Swap my Samsung BD-P1500 for a Sony BDP-S350?

[CrazyInBlack]

I received a BD-P1500 for Christmas, I was wanting a BDP-S350. But the more I read the more the Samsung seems to be an alright player and not much worse off than the Sony. Is there a strong reason to take it back and swap it?

[Yeha-Noha]

Originally Posted by CrazyInBlack

I received a BD-P1500 for Christmas, I was wanting a BDP-S350. But the more I read the more the Samsung seems to be an alright player and not much worse off than the Sony. Is there a strong reason to take it back and swap it?

I would trade it in for the S350 if you have that option. Sony is tops when it comes to firmware updates. I used a Sony S301 player for over a year and never had a problem playing any BDs. I love my S350 player. I was hesitant buying it on BF. I was actually looking for a deal on the Panny 35 player. The S350 was price over $50 lower, and I walked out of the store with one after paying only $177.99 plus tax. Wow, that was deal. The AQ and PQ exceeded my expectations. It has worked flawless since day one. It's a keeper for me.

All I can say is that my own impression after reading some user reviews is that the 1500 has some quality control issues. I was reading the reviews before BF so that I would make up my mind on which player to buy. It boiled down to the Panny 35 or the Sony S350 with the Panny being slightly more prefered because it is faster.

On BF, at the Ultimate Electronics store I was at, the S350 was sold out before they opened the doors. I saw stacks and stacks of 1500s in the store after I went in waiting in line to buy my S350. Even though the 1500 was the same price, I didn't see one person carry one or buying one. Everyone wanted the S350. Samsung does make fine TVs. I saw a lot of those being sold on BF, but not the 1500 BD player.

[jdeats]

A friend of mine has the BD-P1500 and loves it, no problems at all. SONY support is better and future firmware updates will almost certainly be available first for the S350, but you can trust Samsung to follow shortly after.

I own the the BDP-S350 and it's a great player, but I also got a great deal on it. Unless you're having some problems with it, I can't think of a really great reason to go through the hassle of exchanging the BD-P1500, feature wise they stack up the same. I would say only exchange if you can find the BDP-S350 in stock and only if there will be no cost difference.

[CrazyInBlack]

thanks guys, I will call down there and see how hard it would be

[blopez]

Looks like you've already made up your mind, but in case you're on the fence, I strongly urge you to swap the Samsung for the Sony.

I own a Sony BDP-S350 and just purchased a second television for the home. That second television came with a deal where they throw in a free Sony BDP-S350, but the unit is currently backordered so the store gave me the Samsung BD-P1500 as a temporary loaner. Now having spent the good part of a day comparing the two side-by-side to see if I should just keep the Samsung when the Sonys come in, I've made up my mind. I'm dumping the Samsung the moment my store gets its shipment of Sonys. The Sony just seems to be an indisputably superior machine. Here are my thoughts:

1) The Sony on-screen user interface is better and more attractive. The Samsung interface is inferior and the on-screen instructions have grammatical errors and are not in proper English. (This shouldn't bother me, I guess, but when you're a multi-billion dollar consumer electronics company, you'd figure that they could find at least one native English speaker to review their on-screen displays, and remove the comma splices, before shipping out so many units and upgrading the firmware so many times.)

2) The Sony does a better job of upconverting and playing standard-definition DVDs through HDMI. The picture on the Sony is simply better with standard DVDs, fewer artifacts. The difference is particularly noticeable on fast moving sequences.

3) The Sony remote is better. Its layout is more logical and the buttons have a cleaner, more solid feel. It is also more responsive and tolerant. The Samsung remote, on the other hand, feels like a piece of crap and doesn't communicate with the player unless you point the remote directly at it. The Sony unit is more compact (less depth) and is generally more attractive visually.

4) The firmware upgrade function on the Samsung is slow and unreliable. It took 15 minutes to download the latest firmware (using high-speed cable modem connection). When it finally downloaded, wrote the upgrade and restarted the unit, the upgrade didn't work and it still had the old firmware (then asked me to download the upgrade -- again). Had to do it again before the upgrade would "stick." (At least it didn't brick the unit..) No such problems with the Sony.

5) This Samsung model doesn't support Netflix streaming. The Sony doesn't either, but Netflix streaming is the one thing that, in my opinion, would have set this otherwise sub-standard Samsung box apart from the Sony and justified a decision to keep it. You blew this one, Samsung, by limiting it to the more expensive 2500/2550 models.

6) There are reports that the Samsung unit cannot properly play back certain titles, and as noted in this thread, this is the reason for the many firmware upgrades (which add no features but just fix playback bugs). I haven't yet experienced this (all of the titles I've tested so far work), but the constant cycle of problem-upgrade-problem-upgrade tells you a lot about the hodge-podge, kludge-and-ship approach to software development that Samsung employs. They obviously didn't thoroughly test their product before shipping, and are using their customers as beta testers.

Enough. I could go on, but you get the point.