Customer Reviews

Samsung BD-P3600 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

5 star:		(110)
4 star:		(62)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(58)
1 star:		(133)

 

 

When choosing a blu ray player, the choice can be confusing at times. After months of searching I now believe the best ones are the ones that match your needs most, after price point. Here is my review after a night well spent learning the ins and outs.

Pros-

Wifi-- This year Wifi will be all the rage. Set up with my samsung after a slight learning curve took 20 mins tops and once connected it worked flawlessy. I didn't even need to read the manuel. Superb and blazing fast!

Pandora--what a terrific gem of a music program. And its free! The learning curve is super easy and fun. I was able to program it from my mobile phone, and there it is two seconds later. I am a happy camper!

Netflix-- Great. super simple! Netflix needs more choices, but that is not Samsung's fault.

wifi dongle!- They could have charged for this. They didn't. Great!

cons, if it is one--The player feels flimsy upon first contact so that you almost want to be super gentle with it. As opposed to the sturdier players out there. If that concerns you, i suggest you hold a floor model first and decide for yourself. Also, still no hdmi plugs offered with the majority of players, this one included. Makes no sense at this point. Luckily i have spares.

Overall- a solid player, with wonderful audio and visual clarity. My test for blu ray, The Dark Knight. Looked amazing, sound oustanding. Test for upscale, Wall-E. Looked incredible and rich.

Nice job samsung!!!

UPDATE: Not sure what all the griping is about for a select few, but I watched Punisher Warzone on this player, a hard hitting film if there ever was one and this player did not hiccup. Audio and visual clarity were fantastic!! Also just watched quantum of solace. No issues. A little lag in the load time but I suspect that has to do with the dvd not the player. Sounded and looked great!! Be cautious of those few on here who get one bad lemon and decide the whole basket is rotten.

Three and a half month update: Still no problems to report with this player. I have not had one single issue with any movie I have thrown at it and I have now played over 200 films on it. it's a workhorse. It also plays copies of pretty much any DVD you have burned from a computer hard drive. I'll say it again, great product!

This blu ray player has gone done in price remarkably since it first dropped. It's orginal asking price, for those of you coming to it now, was nearly 400.00 dollars. It is now nearly 50 percent less. This is a real steal folks.

I've never felt so conflicted about a piece of home theater gear in my life. On the one hand, the BD-P3600 offers very good to excellent audio and video performance on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs as well as some great internet streaming features. On the other hand the "PC Streaming" feature is frustratingly hard to use and unreliable to the point that I finally gave up trying to get it to work.

A few die-hard audio/videophiles were worried when Samsung chose not to include the excellent Silicon Optix Reon HQV video processor in this year's line-up of Blu-ray Disc players. The DVD upconversion on last year's BD-P2500 was outstanding and many of us were concerned that its omission from the BD-P3600 would lead to noticeably inferior standard def performance. Turns out there was little to worry about as both the DVD and Blu-ray performance of the BD-P3600 are excellent, comparable to Panasonic's DMP-BD80 and superior to LG's BD370.

Also, with on-board decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio over HDMI/PCM and multi-channel analog outputs, the audio performance and flexibility of the BD-P3600 is also excellent. Throw in the included WiFi dongle, BD-Live support, quick disc loading, Netflix online streaming and Pandora internet radio and you get one full-featured high performance Blu-ray player. That is until you try out Samsung's new PC streaming feature.

With PC streaming, you can access media files (photos, music and Divx videos) directly from a PC with shared folders on the same home network... at least in theory. When we tested this, the "automatic" feature to detect sharable PCs on the network failed entirely and we had to resort to manually providing the IP address of the PC, and even this was not reliable. This process wouldn't be such a pain except that the player does not have a "remember me" function to remember the IP address, share name, userid and password for the next connection, and entering all of this manually using the remote and on-screen graphical keyboard is a time-consuming process. Also, we found that the player hung on multiple occasions while attempting to playback AVIs from the networked PC, and the only way to recover from this was a re-boot (which, of course, forgot all of our network information). Meanwhile, playback of the same content from a USB flash drive connected to the player's front or rear USB port, worked reliably, without all the drama.

As a Blu-ray Disc and DVD player, the BD-P3600 performs very well. It is one of the fastest players to load up both standard DVDs and Blu-ray Discs (faster, in most cases, than even the PS3). Also, the Pandora and Netflix streaming features are very reliable and add quite a bit to the overall flexibility and versatility of the player. But Samsung really should have waited to release the PC streaming feature until it was more robust and more reliable. If you promise not to use this feature, then I'd happily recommend the BD-P3600 as a full-featured high performance Blu-ray and DVD player. But those who do want to take advantage of PC streaming are in for some serious frustration.

A full review is available at Big Picture Big Sound (dot com).

Wireless access to Netflix was my key criteria when I started looking for my first Blu-ray player. Once I read CNET's statement that this unit was a huge leap ahead, I was sold.

I bought and connected it to my new Samsung UN46B7100, both of which I bought at Best Buy. Connecting it to my wireless network went smoothly. I put in The Matrix on DVD. It looked as good as a DVD could look. That is, it looked good until it froze up. After several attempts, I restarted the player and put in a new Blu-ray disc. Fifteen minutes later it froze. Samsung customer support quickly recommended that I return the player. Best Buy exchanged it.

Unit 2 had the same issue. Best Buy suggested I try a different brand and mentioned that another customer had returned 3 units. I wasn't ready to give up, and I took unit 3 home. It only seemed prudent that I give it a thorough testing. It played DVDs, Blu-rays, and streaming Netflix films for 12 hours. During that time I noticed that the audio was slightly behind the video, which was especially pronounced in concert footage. Customer support had me change various setting to no avail. In hour 13 the player froze up just as the others had. I gave up. I returned the unit and took home an LG B390. I've had it playing for 24 hours and it has performed excellently.

I have 2 suggestions for anyone reading this: thoroughly test any player and be aware that CNET doesn't review units that it buys in stores. Manufacturers send them units for testing, and you can be sure that those units aren't lemons.

Dirty Harry once asked, "Do you feel lucky, Punk?"

I ordered my Samsung BD-P3600 on Aug 8th. As usual, Amazon.com under committed and over delivered, getting the unit in my hands on Aug 12th, two days earlier than promised. That and their pricing is why I love doing business with these folks. I discarded the product packaging after the Amazon 30 day return period passed, assuming that I would have no need of it ever again. In retrospect, this turned out to be foolishly optimistic, as I now have to purchase a sturdy box and packing material to ship it back for repair.

I selected this top-of-the-line Blu-Ray because of its rich feature menu, which I thought would compliment my new LN52B750 Samsung LCD TV. True to form, everything went together almost effortlessly and worked well together until the forth time I attempted to use the DVD player. That's when the BD-P3600 completely froze up. Now it not only fails to display the Pandora/Netflix splash screen, it also won't respond to any command from the top-mounted touch controls or the remote. Generally when it powers up, the display says "Loading" on the front even though there's no DVD onboard, remaining so until the unit is turned off or unplugged. Other times it fails to recognize that a DVD has been put in the tray, refusing to load it at all. In every case, it fails to play a disc and/or respond to the set-up menu command, displaying nothing on the screen at all.

I called customer service and found myself talking to a very helpful rep. She had me first try to reset the unit by holding down the top mounted fast forward button for 10 seconds. Earlier, I had unplugged the power cord for 30 seconds and then replaced it, powering the unit up again. I also unplugged the HDMI from my receiver and went directly into the TV on the HDMI 3 input with a brand new cable but those, too, failed to correct the problem. Now I have to return it (shipping and insurance costs paid at my own expense in addition to the packaging materials I have to buy) to N.J. for repair and return. She says this will take between 7-14 days, not counting shipping times each way.

Having extensively researched this unit before selecting it, I was aware of the significant number of unhappy BD-P3600 buyers who have posted feedback complaining about the same problem. Despite these numerous red flags posted by angry BD-P3600 buyers on Amazon, C-Net, etc., I assumed naively that A) enough time and B) enough customer complaints had passed since its introduction that Samsung would have addressed this obvious design fault by now (my units date of manufacture was in late June '09). I thought that in this economy, while scrambling for every paying customer, no major consumer electronics manufacturer would be so irresponsible as to fail to correct such a well-documented shortcoming in their top end $300+ product, and particularly after so much negative customer feedback. This proved to be naively optimistic. The issue is clearly still very much a problem with a significant number of these units shipping today, as evidenced by the CSRs comment "I'll bet I can guess exactly what your problem is" as soon as I gave her the model number. How very, very disappointing for a company such as Samsung.

So, are you still considering buying a Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-Ray player instead of a Sony, Panasonic, etc. If you get one that works and stays working, you'll have a kick-a** player. If not, well I'm sure YOU'RE not one to throw away the original packaging prematurely, right?

"Do you feel lucky, Punk?" Well, DO you?

I differ with the first reviewer and am very satisfied with the player. It does a beautiful job of playing Blu-Ray disks and the image is immaculate as is the audio (the primary reason for buying any player). Netflix stream is great (it also streams in HD where the content is available - much nicer than the image on a PC), Pandora internet radio is a bonus.
I had no trouble connecting to my network. It was very easy and by putting my media into a shared (public) folder there was no complicated set up. I agree that this aspect of the player is a work in progress - codec support seems spotty - some played, some did not. Samsung has always done a great job of supporting their products (I've owned printers, TV's, etc.), so I expect further improvements.
My conclusion is that if what you want is a great Blu-Ray player with good networking and excellent audio then this IS the player. If you primarily want streaming of computer files to your TV, then a PC attached to the TV is a better solution (I have one of those too).

If you are thinking of purchasing a Samsung blue ray player consider this.

I purchased a BD-P2500 Samsung player from Amazon in May 2009. It performed well for approximately 2 weeks until I installed a software upgrade. After this, the HDMI interface failed to reliably connect to my Samsung LCD TV. The only solution was to power cycle the player multiple times until it would somehow miraculously start working. Since the player was under warrantee, I sent it to Samsungs New Jersey repair facility for repair on May 28 2009. On or about June 2 2009 I was notified via e-mail that the player was received and "Your product should be shipped back to you within 5 business days". After approximately a week I called their service center to find out that parts needed to fix my player were on back order and Samsung did not have any estimate on how long it would take to get the necessary parts. After multiple calls to find out the status of my player ( as the Samsung repair tracking web site would not work reliably ) I was told Samsung could not repair my BD-2500 and they would need to send me a new model BD-P3600 with comparable features. After more phone calls to find out when I would get my new player I finally received it on or about July 6 2009. It took from May 26 2009 to July 6 2009 for Samsung to get me a new player. Now this is the good part! The new BP-3600 worked for approximately ˝ hour before it totally failed. So... I sent it back to Samsung on or about July 7th 2009 and called Samsung to express my disappointment and tell them I wanted a new product shipped immediately. I was told they would send a new unit but not until they received the failed unit. After approximately one and one half weeks I called Samsung to find out, yet again, the status of my replacement unit. I was told they hadn't received it. Luckily, I had the UPS tracking number and after some time Samsung service "found it". I was told a new unit would be shipped within 7 days. After yet another week or so, I called again to make sure my unit had been shipped. I was told some kind of approval from their service center to ship my unit was not given to their shipper and hence nothing had happened. At this point, I informed them forcefully of my disappointment and of the general incompetence of their organization and I wanted satisfaction. I was "promised" that the hold up would be fixed and my unit would be shipped the next day and I would be notified by e-mail it had been sent and I would get a tracking number. After another 4 or 5 days, I still had not received a tracking number so I called again. I was informed they had no record the unit had been shipped and it needed approval from their service center to ship it to me. At this point I more or less lost it and asked to speak to someone at Samsung to complain (as I found out everyone I had been talking to up to this point was a third party contractor for Samsung). The Samsung representative informed me that there was no record of my product being shipped and they would "look into it". I was also informed that there was no one higher up in their organization I could complain to and if I wanted to complain I could write to the office of the president. This occurred on August 7th. The next day ( August 8th) I received a new BD-P3600. Amazingly, Samsung had sent me a replacement yet their organization had no record of it. Total time from the beginning of this saga on May 28th to final resolution on August 8th was about 2.5 months.

Now, if you want to buy a Samsung blue ray player go right ahead. Let the buyer beware.

As of May 31, 2009 there is no firmware update for this player that solves compatibility issues with lots of disks. While some disks will play fine, others will freeze at random points and then skip back to some point earlier in the movie. I have seen the problem with all of my Star Trek season 1 disks but I have now read reports of other titles having the same issue. The disks in question work fine in my Panasonic player so I know I'm not dealing with a bad disk issue. There are lots of other people seeing this problem with this and other Samsung players - just google for "samsung bd-p3600 freeze"

A lot of people have been waiting for this player. Well they should wait some more as it is not ready for prime time. There are cheaper better players that work better than this one.

First let me say that most of the problems have to do with media other than Blu-ray disks. Many of us were looking for a nice Blu-ray player that would play media from USB drives and even stream them from you PC. While this unit claims to do that it is riddled with problems. Let me list them.

1. Lets talk about streaming media. First you need to connect the player to your network. I tried and tried and could not get the wireless dongle that comes with the player to work with my network. I'm not even using any security on my network. It just refused to connect to my wireless router. After an hour of messing with settings I gave up and resorted to using a wired connection. I was able to connect to the network but my shared drives are password protected. You have to manually enter the IP address of the PC and the folder name as well as the username and password. All fine and dandy. I did get it to work however. As soon as you power down the player (power switch) it loses the data. This is unacceptable. Ever try to enter all that information with a remote. No way. I resorted to providing guest accounts (Open) so that they could be searched and accessed. This works and you are able to access the DIVX avi files. Power down the machine and you have to search again.

2. No streaming of any other video format from PC/USB or Data DVD. Not even H264 MP4 files as stated in the manual. Only DIVX and XVID avi files are supported. And these have major issues almost every single file played started to stutter once you were about 20-30 minutes into the video. It does not matter if they were streamed form PC/USB or DATA DVD. The DIVX decoder on this machine has major problems and no other codec or format is supported.

3. Cannot fast-forward or rewind faster than X8 when watching DIVX movies. This means if you are resuming a move near the end its going to take you 10-15 minutes to get there.

4. When going from PC to Disk to USB the player gets lost and you have to cycle the power to get back on track.

5. Top buttons are touch sensitive and don't always work the first time you touch them.

6. Manual Stinks. No support on website. In major need of a firmware upgrade.

7. You cannot use a Blu-Ray BD-R or BD-RE as a data disk with media. Does not work.

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OK all that said the player does a great job of up converting standard DVD's. The look great. Bottom line is you are paying a lot to get these other features and they just don't deliver. I could have lived with just about every thing but the stutter problem. This makes the player unsuitable for use other than as standard Blu-Ray or DVD player and there are much cheaper choices for this.

I am returning the player

I purchased this player yesterday evening at PC Richards ($355), It took me less than 1/2 hour to begin watching a netflix movie. Used HDMI cable, just unhooked the one already in my receiver for the old DVD player (a 5 disk sony upconverter), repluged it in the Samsung, pluged in the included dongle thing, searched for a wi-fi network, found mine, entered password, and away it went.
Viewed a regular DVD, the upconversion is much better than my old sony
Viewed a HD netflix movie - great
Viewed a regular netflix - not as good as the upconverted DVD quality, but better than a regular DVD. I can't beleive how good this works.
Added pandora music, also works fantastic.
only downside, the netflix only come out in Dolby 2 channel. Don't know if its me or netflix.

First machine didn't work had to send it back to Amazon. 2nd unit worked great until I was prompted for a firware upgrade. After upgrading, the unit is now unresponsive. Remote doesn't work, but it works the tv just fine. The only buttons that work on the console are power and open. Can't even reboot it. Thanks for the firmware upgrade. Now I will call customer service and they will tell me to send it back. Great. Like I have nothing better to do.