A BD player these days is not just for playing BDs and DVDs but also for playing music CDs and serving content from the internet.
Let me go through the nice aspects of this player first:
* Fast BD/CD load times disks load almost instantly
* Nice picture quality. Upscaling to 1080p works very well too (at least when viewed on a 46" Samsung LED TV).
* Overall nice for watching BD/DVDs
Here are the areas of improvement:
* Remote control buttons could be made better. Either the buttons are not good or the BD player does not respond fast enough forwarding, rewinding and using the direction buttons is not exactly fun.
* If your primary purpose is to view content online, skip Samsung entirely. Very few of the apps mentioned on their website are actually available. Go for Sony instead (I am returning this player and getting a Sony). The user interface is also poor. The new Apple TV is the best in terms of interface (and until third party apps are available on that, the Sony BD player should fill in the void).
* The player supports DLNA but the Samsung implementation is full of bugs. Besides it lacks features such as shuffling songs, forwarding or rewinding video and that makes it practically useless.
* Not at all recommended for playing music on a hi fi system you will notice the sound made when the disk rotates.
Overall, Samsung has done a poor job with its BD players. Its TVs are awesome but it has a long way to go in catching up on the BD player quality.
UPDATE Oct 26, 2010
I exchanged this played for Sony BD-P570 a couple of weeks ago. The Sony player also has issues with DLNA. Also, Netflix on Sony freezes all the time and several other features do not work despite a firmware upgrade. I cannot recommend Sony either and am still searching for a BD player with network features that work as advertised. If you are aware of one, please let me know.
UPDATE Dec 23, 2010
After trying several other players, I finally came back to the Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player when the price on Amazon dropped to $138 a few days ago. With the latest firmware (several versions newer than the one I had tried earlier, the wireless setup and Netflix freezing issues are resolved. Further, this is the only player that plays 1080/60p, 28fps files from my Panasonic camcorder without any problems. I am bumping up my rating from 1 star to 4 stars.
If you don't want the hassle of trying different players and returning them like I did, go for Sony BDP-S570 3D Blu-ray Disc Player. It is not perfect but better than other players in the market.
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