Picked up this DVD player on Saturday to go with my new Sanyo Z4 projector. Figured I'd try and get a cheap player with an HDMI connection, didn't see too much point in spending loads on a player that will probably be upgraded to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray within a couple of years.
Anyway, I did a fair bit of research on the net and found generally positive feedback on the player...so I was very suprised when I found out how rubbish it is.
Here's my bugbears with it.
1.
Constant on screen pop-ups "HDMI Audio is not supported". Some have reported these only occur during changes of Title sets on the DVD. I have found that they also pop up when the layer transition occurs on a DVD or sometimes when you skip chapters. This begins to get very annoying.
Can't you turn them off you might question!? Yes you can. To do so you go into the settings menu and say "No" to "Display Messages". But this turns off all on screen messages, such as how fast it's forward winding, but I can live with that. But I can't live with the fact that every time the DVD is turned off the "Display Messages" setting reverts back to "Yes"
2.
Related to the above certain settings in the "Settings" menu do not save properly so they reset each time you turn the DVD player off.
3.
The player does not remember where you've got to on a DVD once the power has been turned off. Again, at first I though I could live with that... that was until I realised, if for example, I paused a film to go and make a cup of tea, the player would, after a short while (say 5minutes'ish), automatically power down and lose its position in the film. The result of which means that I have to first go back into the Settings menu to turn the "Display Messages" off (see note 1) and then go through all the DVD disc menus, then use chapter search to try and find where in the film I got to.
4.
The unit has a Bookmark function. Great I thought I can get around the position in the DVD being lost by remembering to bookmark my location before pausing or turning the player off. How foolish of me, of course the units forgets any bookmarked positions as soon as the unit is turned off. Can't really see any point in this feature then.
5.
The unit does not automatically switch between PAL and NTSC output for DVDs. This again means a trip to the Display Settings menu to manually change the setting. Once the video system output setting is changed I then have to change the HDMI output resolution back to 720p as this resets to 480p or 578p whenever you change from PAL > NTSC >PAL.
6. The units has problems playing back some DVD -R's (not tested +R's) with picture break up, or worst still the player freezing altogether.
7
Using HDMI cuts out all other video outputs (the rest of my system is on S-video and my amp is too old for HDMI swithcing). This means that whilst the unit's connected to my projector I cannot direct the output of the DVD player to my TV without first unplugging the HDMI cable.
8.
Despite all of the above I at first thought maybe I can live with all these faults until I realised I'd have to teach my wife how to change all the settings just to watch a PAL DVD after a NTSC one's been watched or vice-versa. I realised then that although this is not the greatest hassle she'd much rather just pop the DVD in the pioneer DVD rec/player connected using S-Video and then simply press play than go through all of that. This would kind of make the Samsung redundant and a waste of money.
I discovered all these things within hours of owning the unit, so I hate to think what else might come to light. I'm now waiting for the returns department, where I bought the unit from, to issue me a returns note so I can send it back.
It's a shame really as the PQ from the DVD player wasn't at all that bad