The Smorgasbord

Is the Samsung BD-P3600 better than the Playstation 3?

Do you need a Blu-Ray player, but don’t want or need the gaming aspect of the Playstation 3? The Samsung BD-P3600 one of the highest rated non-PS3 Blu-Ray players on the market. The features on this player are a laundry list of what you will need to never leave your couch again (or so the marketing people say). According to cNET (the holy grail of tech reviews) “The Samsung BD-P3600 is a huge leap ahead for standalone Blu-Ray players with blazing-fast operational speed, tons of features and excellent image quality.” Well let’s see if this player reaches its potential, or lags back like the rest of standalone Blu-Ray players we’ve seen in the past.

The player claims to boast a new innovative Video Quality Enhancement (QVE) feature that further improves the picture quality by adjusting brightness, flickering and other visual “noise”. While this sounds like an awesome feature it really only goes so far to improve video quality. This feature is clearly targeting videophiles but most videophiles have manually tweaked their settings anyways. We’re talking about guys so geeked about their home entertainment that they’ll spend $120 on a single oxygen free gold plated HDMI cord. This is not a mark down, but a heads up.

Besides the QVE vido enhancement this player really shines when you see all the options for viewing your media. First it has your Blu-Ray player, of which the benchmarks of the loading times met or came close to the industry leader, PS3. Next, it has a Netflix instant streaming player, which in term of performance works only slightly as well PS3’s Netflix player (but at least it’s there). It also has a Pandora Internet radio player but it feels tacked on and load times are on the slow side. Finally, the player offers the ability to stream content from your PC or laptop. Once again the feature seems tacked on, and not as full featured as it could be. It seems like it is only there so Samsung can say “look what we did!”

I really wanted to like this player. It seems like for everything it does right, it does two things wrong. If you are in the market for a Blu-Ray player or you are looking to upgrade, get a Playstation 3. Its really easy and it offers all the features of this player and much more, but it does it all much better.

Need a Blu-Ray player, but don’t want or need the gaming aspect of the Playstation 3? The Samsung BD-P3600 one of the highest rated non-PS3 Blu-Ray players on the market. The features on this player are a laundry list of what you will need to never leave your couch again. According to CNET (the holy grail of tech reviews) “The Samsung BD-P3600 is a huge leap ahead for standalone Blu-Ray players with blazing-fast operational speed, tons of features and excellent image quality.” Well let’s see if this player reaches its potential, or lags back like the rest of standalone players.

The player claims to boast a new innovative Video Quality Enhancement (QVE) feature that further improves the picture quality by adjusting brightness, flickering and other visual “noise”. While this sounds like an awesome feature it really only goes so far to improve video quality. This feature is clearly targeting videophiles but most videophiles have manually tweaked their settings anyways. This is not a mark down, but a heads up.

Besides the QVE this player really shines when you see all the options for viewing your media. First it has your Blu-Ray player, which benchmarks of the loading times met or came close to the industry leader, PS3. Next, it has a Netflix instant streaming player, which in term of performance works only slightly as well PS3’s Netflix player. It also has a Pandora player but it feels tacked on and load times are on the slow side. Finally, the player offers the ability to stream content from your pc. Once again the feature seems tacked on and is only there so Samsung can say “look what we did!”

I really wanted to like this player. It seems like for everything it does right, it does two things wrong. If you are in the market for a Blu-Ray player or you are looking to upgrade, get a ps3. Its really easy and it offers all the features of this player and much more, but it does it all much better.

Final Rating is a 6.5/10

Amazon is having a 50% off Blu-Ray Movie sale! It’s really funny too, since just yesterday I blogged about the LG Blu-Ray player. I checked my email this morning and saw this sale, and wow – it couldn’t be more timely! I don’t know how much I’ll spend, but I think I’m going to get about 6 of these while I can. They’ve got some great titles on sale too, like No Country for Old Men, The Doors, Gangs of New York, The Bank Job, Pirates of the Caribbean, and my favorite “Crash”!

They have like 83 Blu-Ray titles on sale, but it only goes until August 29th. You can get a deal on the pre-order of Iron Man too while you’re in there.

The LG BH200 Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player is now much more affordable than ever before, and even though Blu-Ray is now pretty much decided on as the standard for surpassing regular DVD’s in HD format – having the “HD-DVD” format option available is a bonus! If you’re wondering what the big deal is about a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc versus a traditional DVD movie – all you really have to know is that it’s displayed at nearly TWICE the resolution! If you thought a traditional or progressive scan DVD movie was a pretty good picture – if you own a flat screen LCD or Plasma television, you OWE it to yourself to upgrade your DVD player to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD!

Having said that – the LG BH200 is the one we picked because it not only plays in full 1080p output, but this player upscales the picture of traditional DVD’s to Full HD as well! It’s already setup to handle the “BD-Live” features touted ahead for Blu-Ray discs, but the LG “Super Blu Player” will also do MPEG’s, H.264 Quicktime, and DTS-HD audio as well. Oh, of course it has HDMI 1.3 out too. It also has S-Video and Component outs, but who would want to use those?

Guess what – it has USB “media host” too so you can set it up to access digital pics and MP3′s. Plugin your external hard drives, portable drives, or flash sticks for quick access and review of your multimedia files. The one thing we noticed was that this thing was practically silent when playing discs. It even has a network ethernet jack!

This would be a good treat for yourself and the old home entertainment center before you have to start saving to buy other people Christmas presents! Or, you could even put it away as an early present for that special someone.

Here are the best prices you can get on the LG BH200 Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player:

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