Samsung BD-P1500

Samsung BD-P1500

The Samsung BD-P1500 is a great Blu-ray player for its entry-level price. It packs a lot of leading edge features into its design and includes a few options only found on more expensive units. Since it is network ready, it can take advantage of the HDMI 2.0 features with a simple firmware upgrade.

The Samsung BD-P1500 provides a choice of display resolutions including 720p, 1080i and 1080p to ensure compatibility with most monitors or displays. It also supports the cinema quality 24fps frame rate. This allows you to watch a movie in the exact format in which the movie was originally produced. Since most movies are created (and shown in theaters) at 24fps, watching it at home in this format will give you the closest possible theater experience and display the movie the way the director intended. Other players that don't allow you to view a film at 24fps will have to convert the video to another standard and the picture will be degraded as a result.

The Samsung BD-P1500 includes a network connection for easy access to the internet through your home network. This connection will allow you to take advantage of other features like BD Live, and perform firmware updates as well. For a Blu-ray player to be HDMI 2.0 compliant it needs to have three features, and network access is one of them. This means that if you purchase a Blu-ray player without the ability to connect to the internet, it will never be HDMI 2.0 compliant. The other two things a Blu-ray player needs to meet the HDMI 2.0 standard is have 1GB of additional memory available (which the Samsung BD-P1500 player covers with the USB connector) and have 2 onboard decoders for audio. These are not features that can be added with firmware updates and need to be part of the physical hardware of the player. By purchasing a Samsung BD-P1500 player, you are sure to be ready when the HDMI standard is fully implemented.

The Samsung BP-P1500 blu-ray player includes a feature called BD Live that enables you to enjoy additional content from the internet that is related to the movie you are watching. This additional content could be trailers, deleted scenes, bloopers or even interviews with the cast. Some of the newer movies are even released with internet-enabled games that a viewer can enjoy to extend the content from the film.

The Samsung BP-P1500-XEU blu ray player has another feature called Bonus view that allows you to open a second window on-screen while the movie is playing. You can use this second window to view a different video stream from the Blu-ray DVD along with the main movie. This second window could be used for director's comments as you watch the main movie on the larger screen.

Another nice feature of the Samsung BD-P1500 is the fact that it can decode Dolby TrueHD within the player. This is an advantage since it allows you to use a less expensive audio receiver with the Samsung BD-P1500. Taking all of these features into account, this 4th generation player from Samsung is a great value for its reasonable price.