to reload the disc or turn the player off and start the warm-up process from scratch. On the plus side, Samsung has released a firmware update to rectify some imaging flaws found on early-delivered units, as well as reduce the disc loading time.
Menus:
Skipping the chapters is done at a good pace but the navigation of menus is not so easy and it time consuming too. In this Blu-ray player too you will have to stop the player before you can access the “player menu” which is unacceptable even in this format. Though, one of the coolest features of a blu-ray disk player is that the menus can be overlaid on the movies and select options. These menus have their own sound effects. But these sound effects were disabled when the S/PDIF coax output which does not support the uncompressed audio format. These menus have automatic timeout options that vanish when the menus are not accessed for 15 seconds.
Audio and image:
This Samsung blu-ray player does a good job as a CD audio player. The basic functions that are available in an audio player are also available in BD-P1000. When the player is displaying images from a memory card reader, it cannot playback audio from a CD. The speed of the image slideshows can be set as slow, medium or fast. The images were displayed in proper aspect ratio and the clarity was also good. You will need a state-of-the-art hardware in order it appreciate audio enhancement.
Picture performance:
One of the greatest reasons on why you must invest in this Blu-ray player can be its picture quality as you can see all the Hollywood movies in the highest possible resolution. Once you get the pictures on to the screen you will realize why the Blu-ray players have such a massive potential. With a spectacular resolution, the colours were striking and vibrant without any slightest signs of saturation.
One of the clever features of the player is that it automatically works-out the maximum resolution of a TV and then tailors its performance to suite. As a stand alone DVD player, BD-P1000 does a great job.
Verdict:
A few pros of the player are the Blu-ray discs that are in true high definition, sleek design, upscaling capabilities and the 1080p output through HDMI. When it comes to the cons, they are the slow load times and the remote control.
Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-Ray Player being the first Blu-ray player has performed well at that time but now you have a lot of other models to choose from Samsung itself.
Technical Specification Details of Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player
| Manufacturer | Samsung |
| Model Name | Samsung BD-P1000 |
| Form factor | Table top |
| Media types supported | BD-ROM, DVD+R, CD, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, DVD, DVD-R |
| Built-in Audio Decoders | Dolby Digital, DTS decoder, Dolby Digital Plus |
| Supported Digital Video Standards | MPEG-2 |
| Digital Output Sample Rate | 192 KHz |
| Display Type | LED |
| MP3 Compatible | Yes |
| Connector Type | HDMI, SPDIF output, S-Video output, Audio line-out, Component video output, Composite video output |
| Type | Memory Stick, XD-Picture Card, SD Memory Card, CompactFlash Card |
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