Customer Reviews

Samsung DVD-P721M Progressive-Scan DVD Player

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Samsung P721 DVD Player has once again proved the technical creativity/competance of Samsung as a Consumer Electronics leader.
This player has a very unique feature set that complies with the conventional DVD feature set and add several next generation features that are bridging the gap between PC's and consumer electronic boxes.The P721 offers superior Progressive scan output and supports DVD/CD-DA/CD-R/MP3/VCD formats and has added support for Memory stick interface.
There are no other DVD models with support for memory stick. With this player, you can simply insert a memory stick from a digital camera and view thumbnails or full screen images on your TV set that is hooked to the P721. Additionally, you can copy MP3 files on a memory stick using a PC and the P721 will decode the files on the Memory stick and plays them back with perfection!.
The GUI on this player is totally superb and very simple to follow thru. Overall the player has more to offer when compared to other players that are in the same price range.

I bought this DVD player after reading the great reviews it got on Amazon and was not disappointed. The loading time is a bit slow, but that is a general DVD problem. The picture quality is amazing! There is a lot of nifty little features to boot:

- you can zoom in on the picture
- there is a replay button so if you missed what someone said, you hit this button and it goes back 10 seconds
- turning subtitles on and off is really easy - some players requre that you stop the movie and go back to the root menu
- for DVDs that allow it, you can view the scene from different angles

The Progressive Scan is really neat also. For the money, this DVD player can't be beat.

At first I just walked into [...] and thought that I wanted a telephone until I saw this DVD player. It was on sale for [$$$] when I purchased it last year, and while I took it to the cashiers, I realized that there were five other people holding one. I didn't want to purchase a DVD player, as they were overpriced last year, but since my brother is a DVD fanatic, I needed one in order to borrow some of his movies. Well, I must say that I bought this player thinking that I'll use it for one year and dump it for a better one, but I still have it. My husband and I have the player connected to our Bose Home Theater System, our 36" Flat Screen TV, and our state of the art stereo system, and it works as hard as the rest of the equipment. Compared to my brother's [$$$] DVD player (bought 3 years ago), I must admit that I just can't see the difference between the two -- My brother has a SONY. Once I turned the DVD player on, its quality makes our cable company, AT&T Broadband, look like they are providing us horrible quality television -- I even called AT&T to complain. If you're looking for a DVD player that wants to do just that: Play DVDs, then this is an excellent buy for the money and quality you get. However, if you're looking to find a player that is going to play with you, by providing you with a number of useless buttons for "sleep" or "eat" or one that is going to have "pretty" on-screen numbers and so on, then you will have to purchase yourself a [$$$] system. One other thing that I've noticed about people who complain about their DVD players is that they "lock" and they have to turn it on and off. Well people, please note that when you rent movies from [...], and the DVD is dirty, your player will "lock" because it can't move, or will give you fragmented pictures. Take the DVD out, then clean it with WINDEX, and pop it right back in -- it works fine! We have not had one single problem with our DVD player, except that once in a blue moon it will get fragmented pictures and we know that its the CD, so we clean it with WINDEX, pop it right back in, and grow more annoyed at [...]. We've probably spent more money on rental DVD movies the last six months, than it cost us to buy this player. Extremely satisfied! It does what it's supposed to do, and everything else is completely trivial and unimportant.

Oh before I forget, one thing I actually do LOVE about the player is that when it fast forwards or rewinds, it is able to do it by chapters, or by different speeds. I've noticed that this feature is NOT provided in most DVD players -- my brother's SONY and my friend's players don't have this feature, except for a limited speed, while the Samsung does up to 128x, I believe. It forwards and rewinds by doubles (i.e., 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x,... and so on). So if you stopped your movie half way, it's very easy to get back to where you left it. Plays MP3 and CDs, but you may have to turn on your television to do so, depending on how your connectivity worked out -- we didn't have any more input/outputs on our receiver, so it was set up directly with the television. Other than that, for those who can figure this out, this is great!

It does the trick!!

I found that the samsung DVD-P721M is one of the best dvd player at this price range. It has a bunch of cool little features that you will enjoy. Like it supports ID3 tag for your MP3's(display the song name). It can also display your images off a memory stick or JPEG image cd(pretty cool). So far i am pretty happy with this one. If your thinking about buying a progressive-scan DVD player check this one out. I say you go out the BestBuy or CompUSA to check it out. See if it is to your liking.

I had really looked forward to adding this component to the mix in our home theatre system, replacing a Sony that lacked the depth of features this one had...or was supposed to have! Right out of the box it was defective. Hooked up easily enough, but wouldn't play a thing! Actually didn't seem to realize DVDs were even loaded into it! Buttons on the unit didn't work, and neither did the remotes. So, I'm sending it back, and not running the risk again, due to other negative comments by other reviewers... Going to start my research all over again...!

This DVD player has serious limitations as a JPEG player. CDs can have no more than 50MB per directory. Picture file size is limited to 150KB. Additionally this player is very slow at processing JPEGs.

At first glance, this unit looks pretty good for the price.
However:

1. Chroma-bug is present in progressive scan mode.

2. Memory stick port doesn't support 128MB sticks - only 64mb or less. No where is this limitation mentioned - I had to go to Samsung.com to find out the bad news.

3. Regular DVD playback mode distorts DVDs with a letterbox aspect ratio - it stretches the playback vertically. While most folks may not notice this, it is still annoying to have small black bars at the top and bottom during playback yet have the image stretched and vertically distorted.

I dont know much about DVD players... this is my first... but i've had trouble with it.... it is on it's way back to the shop for the second time in 8 months...

I purchased my DVD player last Christmas and shortly after I as well as my friends all noticed that the picture is to dark, in particular when there is a dark image It is instead all black... A week later I got the unit returned to me stating that there was no problem with my unit... The unit is also now missing screws...

I have a Sony Wega TV that has support for vertical compression for anamorphic DVDs. This worked flawlessly on my old Panasonic A310 player. I set up the P721M to Wide mode display so it will send the full squeezed anamorphic picture to the TV. So far I've tried 4 different anamorphic DVDs, and only one of them was displayed correctly. The ones displayed incorrectly show a horizontally squeezed image that fills the screen vertically. Reluctantly, I'm going to return this player.