Samsung BD-C5500

This is my first stand alone Blu-Ray player purchase. I also have a Playstation 3. Setup on the Samsung was fast and easy. Blu-Ray discs load up fast. I didn’t notice any difference in load speeds between this player and the Playstation 3. The quality of upconverting regular DVD’s to 1080p was decent. To access the internet features, I’m using an ethernet cable connected to an Actiontec Powerline Adapter. So far, I have streamed HD Netflix movies and checked out a few videos on Youtube. Both worked flawlessly. As another reviewer mentioned a bug regarding sound, I haven’t had that issue at all.  Read the rest of this entry »

I have had the Samsung BD-C5500 Blu-ray player for about a week now and I absolutely love it. It was very easy to setup and worked perfectly right out of the box. It’s smaller in size than the DVD player it is replacing but noticeably heavier. It starts up quickly and loads Blu-ray discs quickly too. The buttons on the front of the player are touch sensitive and don’t give the user any tactile feedback so sometimes it’s hard to tell if you have pushed them or not but at the same time they are cool and have a cutting-edge appeal. Some people have mentioned that they don’t care for the remote but I find it to be very adequate and easy to use. I like the larger size of the buttons since I have big hands. The remote seems to work well at different angles and distances as well. When I first hooked up the player it did a firmware update and about a week later it notified me that there was a newer firmware and again did an update. It’s comforting to see that Samsung is actively working to improve the device’s firmware by releasing updates frequently if needed. I didn’t know what issues/features the firmware updates were addressing because the UI on the player doesn’t really tell you but Samsung does list what the firmware updates change/fix on their website. The device didn’t have any problems connecting to my home network using a CAT-5 cable. It doesn’t bother me a bit that this player doesn’t support wi-fi out of the box. In my experience wi-fi is very susceptible to interference from other devices such as microwaves, cordless phones, and other wi-fi routers so using it to stream a high-definition movie could be problematic when you decide to pop some popcorn during the show or if someone calls you on your cordless phone. You’ll always get better streaming performance from CAT-5. Plus, it’s a lot cheaper than the players that do have wi-fi built in.  Read the rest of this entry »