Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD-HD860 Up-Converting DVD Player

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I picked up a refurbished job from Tiger (I like Amazon but the deal was just too good) Works great for the short time I've had it. Got a new big HDTV that does the 1080 thing so I'm impressed. You can set it up to just come on at that rate but it has a botton to "toggle" through the options. The only minor complaint is the on light the BRIGHT blue on light is a bit much. Put a little round sticky thing to tone it down. Should you care, I'm going to give you a little "hack" information should you play disc from other than Zone One (you know who you are) It worked like a charm first time for me so I pass it on. I have the Alley McBeal complete set from the UK (can't get it in the US) plus a few DVD I pick up on vaction.

This just sets you DVD to Region "Free"--Region code hack posted by

Silver Surfer, November 05 2006:
DEAR FRIENDS, IT TOOK ME A LOT OF TIME AND PATIENCE, BUT I DID IT
GOT A SAMSUNG HD860, JUST HACKED THE REGION WITH THE SAMSUNG
REMOTE 00054D, I BOUGHT DVD PLAYER ON USA, REGION 1, I DID THIS, NOW
I CAN SEE ANY REGION DISK ON MY DVD PLAYER. . . SO HERE IS HOW
FIRST SET HDMI SEL BUTTON TO 480P, THEN OPEN TRAY NO DISK ON IT,
PRESS INFO BUTTON, AND PRESS NINE, UNTIL NUMBER 9 APPEARS ON LEFT
CORNER OF TV DISPLAY, THEN, TURN OFF DVD, THEN ON AND. . . . ENJOY
FREE REGION LIFE. . . BYE BYE!

You have to hit the number 9 repeatedly to get it to show and it will appear on the upper left corner of your screen (be careful the #9 shows up "over" the other information on the screen) but the whole things pretty groovy. Tiger had them for about $40 but even at twice the price it's very cool. The HDMI works great I put that into my HDTV then run the Optical sound from the the TV (it has optical out) to the Receiver for my "Surround" sound. Actually due to that blue light its gets just 4.5 stars but I rounded it up to 5! It does require the HDMI hook up to benifit from the Up-Convert feature, works for me my Toshiba HDTV has 2 in HDMI and wth the "Optical" sound out from the TV makes for a very good set up for me.

Okay so I just bought this item but I am feeling the need to write up a review so here it goes. I picked this player up from Best Buy after examining all the other players they had, the deciding factor for me to go with this Samsung DVD player is because my HDTV is also a Samsung. I wanted a good HD-upconverter and this was priced for $98 at Best Buy and was the only player I saw of this brand so I figured this is probably the best what Samsung had to offer so purchased it, but it was only until I got home and saw on BB's website that they sale a higher model HD-960, but the only difference I could tell is that the HD-96- can do 1080p and play back DivX which this player (HD-860) is not advertised to do. Although if you look at the middle of the HD-860 manual you will see in the section it describes the formats it can play by logo it also has DivX logo there. I later discovered that this player actually DivX support its hidden and has to be accessed a certain way and it doesn't require a hack to do it. Just create a video CD containing DivX files on there, you have to create folders and place the Divx video files in those folders so don't put DivX files just on the top level of the disc. Burn and close the disc when you've finished and insert it into this player. It will show a menu displaying the content on the disc (the folders), just select a folder you put your videos under and then the menu will display the list of video files it contains. To watch the video move the selection back up to the top in the folder where it will show "..." and just click the PLAY button on the remote there and it will play back all the videos in that folder. Pretty cool isn't it. I figure Samsung must have disabled the function to auto-play or playback any video files on disc thats a DivX file when selected, but they forgot to disable the ability to hit PLAY on the "..." folder itself.

Now I would have gave this 5 stars but this player like a lot of new players that are starting to come out I notice wont allow you to do HD (720p/1080i) over Component connection. Usually this feature is there but not openly available in the menus and it has to be unlocked through a hack code with the remote. It seems that the previous Samsung DVD players could easily be hacked to do HD over component, even my last DVD player a CyberHome could do it, but this HD-860 does not, I searched the web but couldn't find any info on how to unluck it, and my guess is that Samsung just hasn't leaked how to do this to the public yet or was forced by the Movie industry to remove the feature.

I really dont see why the movie industry is being so tight on only allowing HD via HDMI. Most TVs only have one HDMI and if they have HD digital cable like I do, then that one HDMI is probably already occupied. Most HDTVs have 1 or more component connection. Component connections can do HD so I dont see why consumers have to go the hassle of this, I just wish somebody would really do something about this cause I see it as a really unnecessary copy protection trend.

If you need a nicely priced up-converting DVD player, without all the bells and whistles, this is the player for you. You can definitely notice the picture quality increase (when using the up-convert setting) compared to the usual picture quality provided by standard def. progressive scan (480p) DVD players.

The higher the quality of the DVD transfer, the better it looks with this DVD player. With my old Sony standard-def player, it didn't make much of a difference whether the transfer was high quality or not. Now I can tell which DVDs received a good treatment or not.

I have this DVD player matched with a Samsung HL-S5086W 50" DLP HDTV and the picture quality is excellent. It pays to use an HDMI cable rather than the component video as the picture is sharper and seems to have deeper color saturation. I'm very pleased with the purchase.

In summary, this is a great low-priced player and does exactly what most people would need from it: up-converts your standard definition DVDs until you are ready to upgrade to Hi-Def DVDs and it doesn't bog you down with a lot of unnecessary options or complex menus.

We loved this DVD player for the first 6 months, then it the power started shutting off randomly. I did every troubleshooting thing I could think of, and came up with nothing. I also went to the Samsung website, and tried to find help there and came up with N-O-T-H-I-N-G! We bought the DVD player b/c we bought a Samsung HD flatscreen TV (love it-- no problems). However, this is our second samsung dvd player- hated the first one too! I should have known! The first one was several years ago-- thought it was a fluke. For as much $$ as this one was I can't believe how much this one SUCKS! I am going back to buying cheap DVD players. I am so mad! The power won't stay on for more than 1 or 2 minutes! NOT WORTH THE $$$$$$$

I purchased this player on a recommendation from a (non-commissioned) store salesman (who clearly had nothing to lose) at the same time that I bought my Sony KDL-46XBR2 HD LCD TV (which, by the way, is a STELLAR television). He could have easily talked me into the Sony DVP-NS75H, which was sitting on the shelf next to the Samsung (for about $15 more), but he spoke very highly of the customer satisfaction rating on the Samsung unit, while also indicating a fairly low satisfaction rating on the Sony (excepting that my TV remote would have also been able to control the DVD player, a nice bonus that I chose to forego on his recommendation).

When I got the unit home, I plugged in the HDMI cable to my TV and the digital coaxial cable to my Denon receiver and everything worked beautifully on the first try. I don't know exactly what problem an earlier reviewer was having, but I knew that I had to go in and program my receiver as to which input selections corresponded to the digital inputs: optical is assigned to the TV/DBS, coax 1 is DVD, etc.

The picture produced at 1080i was stunning. I don't know why people were having problems with the remote. Mine worked flawlessly out of the box, with only very minor delays between pressing a button and seeing the unit respond, most notably while movie playback was commencing.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this product and would recommend it to my friends.

So far i have no complaints with this player, it comes with HDMI interface, highest quality on digital video/audio in one single cable. It's easy to configure and setup in no time. The image improvement is very noticeable for burned DVDs and VCDs. The resolution upconvert for the commercial ones is very good at 720p while at 1080i is slightly better, althought the ARTISAN's T2 EXTREME DVD EDITION (digitally mastered from a brand-new 1080p, 24sf high-definition digital telecine transfer) is AWESOME in 1080i. Fair price for the overall performance.

I'm satisfied with this player at least until the final word on high definition DVD's format has been taken and prices drop to 150 - :P

I am impressed with the ease of setup and ease of use of this Samsung HD860.

N.B. You must connect this unit to an HD-TV using an HDMI cable to access the high resolution features. Once connected, you can toggle between the various HD resolutions. The up-converted images are spectacular, and this technology is an excellent way to wait for the Blue-ray vs HD-DVD war to be resolved.

Just got this yesterday to go with my Panasonic blah blah 50" 60U plasma tv. So far works great, no problems except the remote. When I am trying to navigate the menus on a DVD and press an arrow button to move around the menu, the "cursor" goes nuts, bounces around all over the place to where I can't select which audio option, or watch special features, etc. This was solved by programming my tv remote to handle the DVD player.

Someone else said that when using HDMI you can't get audio out of the coax cable, and thinks the same is true with the optical output. Not true, I use an optical outpout from the dvd player to my DTS receiver with no problems. Which, not to go off topic, but WHY do most new dvd players, even some HDMI models, not have an optical audio output!?! You can't get DTS out of digital coax. What is the thinking behind this!?!

I originally purchased this unit for my girlfriend who had purchased a 26" 720p Sharp LCD TV. The picture and sound were great over the HDMI for her bedroom, and we have watched all kinds of dvd's and are very happy. I decided to buy the same unit and use it with my Panasonic TH-42PX60U (Great tv, by the way!) I must say, the picture quality is not as great as on the 26" inch screen, which is to be expected, but it still looks better than my other dvd player or standard def cable tv. Overall, it's not Blu Ray or HD Cable quality, but it is the best looking picture I have ever seen from a DVD onto my 42" Plasma, so it does what I wanted it do. If you have a 60" tv, get a Blu Ray player, 42" and below, Upconverted DVD looks great!

Also, I don't care about all the other burned and backed up dvd stuff, so that isn't an issue for me, therefore, I have not experienced any bugginess or issues with freezing or skipping.

This is a great DVD player that fits perfectly under my small tv in the bedroom. Slim and compact. The upconverting is nice and it remembers where you left off in your movie when you put that disk back in.