Samsung BD-P1590 Blu-ray Player

by Samsung

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 20 x 12 x 6 inches ; 7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 10 pounds
• ASIN: B002HIZQ0W
• Item model number: BD-P1590
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (148 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 14, 2009

Product Description

For the best in movies and shows, you haven't seen anything until you've seen it in Blu-Ray. Samsung's BD-P1590 delivers the superior image detail and clarity of Blu-ray Disc technology, along with a host of innovative features. Stream Netflix and Pandora right to your HDTV. BDWise synchronizes your devices, optimizing both picture and sound. And BD Profile 2.0 means you're BD Live ready - just connect the BD-P1590 to the internet and access hours of online content. Netflix subscription required.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stellar player with minor issues, August 6, 2009

By 

eternal now "roejoerrer" (mankato) - See all my reviews

Sleek, sexy, easy to use and highly affordable; the Samsung BD-P1590 is the perfect player for that newcomer to the Blu-Ray world, or even as a second player for a seasoned Blu-Ray vet. With just one caveat, this player is ideal for that film lover on a budget.

Let's start with what it can do. First of all it can output Blu-Ray discs in glorious 1080p HD (provided you have an HDMI cable and an HDTV); as far as BD output this player performs admirably. I found nary an issue with disc playback, and the picture is astounding. The player is able to handle nearly ever disc I tried to play, save for Watchmen, which comes with brand new features that the BD-P1590 was not equipped to handle; a simple firmware update should fix that. With the LAN connection you can receive firmware updates and access BD-Live (a sort of Xbox Live for Blu-Ray players that has all sorts of neat stuff).

The BD-P1590 is also setup for the Netflix 'Watch it now' queue, and provided you have a Netflix subscription you can stream any flick from their 'Instant Q' to your television. If you have a great internet connection the quality is superb at best, and wonky at worst, with the usual annoying pixelation and audio sync issues that plague streaming. One amazing feature of the Netflix streaming is the new HD streaming; being able to watch a good chunk of content in HD is always a plus. In addition to being Netflix-ready, the BD-P1590 is also Pandora ready. For those of you who do not know, Pandora is a free internet radio service. Just type in an artist and Pandora will find music exactly like that artist and other artists just like it. Its not going to sway most people, but its icing on the cake. You can also play music and photos through the player, which is nice but not necessary.

The Samsung outputs audio via DTS Master Audio HD, which is good enough for me, and provided you have a surround setup it will sound truly spectacular. However here is where the only caveat comes in; there is an audio sync issue with Blu-Ray disc playback, especially noticeable if you hook up a surround sound system directly to the player, resulting in a nasty echo effect between your player and your television. The latest firmware update did nothing to solve this problem; hopefully Samsung will figure out how to fix this annoying issue.

Another annoying thing is that the BD-P1590 has no hard drive, so if you want to do anything on BD-Live, or listen to music or view photos you need to have everything stored on a flash drive, which isn't really a big deal but in this day and age a built-in hard drive should be standard fare.

I am very pleased with this Blu-Ray player and I highly recommend it.

92 of 100 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Becareful Upgrading New Firmware, September 7, 2009

By 

Lance Q. Homer "lqh" (South Jordan, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Samsung BD-P1590 Blu-ray Player (Electronics)

I bought the BD-P1590 from [...] on Saturday. Upon connecting it to the Internet and powering it on the screen notified me that an upgrade to the firmware was available. I immediately upgraded it. Shortly after that while trying out the different features, I noticed that Pandora was locking up after just a few songs. After Googling to see if this was just me or if others were experiencing the problem I found a thread showing that several other people started having the problem right after the firmware upgrade. Search these terms in Google "Samsung Blu-ray Player Firmware 9/3/09 Update Kills Pandora". I called technical support this morning knowing that I was going to get much help but just wanting to make them aware that another person is having the problem so that as they monitor reasons for people calling in that it would start floating to the top. I spoke to two different customer service reps (due to them hanging up on me, on accident I presume). Disturbingly, both reps put the blame on me for Pandora locking up. They both said that I shouldn't have upgraded to new firmware if I wasn't having a problem with the machine already. I told them the screen saying that new firmware was available didn't mention that warning and that most companies suggest you have the latest firmware. I also questioned them about blaming me, since their firmware broke the machine. I would think they would apologize. Neither seemed to be aware of any other customers having this problem. I begged them to not ignore this as just an isolated problem but to have a manager Google the issue so that they could see others were experience the exact same issue with Pandora that I was due to the firmware upgrade. I asked when a new firmware would be sent out to fix the problem and they said in 6 months. Again, what kind of company wouldn't have had their developers there 24/7 until the problem was fixed and they could send out a new update. Pandora and NetFlix are the key differentiators of their Blu-Ray player and basically the reason I chose Samsung over the competition. Being content to tell me that it will take them six months to fix the problem is completely unacceptable. I'm hoping [...] will let me take it back for a new one and this time I won't do the firmware upgrade. What a joke!

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What the heck were they thinking??, September 23, 2009

By 

William E. Davis "FotoFreak" (Dayton OHIO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Samsung BD-P1590 Blu-ray Player (Electronics)

We've had a great experience with the player. Set up was easy enough, tho wireless was too expensive and I opted to run a cat-5 cable from a mini hub to get the connection. Instant watch in Hi Def is flawless, so don't blame the design or hardware if yours isn't. It's your internet connection, and more than likely throttling by some ISPs that limit bandwidth to protect their own servers from overload. IT's a great player and I love it. Only lost Netflix once and it turned out that the time had to be set on the player so Netflix could synch with it, never would have gotten that on my own without Samsung support, which was excellent.

The tile of my post is reference to an insidious problem, however. Pandora works great, but the player goes to sleep in a few minutes and the music stops. There's no setting you can make to avoid it going to sleep mode, so how the heck are you supposed to enjoy music on the thing if it only stays awake for 10 minutes??