Samsung's BD-P1500: Blu-ray, Priced Right

At $230-$250 online, the P1500 is part of the first wave of affordable Blu-ray players, and lower prices may be on the way

By Justin Bachman

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Superb performance at an excellent price; exceptional load times

The Bad: No onboard DTS HD decoding; no coaxial digital audio jack

The Bottom Line: A fine entry-level machine that will satisfy most home-theater enthusiasts

Reader Reviews

I was a Blu-ray holdout. First, I waited for ceasefire in the format wars; then I was put off by price and reports of technical hiccups. Sony (SNE) and its cohorts seemed to be taking forever to get this thing right.

Judging from Samsung's budget-minded entry, the BD-P1500, forever didn't last long. At $230-$250 online, the P1500 is part of the first wave of players that are priced right and avoid most of the performance bugs that plagued earlier iterations. (Prices may be falling further by yearend; a report from Engadget suggests that the long-awaited price plunge for Blu-ray players may arrive just after Thanksgiving, with deals like $179.99 for Sony's well-reviewed S350.

Notably, this model from Samsung offers quick disc loading and fine playback. I waited less than 25 seconds for every disc I played, a pleasant surprise given the horror stories I've read about the load times on earlier Blu-ray machines.

Sound That Holds Its Own

The 1500, which hit stores in late July, comes with a wide array of other attractive features. It handles the usual array of 480i-1080p video output, lets you bookmark sections of discs, and decodes Dolby TrueHD tracks internally. Assuming your receiver can handle the decoding work for DTS HD, the high-definition audio format, you'll also get sound that holds its own against high-def Blu-ray video when listening to uncompressed soundtracks encoded with DTS.

The player itself is a minimalist's dream, with a glossy black front sporting only power and tray open/close buttons and a round keypad for stop, play/pause, forward, and reverse. In back, you find the typical outputs: HDMI 1.3, component video, stereo analog audio, optical audio, an Ethernet jack, and USB port. There's no analog multichannel output, although this seems a logical omission since (one hopes) most Blu-ray enthusiasts are going digital for their audio. A more glaring absence, in my opinion, is the decision to not offer digital audio output via coax cable, given that some users may prefer this format for their music listening instead of the HDMI or optical routes.

The remote control is laid out logically, but there's no backlight to assist in case you're fumbling with the thing in a dark room. I also wish Samsung had enlarged the teensy buttons at the bottom that control audio, bonus view, subtitles, and repeat functions. I spent a good amount of time comparing various Dolby and DTS formats, and the remote buttons don't offer much help to those with audio geek tendencies.

Shutdown After Firmware Update

Right out of the box I did a firmware upgrade to fix a glitch involving component video output. This was a simple matter of plugging an Ethernet cable into the back and telling the player to update itself. You can also burn the update to a CD and do it that way, but anyone with a decent Internet connection will find the Ethernet route easier. Note that the machine is programmed to shut down after a firmware update, so don't be alarmed when this happens. Fifteen minutes later I was ready to play. Samsung's tech support is superb if anything puzzles you—one tech rep e-mailed with me for several days about my questions and experience with the player. (Thanks, Diane!)

If you're still in the waiting-to-buy camp, be aware that right out of the box, this player won't let you gain access to content from the Web using Blu-ray's BD-Live capability. For that, you'll want Samsung's $400 model, the 2500, or the 2550, which also will stream Netflix (NFLX) movies under a deal the companies announced Oct. 23. (A new model from LG, the BD-300, already offers Netflix streaming.) Panasonic (PC) and Sony also have full Profile 2.0 machines on the market.