Customer Reviews

Samsung BD-P4600 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(32)

 

 

I know there have been a number of mixed reviews about this product, and it almost deterred me from selecting it when I was looking for a Blu-Ray player to go along with a Samsung 50" plasma HDTV I recently bought.

After having this player for a little over two weeks now, I can't be more happy with it. I wasn't sure how I was going to react to the unusual form factor, and I would not have originally thought about mounting a Blu-Ray player on my wall rather than keep it in a entertainment center, but it has worked out extremely well and I very much like having it wall-mounted for both access and use of the remote control.

The player has worked as smooth as silk and I have not had a single issue playing any DVD in my library, including titles burned on DVD-R and DVD+R disks.

I also really love the additional features of Netflix and Pandora and was amazed at the HD quality of the streamed Netflix titles.

I also like that with the wireless network access comes automatic firmware updates, which from I've been reading will prevent me from having to worry about newer Blu-Ray disk features from being usable.

I really have only two criticisms and one warning about this player.

I would really prefer it if the USB Wifi Dongle was positioned to be underneath the visible edges of the player. Having it stick out takes a bit away from the visual sex appeal of this player.

I will also say that they should issue one of these players to CSI graduate students for fingerprinting exercises. This thing is so sleek and shiny that you can spot fingerprints and smudges on it from a 10 feet away.

Lastly, if you are planning on putting this unit in a TV/Entertainment cabinet/housing, beware. Because it is a side-facing slot-loading player, you will not be easily able to load disks without turning the unit sideways each time. Fortunately for me, I enjoyed mounting it on my wall, but it would have been slightly annoying if I had had to stuff it in the new TV cabinet I bought at the same time.

Overall, I am thrilled with this unit and would easily recommend it to anyone looking for a leading-edge Blu-Ray player that will be a great home theater component for several years.

My BD-P4600 arrived 6/3/09. Purchased via Amazon at a great sale price over Memorial Day weekend.

1. Style Factor: That's why I've been drooling over this puppy since January. I detest "boxes" and have endeavored over the years to find the best combination of style/features/ease of use in all my gear. Started with B&O in the 80's, and I'm now getting around to replacing my Bose Lifestyle. (Bose ease of use and style are great, but I sure miss really good sound - Harmon Kardon AVR3550HD will replace this eventually, along with Mirage speakers.) The BD-P4600 was the first step in a complete refurb. And it didn't disappoint. The "Touch of Color" is excellent around the bezel. The size and shape is perfect - big enough to show off, but not overwhelming. Love how the controls are touch sensitive and show up only when the device is on. Slot load, instead of a clunky tray popping out, is great. Pictures don't do it justice.

2. Wireless Network: Samsung includes the wireless dongle. Once I got to the screen to set up the network connection (I have AirPort Extreme, 802.11n) at first I thought it wouldn't take my wireless password. Found out the problem via trial and error - first off, my password is all lower case. Since the Samsung offers up a screen with letters that you have to navigate to to enter, I was choosing capital letters over and over again, I'm ashamed to admit. Whoops. But then even choosing lower case letters it wouldn't work. Samsung offers several secure network options to log on with. I was choosing mine - which is WPA. There were a couple of other secure log on protocols there with longer names that I finally chose out of frustration. Although it didn't make sense to me, choosing a network security protocol OTHER than WPA on the Samsung worked. Whew!

3. Netflix/Pandora: I'm a Netflix subscriber and am on the cheapest plan, so it does wear a bit thin waiting for another DVD after I finish watching one via snail mail. Setting up Netflix and Pandora went flawlessly, easily and quickly. I chose a few movies from the website (can't put movies in your queue via the Samsung) and they showed up right away. Picked one, hit Play, took a moment for it to load (acceptable time frame, considering wireless) and worked like a charm. No more waiting for the mail! No more purchasing movies via my cable company at outrageous prices when there's nothing on TV (which is often.) Fantastic!

4. DVD/CD Playback: Just what you'd expect - handles CD's and DVD's and I know a host of other formats - and, of course, Blu-Ray. This is my first Blu-Ray player, and I don't own any yet (then why did I buy this?!) but it's my plan to continue building my library with Blu-Ray. I've ordered Terminator 2 Skynet Edition, as this Blu-Ray version offers BD-Live internet connectivity - apparently "Skynet" tells you that you are connected and it gives you the city you live in with area code, your email address, the degrees outside where you live and other goodies that only "Skynet" would know. (If it comes up with more personal information, then I'll get worried.) The BD-Live feature sounds awesome, and I can't wait to see it in action.

For now, since the Bose is still around and does not have an HDMI input, the Samsung is sitting at the base of the pedestal that my Panny 46" is attached to. I didn't use the wall-mount capability of the Samsung, so I attached the included base and it "sits up" quite nicely. HDMI is directly attached to the Panny, so I'm using the TV's own speaker set, which is pretty good for that particular product, and very acceptable for the occasional Netflix streamed movie, where this device, for now, will perform its main function. My Harmony One's software had the BD-P4600 remote functions in its data base, so I can get rid of the (IMO) Samsung's lackluster remote - nice piano black finish, but no back-lit buttons, not-too intuitive layout and very small lettering for this 51 year old.

I understand that a PC can stream to the BD-4600; although I haven't tried that yet, from what I've read it's a bit of a task. Recently Samsung updated their manuals to reflect some new information regarding reading shared files from a PC, so it would be of benefit for anyone wishing to do this to visit the Samsung site for the latest information.

Nothing I've read so far states that Mac can share files to the BD-P4600, although I know folks out on the web are trying workarounds and other tricks to get there. Samsung states that, for now, this is not available.

I'm quite satisfied with this 21st Century-looking machine!

I like the design of the player, and for playing Blue Ray disks, it seems to work fine. Although my Blue Ray library is still pretty limited. Sadly, I'm less than happy with the players ability to play DVDs. Several of my DVDs will not play in this unit. It claims the "Disk is unreadable" and ejects it. Even though the disk plays fine in other players. So beware if you have a large DVD collection. Some may not play. My second complaint is the built-in, automatic screen saver. I was pleased with how great Pandora worked. And I was excited to use it. Unfortunately, the player does not recognise Pandora as a valid video signal, so it automatically switches to a screen saver after 60 seconds. I called Samsung, hoping to disable the screen saver, but I was told that the screen saver is built-in and cannot be turned-off or adjusted in any way. What's up with that? They let you adjust nearly every function you can imagine, but they lock you out of the screen saver? The bottom line is that you can play audio via Pandora, but you loose the video showing Title, Artist, etc. That really sucks, and pretty much negates using Pandora.

This is the last Samsung blu-ray product I will buy. On the plus-side, it is a good looking deck, and the visual quality (when it works) is very good.

However, my experience was very unsatisfying--it would freeze intermittently and seemingly at random even with newly purchased (vs. Netflix) blu-rays and sent it back. It also had major problems with the first season of Star Trek The Original Series on Blu-ray.

I bought the Oppo blu-ray player from Amazon and it has been 100% reliable--no freezing, no unreadable disks, and flawless image quality. Plays Star Trek on Blu-ray with no issues at all. It is beautifully packaged for shipment, and it's obvious Oppo took its time to get the player right. It costs more than the 4600, but then, you get what you pay for.

If this comment isn't enough to convince you to stay away from Samsung blu-ray, read the AV forum comments about the problems with Samsung blu-rays (firmware updates cause the players to become bricks, intermittent freezing, etc.). It's obvious that, unlike Oppo, Samsung releases its players to market when they should still be in beta-testing.

I purchased this unit with a Samsung LED TV (7100 series). I immediately noticed a lip sync issue - audio is not synchronized with the video. I am using a direct connection via HDMI. Then I discovered this is a documented problem, just do a google search and see for yourself. After doing the 4600 firmware upgrade and swapping TVs and my old Samsung DVD player, I'm convinced it's the 4600 that is causing the issue. Sadly, this unit is going back to store today, I was looking forward to trying the netflix download.

I bought the sexy thin LED TV, soundbar and this blu ray player after a lot of research. I wish I had believed the bad reviews for the blu ray that I saw on Amazon. Remember - this is a wall mounted unit so if it's installed and doesn't work you have a hole in the wall with wires hanging out to deal with. Here's the horrible saga of my experiences with Samsung:

9/11/09
installation day unit did not work at all - would not play ANY DVD never mind blu ray.
9/12/09
sent back to CVE at Samsung's request - ticket 4005536714 - apparently this is an outsourced repair outfit in NJ
9/23/09
I didn't receive it back so called Samsung - it was not even in transit so they sent it that day
10/5/09 received back a box of BROKEN PARTS -- no exaggeration - front and back not connected, parts rattling around with circuit boards. I called Samsung - ticket 4005633082 from "Executive Customer Service" - and told them I wanted a new unit - Samsung said they would send me a new unit when they received the broken one and told me to send it back to a repair facility in Long Beach CA - Koambra
10/20/09 received back THE SAME BOX OF BROKEN PARTS from Koambra with a note "Please send the unit to CVE because the previous repair was done by them and if this is re-work then they are the one who should do the repair". How's that for customer service?
10/24/09 Called AGAIN and was told Samsung Executive Customer Service is not open weekends - next ticket 3000548767 - and I could not even get the customer service rep to personally follow up on Monday - all she would do was enter information in the computer.

Samsung is easily the worst customer service I've experienced in my 52 years of life. I'm asking for my money back

10/25/2009
I once again emailed the distributor OneCall with the full saga above. I received a response within 2 hours (on a Sunday too) and a replacement unit at OneCall's expense within a few days. Kudos to OneCall for restoring my faith in customer service. Oh, and it was easy to hook back on the wall and is fully functional and works beautifully. Six weeks later I've calmed down - I suppose the lesson learned is to rely on the distributor for service NOT Samsung.

The first one of these units that I got worked fine for about a week; then, some functions suddenly stopped working. (Another reviewer reported that her unit died completely after about a week, so it seems as though reliability problems are more common than they should be). Samsung tech support told me to send it back, and it was speedily replaced.

The new unit is fine, except that periodically the network settings get wiped out and must be re-entered.

I have one other issue: The ability to stream video from another computer is a nice feature, but this would be more useful if the set of supported formats were broader than just DivX.

UPDATE AS OF 4/19/2011:
This unit spontaneously stopped recognizing BluRay disks a couple of days ago. No firmware update; it just decided it had had enough.

This unit is about one year and three months old (or in Samsung terms 3 months PW - PAST WARRANTY). How convenient for Samsung.

Technical support asked me a couple of questions and offered to fix the unit for $110 + shipping and insurance.

I don't want to come off as bitter, so I won't discuss my counter offer here.

I would like to say that if you are thinking about purchasing this player, you may want to consider the following:

1) The firmware updates I've received have not expanded any capabilities of the unit. There are no new on-line options since I bought the unit, so you are limited to Blockbuster, NetFlix, Pandora and YouTube. NetFlix was all I used out of this and the interface is abysmal: no search facility; all you get is access to your Streaming Queue. There are units out there that offer much more for less money.

2) The unit really seems to struggle with BluRay. A new disk comes out and it chokes on it at some point and it is months before a new release of the firmware comes out addressing that problem. In the mean time a new disk comes out and it chokes on *THAT* one: wash, rinse, repeat.

3) I'll grant you that one year and three months is an eternity in the electronics field. However, this was at the time I purchased it, Samsung's best BluRay player. For it to only last one year and three months is disappointing. For Samsung to absolutely wash their hands of it is unacceptable. When you factor in shipping and insurance, what they were asking to fix this thing can (and in this case *DID*) buy one a more reliable player with *WAY* better features and a *WAY* better user interface.


I am done with Samsung. It's interesting that in this economy they did not hesitate to tick off a customer that was willing to buy a top-of-the line piece of merchandise from them a little over a year ago.

END OF UPDATE

Original comment:
First, a comment for those that complained about having to plug the wireless dongle into the external USB port and ruining the aesthetics of the unit: there is a second USB port underneath, inside and the manual even shows that when telling you how to install it.

Next, a bit of a slam on Samsung tech-support. They are very nice, clearly on this side of the big pond, but in my three conversations with them, batted 0 for 3 (though I'll give them credit for fouling one off).

I had two issues out of the box:

1) Video was displaying at 1080i on a screen perfectly capable of 1080p.

2) Could not connect wirelessly.


On the first issue I was advised that it *HAD* to be the HDMI cables I was using (admittedly a cheap one, but HDMI is a digital standard; it either works or it doesn't and a cheap one can perform as well as a top of the line one). Against my better judgment, I bought an expensive cable and *STILL* connected at 1080i. Looking in settings, I found under the Display settings a parameter that was set to 1080i. All I had to do is select 1080p and all was well with the world.

The second issue was really a router issue, but one of those things where the problem could have been a setting in the BD-P4600, could have been an issue with the router, could have been a problem with my network or could have been a problem with my ISP.

The only sound advice I had in three conversations was to use the "Test Internet Connection" choice in Network Settings to narrow down the issue. Beyond that, *EVERYTHING* they told me to do was either not the issue or was flat-out wrong.

Initially I could not even connect to my router and it was, admittedly, a couple of years past its prime. I was able to get it to pass the router test (but only by turning DHCP off and pointing at the DHCP servers on my network) but Ping Gateway failed and that is a router issue. So, I bought a new router (dual band) and was able to pass Ping Gateway but then failed on the Internet Test.

I was told that this had to be a firewall issue and that I needed to contact my router vendor.

Well, I didn't buy that, so I ran a little test. I got a really long cat5 cord and ran it from my router to the BD-P4600. Took the dongle out and switched the parameter from Wireless to Cable. It passed *EVERY* test.

So much for it being a router problem (eyesRolling). After wrenching on a bunch of stuff, I went back and looked at my settings. I still had DHCP off for this connection (turned it off for the old router) and it was on for the wired connection, so I tried turning it back on. That fixed it.

Bottom line, make sure your router can handle 802.11n and don't expect too much out of tech support.

I'd have given this unit five stars if tech support hadn't wasted both my time and money. Great unit, but for anything beyond the most basic questions you are on your own.

BTW - if you get a dual band router, make sure to turn QoS (Quality of Service) on so that it automatically uses the beefier band for high-bandwidth streaming stuff. Watched a Netflix VOD movie today over the wireless in high def!!

I really liked this player after we got it. It played all of my discs, read .divx off the NAS(or USB thumb-drives), streamed Netflix and Pandora. Wonderful player.

Then after about 2 months of operation the auto-firmware update made it crash. Then all it said was "Load". Call tech support, opened ticket, tech walked me through all processes to burn CD, USB, hold down buttons (what buttons?), etc. Nothing worked. The player simply would not complete booting.

Now Samsung wants $85 plus 2 way shipping to hard reset this device and retry the firmware flash. The unit was not even 4 months old yet. I refuse on principle to pay these people again.

Do not buy any hardware from Samsung. Any decent company would not charge a consumer for it's own errors on a product that is brand new. Please save yourself the trouble and get another brand.

I am not an electronics sophisticate, although I enjoy and use my gadgets. I bought this item for instant netflix downloading, and it was a snap to set up (had it two weeks and have not even cracked open the manual). I use wireless; downloads very quickly. Picture quality is okay, but the flicks I'm downloading are not HD. The HD blu ray discs I have tried were phenomenal.

No downside yet. Does what I want it to do, and it's not some ugly box cluttering up my cabinet. Sleek and elegant and useful.

6 months later - this machine is very quirky. I've had to reset it several times, and I am now afraid to download firmware updates. I never know if the machine will work after, or if I will have to once again reset it. Customer service was a bit confused, they told me to unplug the machine, then hold down the on button (which you cannot see with the machine unplugged), then plug it back in. Didn't work. After I got off the phone, I tried holding down the on button for about 60 seconds, then unplugging the machine for about 60 seconds, and that did the trick.

I still can't play blu ray discs from netflix, and tonight I suddenly had no audio (worked fine last night), so had to finally break down and accept the firmware update...

As you can see, it's sort of a hobby more than a really useful piece of equipment. It looks nice, but I wouldn't in good conscience recommend it to a friend at this point.