Received my Samsung 1600 yesterday, excellant service from Robert Whyte who confirmed in stock and said exactly when it will be delivered. On phoning they gave a CityLink tracking no and (for once!) it arrived on the morning of the day promised.
Clunky when reading discs, lightweight panels, exactly what you would expect of a player sub-£300. But this is £150, setup to 1080p / 24 frame Movie mode / re-encode all sound formats to DTS 1500 bps (Optical) easily made within a couple of minutes.
Quick test of 3 Blu-Rays I have, where are these long loading times I'd been expecting! Obviously much improved from earlier models, glad I didnt go for the Denon 3800 at this stage. Tried 30 minutes each of Foo Fighters, Rush - Snakes & Ladders, and wife's Mama Mia.
Picture quality on all three looks very good, I have no other BRPs to compare with in my setup, but obvious detail and lack of compression artifacts makes it a step up from my DVD player which cost about 30 times more. Whether it will match its subtleties and depth etc on longer watching remains to be seen.
Found colours a little cool compared with my other sources, adjusted Colour Balance on my Kuro to compensate as no colour correction built-in.
Sound into my Tag AV32 processor most pleasing with the re-encode. Will never know if analogues would have beaten this or not (in a cheap player like Samsung 2500), but it sounds pretty good to me and allows all the TAG processing adjustments (Room correction, delays etc) that will be knocked out when I go to analogues in the future.
Surprised manual (in one place), suggests it can play divx from a USB stick, will check eventually.
Only problem is lip-sync on the Rush disc, but this has been reported as a disc problem on other forums. Cannot be compensated for in processor because I think the picture is ahead of sound! Disc is 1080i, strangely.
Summing up, cant go wrong at £150 for a player that loads quickly, decodes all formats without waiting for firmware upgrades, profile 2.0 (for those that want it) and immediately connected to wired ethernet and checked for updates.
PS - The 1600 (like other Samsungs before it) re-encode high res audio to the maximum rate DTS that can be achieved using an optical Digital connection. For those without an HDMI amp/processor, as long as your amp can decode DTS it seems a good compromise.My amp shows 448 bps for dolby digital 5.1 from a DVD, but 1536 bps for Blu-Ray. Still cant believe that Samsung dont promote this much, and that other manufacturers dont make it available.
Comments
Received my Samsung 1600 yesterday, excellant service from Robert Whyte who confirmed in stock and said exactly when it will be delivered. On phoning they gave a CityLink tracking no and (for once!) it arrived on the morning of the day promised.
Clunky when reading discs, lightweight panels, exactly what you would expect of a player sub-£300. But this is £150, setup to 1080p / 24 frame Movie mode / re-encode all sound formats to DTS 1500 bps (Optical) easily made within a couple of minutes.
Quick test of 3 Blu-Rays I have, where are these long loading times I'd been expecting! Obviously much improved from earlier models, glad I didnt go for the Denon 3800 at this stage. Tried 30 minutes each of Foo Fighters, Rush - Snakes & Ladders, and wife's Mama Mia.
Picture quality on all three looks very good, I have no other BRPs to compare with in my setup, but obvious detail and lack of compression artifacts makes it a step up from my DVD player which cost about 30 times more. Whether it will match its subtleties and depth etc on longer watching remains to be seen.
Found colours a little cool compared with my other sources, adjusted Colour Balance on my Kuro to compensate as no colour correction built-in.
Sound into my Tag AV32 processor most pleasing with the re-encode. Will never know if analogues would have beaten this or not (in a cheap player like Samsung 2500), but it sounds pretty good to me and allows all the TAG processing adjustments (Room correction, delays etc) that will be knocked out when I go to analogues in the future.
Surprised manual (in one place), suggests it can play divx from a USB stick, will check eventually.
Only problem is lip-sync on the Rush disc, but this has been reported as a disc problem on other forums. Cannot be compensated for in processor because I think the picture is ahead of sound! Disc is 1080i, strangely.
Summing up, cant go wrong at £150 for a player that loads quickly, decodes all formats without waiting for firmware upgrades, profile 2.0 (for those that want it) and immediately connected to wired ethernet and checked for updates.
PS - The 1600 (like other Samsungs before it) re-encode high res audio to the maximum rate DTS that can be achieved using an optical Digital connection. For those without an HDMI amp/processor, as long as your amp can decode DTS it seems a good compromise.My amp shows 448 bps for dolby digital 5.1 from a DVD, but 1536 bps for Blu-Ray. Still cant believe that Samsung dont promote this much, and that other manufacturers dont make it available.