LG BD590 Blu-ray player (July 2010 Home Theater magazine review)

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LG BD590 Blu-ray player (July 2010 Home Theater magazine review)

For those that are interested in a LG BD590 BLU-RAY player there is a review on the player in the July 2010 Home Theater magazine on pages 56-58. The LG BD590 has a built in 250-GB hard drive for plenty of storage for BD-LIVE or for downloaded HD or SD movies (downloaded HD movies are lower quality compared to Blu-ray discs). The video quality performance on the LG BD590 is not as good as quality as an OPPO BDP-83. The load times on the LG BD590 were slower compared to the LG BD390 but around the same speed as an OPPO BDP-83 according to the Home Theater magazine review. When I recommend Blu-ray players to people I normally recommend the OPPO BDP-83, certain Panasonic models, and some Sony models. OPPO, Panasonic, and Sony offer fast and reliable firmware updates with good performance. OPPO and Panasonic also have better video processors compared to most other low cost Blu-ray players on the market. I have never been that interested in Samsung or LG players since I am always reading about playback problems on certain models. Samsung and LG fix most the problems with a future firmware update but sometimes it can take over a month for the software to be released. Samsung and LG keep improving on their Blu-ray players and hopefully playback problems on some models will be fixed faster.

The following are some quotes from the July 2010 Home Theater magazine review on the LG BD590 Blu-ray player (Review located on pages 56-58)

"Although it's slightly slower than the BD390, the BD590 is very fast. Load times with Java-intensive Blu-ray titles were right in line with my OPPO BDP-83, which is fast."

"Unfortunately, I ran into some playback issues. When I tested the layer change on the DVD of Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones, the player refused to advance to chapter 28."

"But at the 0:57:52 mark - about 3 minutes before the layer change - the disc froze."

"I also started to have some perplexing issues with Blu-ray Discs, particularly Pixar titles. When the player was set to 24p output, discs like Up, Toy Story, and Toy Story 2 jumped forward at various times that were repeatable."

"Fortunately, an LG firmware update (BD 8.31.211.C) fixed this playback problem. Still, the player was on the market for well over a month before LG issued the fix, and the Internet forums were abuzz with complaints. While I commend LG for fixing the issues, too much time elapsed, and it's left a stain on the company's customer service. The last thing customers want is to be unpaid beta testers for manufacturers."

"After the firmware update, I watched a wide variety of discs, and the Star Wars DVD was the only disc that continued to malfunction."

"Another minor quibble is that the disc mechanism is quite loud, especially when the player boots up and when it firsts loads a disc. Initially, I thought this was the hard drive spinning up. However, after a few on/off cycles, I realized it was the optical drive that was making such a ruckus."