Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD-1080P9 1080p Upconverting DVD Player

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

For the price point, this is a feature rich player. What you get:

- a very sleek looking player that loads fast. Compared to the Phillips I bought at a big box store for the same price a year ago, it is greased lightning.

- a functional remote that is comfortable and easy to use.

- a USB port on the front of the player to play .mpg and picture files or to rip music to a flash drive or MP3 player from a CD or DVD.

- easy to navigate controls on the front panel. This is essential for me because my employees, who will not have the instruction manual available, will also be using the machine.

- an HDMI output, as well as the regular RCA type jacks.

- a ton of other features I will not use in my particular application.

Setup was a snap, even without so much as a glance at the instructions. I was even able to do a picture slide show from a flash drive without instructions, it is that intuitive. The only reason I didn't give 5 stars:

- If you want to connect an old school coaxial cable (the one that you screw on - with the little wire in the middle of the cable), you are out of luck

- I don't see any instructions on how to get it to control the volume on my TV (and it does not do it on it's own) even though the remote indicates it has the capability.

I have owned alot of dvd players. I current have a Samsung BDP 1500, Toshiba HDVD, Samsung 1080p7, and LG & Onkyo unconverting players.

The P9 is pretty sweet. It does what it should do. I got it to play regular DVDs and audio CDs instead of using the Blu Ray player. With audio and standard DVDs the upconverting player loads and navigates MUCH faster than a Blu Ray player. I really got the Samsung because it matched my Blu Ray player in appearance and the older Samsung 1080p7 in my bedroom works so well.

Everything works as it should. Having said that, the CD ripper to USB port is the easiest way I've found to rip audio CDS. If I had to nit pick, I would ding it for not having an optical output. The P7 and P8 did, but Samsung must have figured the P9 didn't need it. I don't use HDMI video switching on my receiver and I have 2 optical and 1 coax digital input. Luckily my other 2 devices I use have optical audio outputs.

Overall, it looks great and works well and is pretty inexpensive. Highly recommend.

If you have a new LCD TV and still are using an old DVD player, and aren't ready to take the Blu-Ray plunge, then this is the product for you.
I just bought a new Samsung LN26B460 (26" 720P LCD), and had it hooked up to my old Sony DVD player through the RCA cables. The picture wasn't as good as it used to be on my old CRT. So I bought this upconverting DVD player and I'm not disappointed. The picture quality improved immensely. It is now better than it was on my CRT. I can't say if it is as good as 720P Blu-Ray, and I'm sure it isn't as good as 1080P Blu-Ray, but it is way better than a non-upconverting DVD using RCA cables. It is most likely that the improvement is only because of the HDMI connection instead of using RCA cables. It doesn't matter what I set the player to, the picture seems to be the same, because the TV will also convert the picture to 720P no matter what. So the converter on the TV seems to be the same quality as the converter in the player.
If I were to guess, I'd say it is just a touch below 720P Blu-Ray quality.
As far as the rest of the player goes, it works as expected. It isn't super fast at loading DVD's, probably about normal. It isn't too noisy. I guess my one complaint would be that I seem to have to press the buttons on the remote more than once for them to work. I have the player at an angle to were I sit, and it doesn't seem to have the strongest sensor. If I'm aiming straight on, it works fine.
If your player already has HDMI or DVI connector, then I wouldn't bother getting this one, I don't think you will see a big improvement.

I recently received this player through Amazon. It arrived ahead of schedule and was securely packaged. Very important when purchasing electronics, as they can be damaged easily.

I very much like this player. I ordered a Samsung TV, so was going to get a Samsung DVD player, so that I could use one of the supplied remote controls for both (it does this automatically, without any programing or fuss). I just looked at the 4 players on amazon and picked the one with the highest rating.

First, I will say, this is a good looking player. You can not tell much from its picture, however, this has the piano gloss front and looks quite nice. The front is not cluttered at all. A power switch to the far left and a telescoping tray as well. The large majority of the player is clean and open. On the far right is a circular control button, a-la ipod style and a USB port. The LCD screen sits in the center and is unlit when off, and not intrusive when displaying info, even in the dark. It is a perfect match for the Samsung TVs.

I have the player hooked to my TV with a Monster 1000 HDMI cable (yes this is overkill, however it was fantastically priced here on amazon). You can only upconvert with an HDMI cable, and one is not provided, so you must get one if you want the best picture possible. The HDMI can send a signal of 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. I have a 26" 720p TV (newly purchased and reviewed on amazon as well) and the 720p setting gave the best picture for this TV. This is easy to check for your TV as there is a dedicated button to cycle through each setting.

Setup was incredibly easy. Plug the player into an outlet. Plug the HDMI into the back of the player and into the TV. Switch the TV to the proper input. That's it. 5 seconds and your playing movies.

The quality of the player is quite nice. We rented Bolt, an animated Disney movie. It was very colorful and detailed. An absolute pleasure to watch. The player supports autoplay, so discs automatically start with the previews, and then the movie right after (must also be programed on the disc as well). I can not say enough of how happy we were with the picture quality.

The bonus gem here though, and reason to get this over other players, is the front USB port. If you have your own digital movies from a digital camera or camcorder, or digital pictures, you can put them on a USB flash drive and watch them on your TV through this player. There is a USB button on the remote, however, it autodetected mine when I plugged the flash drive in. This was very nice as it also upconverted the digital movies I played. I could not see a difference in quality with pictures, however they were taken with a 15mp DSLR camera on highest quality, so I can't expect miracles. Other reviews discuss that downloaded movies will also play through the USB, but I do not own any, and can't review this function.

The remote control comes with batteries, and is pretty basic. It is not back lit, so will be a bit hard to see in dark lighting. There is a button to press if you wish to use it for the TV. As this does not stop the DVD controls from working, I leave it on TV setting all the time and use this remote for both. Only thing I do not like is that the chapter foward/reverse buttons for DVD operation and channel up/down buttons for TV operation are shared. If you are set to TV and try to fast foward, the channel changes off of input to cable. A minor annoiance, but this design flaw should be noted, even if not cared about.

Over all, I am extremely pleased with this purchase.
Thank you for reading my review :)

If you are still on the fence about investing in Blu-ray, but want to get the the most out of your HD TV, then up-convert DVD players are the way to go. Up-convert DVD players allow you to get the most out of your standard DVDs without the added expense of "new" hardware or the need to purchase (or re-purchase) your favorite movies in a different format.

Now, you may be asking yourself; what exactly does an up-conversion DVD player do, and how is it any better than a normal DVD player? Well, to put it simply, an up-conversion DVD player takes the standard 480p(640x480)resolution, which is standard on ALL DVDs, and up-scales(changes) it to a higher resolution; it then sends the up-scaled picture (digitally via HDMI) to the television. The end result is a picture that may appear to be much sharper and clearer than it would on a standard DVD player. On the flip side, unless you are using an HDMI cable, you may not notice much difference between standard 480p and 720p when up-converted, because the "digital" picture has to then be converted into an analog signal which results in a loss of quality. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can do with 480p "source material" and an up-conversion can "enhance" the picture quality of standard DVDs, but it will in no way look as crisp and clear as Blu-ray.

Now that I have explained a bit about up conversion, let's get on with the review. The Samsung 1080p9 is a fairly inexpensive up-convert DVD Player that comes with a host of features. In addition to playing standard DVDs the player also has the option to play Divx (and Xvid) movies, as well as Mp3, Wma, and JPEG files from either a disc or a USB thumb drive. The USB port is a nice perk, because it allows users the freedom of not having to burn everything to a disc in order to viewed on the television. The USB port also allows users to rip audio CDs ,via the player, into the MP3 format for storage on a thumb drive. A nice perk, but the ripping speed is only 2x, which is pretty slow. The player also comes with an HDMI output, as well as Component (RBG), S-Video, Composite (yellow), and RCA (red and white) audio outputs. It is unfortunate that this unit does not come with an optical audio output for home theater audio. The unit also does not come with any cables other than an RCA audio cable and the yellow composite video cable.

In terms of up-conversion of DVDs, the quality is pretty mediocre, especially when compared to other up-convert DVD players on the market. In fact, Samsung Blu-ray players actually do a much better up-converting standard DVDs than the Samsung 1080p9. This is because the up-conversion in this player is done via software, rather than using hardware specifically designed for up-scaling to high resolutions. Both Sony and Panasonic offer up-conversion DVD players that do a much better job with up-converting, because those players are hardware-based rather than software-based. The resulting picture quality from the 1080p9 is not bad by any means, the picture still looks better than a standard DVD player, but there are players that do a much better job of up-converting on the market, and they are pretty comparable in price.

The Samsung 1080p9 is very easy to use and set up. Just plug it in, and it automatically adjusts itself to the best resolution for your television. Those with Samsung televisions will also benefit from the Anynet feature that allow the user to control the TV and DVD player with the same remote, as well as some additional features like direct connect. The remote that comes with the DVD player does take some getting used to. The button placements feel a bit awkward at first, and the remote needs to be pointed directly at the player with no obstructions, but otherwise it's a very simple set-up-and-use DVD player.

This player does have a few quirks to keep in mind. First of all, the brightness and counter on the front of the display can not be adjusted. This player is also very sensitive to heat, so if it is not well ventilated, the picture will freeze and skip. The player does have a resume play feature, but it is very finicky; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When the resume feature does work, for some reason the subtitles turn on by default, and need to manually be turned off. Also, when playing DVD-R material, the unit makes a slight constant chirping sound, which doesn't occur when playing retail DVDs, I'm not sure as to why, but the unit appears to play fine.

Overall, the Samsung 1080p9 is a good value for the money. It may not offer the best up-conversion quality on the market, but it does have a host of additional features that make it a bang for the buck. For those who are hesitant to re-invest in a new format, this player will definitely tide you over until your ready to take the plunge into Blu-ray.

Echo all the other reviewers comments about excellent picture quality on SD DVD material. Even highly compressed stuff that I've recorded off the TV on a DVD-R recorder looks a lot cleaner, played back on this unit.

My DVD-R unit burned out, so after reading lots of reviews I bought this Samsung. I read reviews of older, similar Samsungs and saw that they were region-hackable. About 50% of my DVD collection was purchased in the UK and the other half in the USA after I moved here. Region-hackable is therefore a necessity for me. As of yet, nobody on the Tinternet has posted a region hack for the USA model of this player. Grrrr! I took a gamble, and it didn't pay off.

I am not an advocate of ripping off copyrighted material but this region encoding thing is a pain in the butt. Movies seem to get released to all regions almost concurrently nowadays so why can't they just disband this silly, crippling, big brother idea? (rhetorical question - don't flame me please). I will now have to buy an el cheapo, non-upconverting DVD player from Wal*Mart to play my region 2 movies on - they're always hackable.

That's the only bad thing about this player. Good points are:

* Very minimalist. No flashy chrome or bright lights to distract the eye
* Very small. Less deep than any other player I've owned
* Remote is compatible with Samsung TV remotes
* Doesn't get hot at all, even after being left on all day
* Remembers DVD resume point over a (front panel) power-off event
* Relatively quick to start up and load a DVD
* Slide show from USB socket is useable and "hi-def". Haven't tested that extensively

Not-so-good points are:

* Because it's so lightweight, kids pushing the buttons repeatedly push it further and further back into the TV furniture
* Vacuum fluorescent display is very dim. Unreadable from a distance at daytime
* Menu rendering is a bit cheesy. Very low res menu screens.
* Can't seem to have "raw" digital audio out of the SPDIF connector and decoded data from the HDMI socket concurrently. One menu setting affects both sockets. I can't remember the exact terminology from the menu but if I set it so that my Yamaha HT receiver can understand the audio data stream, the TV can't (and vice-versa).
* Saw it in Wal*Mart for 5 bucks cheaper than Amazon, the day after I bought it. D'oh!

While this player delivers on its promise of beautiful disc playback (you really truly can notice a difference) it falls far short in terms of usability. It is slow to respond to commands, both through remote and through manually pushing the buttons on the actual machine, which can be frustrating to say the least, as often times you will hit the button on the remote multiple times, thinking that it just didn't get the signal, only to have the disc tray open and close 5 times 8 seconds later. While this in itself is not that big of a deal, it has other problems that cripple it in terms of usability. When selecting fast-forwarding speeds, it skips from x2 to x4 to x64. While also minor, none of these speeds are truly optimal for trying to find a specific moment in a scene. This next gripe may be a bit confusing to read at first so bear with me. I have the Samsung DVD player hooked up to a 37" Panasonic 1080P LCD TV. When I switch from the HDMI input for Cable to the HDMI input for the DVD player it automatically sends a signal for the DVD player to turn on. This is a pretty nice feature apart from the fact that if the DVD player is already on before I switch, it interprets that signal as a command to turn the whole machine off, regardless of whether it was already playing the disc. Which trust me gets old really fast. This seems like such an easy fix on any hardware programmer's part that I cannot help but think that Samsung must not have tested its product in the slightest before releasing it to market. So to make a long rant short, in the 8 months or so that I have owned this product I have been pleased with the quality of picture that this machine offers, but sorely disappointed with the user-interface, or rather lack of user-interface. I have never used a DVD player that is so lacking and has this many bugs.

I bought this DVD player because it can play region-free PAL discs. It even flawlessly played a dual-layer DVD-R with a PAL-encoded movie on it. This ability means that you no longer have to go through the tedious and error-prone process of converting your PAL discs to NTSC.

The USB port is also an incredible convenience. Just copy some MP3s, DviX videos, or JPEG images onto a thumb drive and pop it into the player . . . you'll then be able to listen, watch, and/or view slideshows of your content.

This player provides a lot of functionality for a low price.

Pros: It plays dvds, dvd-r and dvd+r and reads divx files. It is sleek and thin, making it ideal for placement in cramped spaces. It has USB for flash drives and can rip cds. It upconverts dvds for HD viewing and outputs via HDMI. It has a good cable manager at its back and offered at an affordable price which nothing can beat as of the time I purchased it. It comes in a glossy finish that matches generally the other components like the TV and decoder, especially if they too are Samsung.
Cons: Display is good but not excellent as compared to the dvd upscaling done in Playstation 3. It is slower to read divx files and certain dvds too. But at least, it does read them well and playback is good to excellent.

I was not quite ready to make the leap to Blu-Ray, but I did want an upconverting dvd player that could take advantage of the resolution on my new 42" Sanyo 1080p LCD television. I'm very happy with this one. We get full HD channels on cable and the picture I get on an upconverted dvd with this player is better than the images I get from even the best cable stations, like HBO HD. I can't compare with Blu-Ray, but I'm very happy with what I'm getting here.

Before I bought the Samsung, I tried a slightly less expensive upconverting player made by Phillips and there is no comparison. This one loads faster and gives a better picture, plus I haven't seen any of the quirky artefacts that I saw with that one.

You can hook it up with component or RCA cables, but also with HDMI. I've tried both component and HDMI and am happy with the quality I get either way. You can also plug and play mp3s and pictures from the USB 2.0 port on the front.

It will play almost anything you can throw at it, including DivX and MPEG-4 files, and of course DVD-R and DVD+R discs you burn from your computer. For now, at least, I'm not even missing the Blu-Ray. Right now, I've got everything I need.