Just bought Samsung bdp-2550

[bruss01]

Spotted on sale at Best Buy today for $349 so I went for it.

Our DVD player went belly-up earlier this year and we have been getting by, using the XBOX 360. Kind of a pain, but still usable. So I have been shopping around. This model fit my needs because it has dedicated hardware upscaling of standard DVD's. We have a substantial DVD collection so this sounded like it might be a good feature to have.

I was disappointed that there was no S-video connection. It does have composite video (3 rca type plugs) for video and stereo audio. I would love to be able to take advantage of the more advanced audio and video capabilities of this unit but that will happen when we upgrade our TV. Right now we have a 26" Panasonic purchased in 1998, kind of a dinosaur in ways but to be honest it has been a great set. To this day, there is nothing "wrong" with it. I'm kind of at a loss what to do with it since it is functionally and cosmetically perfect (well a little dusty but that's to be expected). Maybe there is a market for it somewhere? I don't really have room to store it and I can't picture it going to the dump in perfect working order.

The old TV has multiple video inputs - coax, RCA video, composite and S-video. The coax connection was in use by our SAT system dvr, the S-video was our former DVD player, the XBOX was on the composite. The RCA video was left unused. So when I did the setup today I had to unplug the S-video to the old DVD, and swap the XBOX over to RCA video (haven't tested that yet, hoping it works). That left the composite connection open to attach the new blu player. When we get the new TV the player and the XBOX should both be able to use HDMI cables and open up a whole new world of resolution. I'm really looking forward to THAT.

We watched two blu disks tonight, Iron Man and Sleeping Beauty. Both played perfectly. I also played part of a DVD (Constantine) just to be sure that standard DVD playing worked as well. The picture was beyond reproach in the 480i mode that our TV supports. I'm sure we will have even more enjoyment out of this unit when we are able to upgrade the TV (soon I hope).

I did have an issue when setting up - apparently the default resolution of the player is 480p, and this made two reddish samsung background screens appear on the TV, side by side. There was nothing regarding this in the manual nor in the FAQ. I just tried it because it was there and got lucky with 480i, which is the lowest resolution. Kind of funny because when we bought the TV we were told it was "HD Ready" and it's amusing to think that 480i was once considered HD.

We use sub-titles frequently because we like to keep the volume reasonable but still get all the dialogue when characters are whispering, mumbling or trampled by sound effects. We were able to use this feature successfully with no issues on both disks.

We also have picked up two other blu disks, Twister and Narnia. We will probably watch those later this week. I'll comment here on any problems or difficulties.