Customer Reviews

LG BX580 Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player, Black

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Had very high expectations for this player. The setup was very easy and the bluray playback was excellent. However, I did not purchase this JUST to play my blurays, my PS3 already does that just fine. I bought it for its streaming and Netcast features, which unfortunately work either satisfactory at best, or, in my case (specifically CinemaNow), not at all. CinemaNow just failed to connect, everything else did. CinemaNow support passed the blame to LG, and LG advised me to send the unit for servicing. I told LG that sending a product for servicing one day after receiving it is not an option. So, am returning it back to Amazon and will hunt for a different network streaming bluray player. LG customer support did try to help, but ultimately were unable to and like I said, having to have a brand new product serviced out of the box is simply not acceptable.

UPDATE 10/20/2010

LG customer support CAME THROUGH! Decided to give them one last chance and this time someone answered who actually knew what to do (I know, shocker!). Anyway, "Oscar" was very helpful and told me to reset the LG's IP address from AUTO to Manual and supplied a new IP address and CinemaNow works beautifully. All the other Netcast sites continued to work as well. I will be keeping this unit!!!

I am mostly pleased with this Blu-ray player's features and performance. I have it connected via HDMI to a 3D-capable AV receiver and as expected it does a great job playing Blu-ray DVD's as well as upconverting standard DVD's. I haven't been able to test the 3D capability because I'm still undecided on a 3D TV. The networking capability works very well; I had no trouble connecting to my secure wireless-N network, but the wireless connection speed seems much lower than I'm getting on my notebook, probably due to the LG player being buried in a cabinet with other electronics. This means that streaming from the internet or a PC via DLNA is somewhat slow, and wired Ethernet would be advisable if you do heavy media streaming. Standard YouTube video streaming, however, worked pretty well due to the lower bandwidth requirement.

The only thing keeping me from giving this unit 5 stars is that the photo display capability has a serious limitation that is not documented and has not been remedied by LG tech support. In spite of the advice to keep JPEG's below 3000 by 3000 pixels (24 bits/pixels), I found that the image will not display properly if the file size exceeds 3.0 MB, regardless of pixel dimension. This problem was duplicated by LG tech support on images that I supplied them, but although they stated their engineers were working on the problem, it has not been fixed in over two months. This is probably not something that most people will care about, but if you want to stream photos from your PC for slide shows on your hi-def TV, the BX580 would be a good way to do it if it worked properly with normal JPEG files.

All in all, a very nice unit, especially considering the substantial discount price that is available on Amazon!

I got this as part of a deal when purchased with a 3D tv. This player has a feature called Homelink which allows you to play media off a network drive. I have a NAS that's on the network and this player plays everything I've thrown at it flawlessly. Its allowing me to move the mac mini I have to the bedroom since I no longer need a media pc. I can't attest to the 3d blu ray playback since there seems to be a lack of 3D blu ray discs but I'm impressed so far with what I've seen.

I got the BX580 is in a bundle from Amazon with the LG 55LX6500 LED 3D Internet 1080 HDTV, and 4 pairs of LG 3D glasses. This player has way more option than I need, and all the connections and capabilities are duplicated on the LG 55LX6500 HDTV. But for someone with an HDTV without those features, the player fills in the gaps.

When all the pieces were delivered and hooked up together, I played a new 3D Blu-Ray disk (Monster House 3D), as well as a new full 1080 HD DVD (Avatar). I also played a lot of older DVDs in the old standard 3:4:5 (1.33) analog TV format, some of which are only 720 resolution. They all play well, but only full 1080 HD sources have the razor sharp definition that is now the expectation. From now on, all I will buy are Blu-Ray. No more DVDs, though I'm glad I can still play my old inferior DVDs.

I don't have any negative issues with the BX580 player. It was a fantastic experience. The only negative I experienced was that 3D gives me a headache after awhile, but that is an issue with the active shutter technology, and not the player equipment.

Neither the LG player nor LG HDTV comes with HDMI cables, which are required for the best results. I originally had the player hooked to the TV with composite video cables and the analog sound (red-white audio cables) -- because I only ordered HDMI cables from Amazon after the player and TV were delivered and I found out HDMI cables were NOT included. If you want the full digital capability of this player, including 5.1 or 7.1 sound, then you must hook up with an HDMI cable. Those red-white-yellow RCA analog cables are for legacy (non-HDMI) analog peripherals you have.

You can hook up your digital 5.1 or 7.1 sound equipment directly to the BX580 player by digital coax or digital optical. I just hook my digital sound system (a Logitech Z-5500 5.1 digital sound system) directly to the HDTV. The HDMI cable linking the player to the TV will carry all the digital sound signal to speaker system through the HDTV. You can also hook up an analog sound system with the red-white RCA jacks, but all you can get is stereo from them. Unlike your computer, which might have 3 or 4 separate analog audio jacks for a 5.1 system, the BX580 player only supports a digital 5.1/7.1 audio connection, and a stereo (red-white RCA jacks) analog audio.

I was pleasantly surprised that the BX580 had built in WiFi, which I didn't even realize until somebody commented on it in an online review (so much for not reading the manual.) I already had the LG HDTV hooked to an Ethernet cable to my home LAN, so I didn't really need the internet capability of the BX580 player, which also has an Ethernet jack. So I connected the player by WiFi, since I also already have WiFi in the house. Sometimes WiFi connections have issues - but I had no trouble connecting the player to my home LAN. The only hiccup was I put the gateway password in as the password the BX580 player asked for, when what it really wanted was the gateway key. I only tested out the Utube internet app because it was free. The other video content apps, like Netflix, requires an account be established first.

Now I have three remotes to manipulate -- the HDTV remote, the BX580 player remote, and the Sound system remote. I'm OK with his, because once set, I manipulate very little from my standard set up. Long ago I gave up on universal remotes, because, despite all their claim, they are not. The LG remotes have a simplex feature which allows both the TV and the player to be operated by one remote - but you can't use simplex when you have a 3D program on.

I don't have any issues with the remotes. I can't read them without glasses any way, and I just keep one of those free mini LED flashlights from Harbor Freight close by if I need to see the remote buttons.

All in all, this is an excellent player with more options than you may be able to take advantage of. I got it at a great price, and I am more than satisfied with it. I would not hesitate to recommended it to a friend.

I was looking for a feature packed 3D blu-ray player that offerd wireless connectivity to my home network. The BX580 fit the bill to a "T". It has lots of features and for the money I don't think that it can be beat. I liked the product so much that I bought another one for a second entertainment system. Previous review critized usb port on face of unit. I have not found that to be a problem. Easy to access and usually this connection is for a short period and not permanent anyway. 3D works great too.

If you are buying this blu ray player for anything but the 3d ability, it may be an ok player for you. However, I have found that this player causes nothing but problems. I had gotten in a package with my LG 3d tv, therefore I kept it since it came for free. My PS3 does a 100 x better job at 3d playback, and at a comparable price. I had constant flickering, loss of 3d signal to glasses, blurry imaging, and even the player freezing with playback. After that its only used for watching regular dvd's as it does a slightly better job of up converting regular dvd's than the PS3 does. Overall, I would highly recommend a ps3 with a new 3d tv over this horrible product.

I got this as part of a bundle deal with the LG 47LX6500 47-Inch 3D 1080p 240 Hz LED Plus LCD HDTV. Here are my thoughts:

Pros:
* The WiFi connectivity works great for DLNA streaming from a network drive. (Haven't really used any of the online content.)
* The remote is very well laid out.
* Everything feels quite polished: the physical design, the interface, the remote, etc.
* Blu-ray playback is fine.
* Lots of settings for video output: 1080i, 1080p/24, 1080p/60, etc.

Cons:
* Startup time for Blu-ray movies is a bit long (~2 minutes maybe?) [EDIT: This seems to depend on the movie. Some are slow while some are quick.]
* The remote has no backlighting (unlike the very similarly-designed remote for the 47LX6500); however, it's so well laid out, I generally have no problem finding the play, pause, stop, fast-forward, and rewind buttons in the dark.
* If you press the stop button during a movie (either by accident or, perhaps, in order to get back to the Blu-ray player's main menu to get to the settings), it doesn't save where you were in the movie. You have to sit through the loading period again and then try and find where you were in the movie... [Edit: I guess this only pertains to some movies? It did this with Scott Pilgrim vs the World, but it doesn't do this with IMAX Under the Sea 3D. Weird...]
* There doesn't appear to be any way to see how much time is left in a chapter(?) But it will tell you how much time is left in the movie...
* Even thought it was bought in a bundle with the LG TV, it seems to have issues recognizing that the TV is 3D when starting a Blu-ray 3D movie... Although, I think this is probably a problem with the TV and not the Blu-ray player.

All-in-all, it's a fine Blu-ray 3D player. If my TV didn't already do DLNA, I'd definitely be using this a ton for that as it works great wirelessly and you don't even need to buy a silly USB dongle or anything!

I bought this player 1 week ago primarily because I wanted a player that had reliable DLNA support and played a wide array of video formats. The majority of the reviews I read pointed to an LG player. Because my new TV has 3D I decided to pay extra for a player that also supports 3D.

Pros: Great picture. DLNA works great, all of the videos I've tried so far on my file server played fine, including AVI, MKV and DIVX. I was suprised on my Windows XP machine all I had to do was share the directory with my video files. This player recognized the directory and plays all the files in it. The menus are intuitive and easy to use. All the rooms in my house are wired with cat6a so I'm using the ethernet port for my network connection and its worked well. I haven't tried the wireless so I can't comment on it. All of the included apps that I've tried so far work great....youtube, pandora, netflix and vudu. The upconverting of my DVDs is on par with my DVD players and laptop

Cons: When I first hooked it up to my TV, the picture would glitch intermittently. I was going to bring it back the next day but then it stopped doing it. It happened again once since then. I'm not sure what to make of it. It tried more than one HDMI cable thinking that was the problem but it didn't make a difference. If it continues to happen, I'll bring it back and see what happens. The only other thing I would complain about is it seems slow at times. The players menus seem to be sluggish at times. It also takes quite some time from the time I put a disk in the player and the time I finally get to the disks menu. Since this is my first stand alone blu ray player I'm not sure how this compares to others. Compared to my laptop with a blu-ray reader and an HDMI hookup, it seems slow. The slow response is why its receiving only 4 stars.

update 4/11/2011

This blu-ray player continues to do a good job. I mostly use it to play files off my NAS drive using DLNA. It hasn't had a problem yet. Other blu-rays I've played since my initial review haven't been as slow as the disk I used when I first purchased it which is great. The glitching I experienced the first day I bought it has not once reoccurred. Overall, I've been very happy with this player. I haven't used the 3D feature up to this point so I have nothing to say about it.

Great player at a good price point. Very easy to get on the Internet and works very well with Streaming content, video as well as audio. Movies start relatively quickly and the 3D picture quality is excellent. It also upscales standard DVDs to an excellent picture quality.

This blu Ray player is woking great nice picture the load time just a bit slow but i can live with it.
Amazon had shipped this product out fast i received it before estimated date :) love Amazon