CUSTOM INSTALLATION HOW-TO

Samsung BD-P2550

Samsung's mandate in bringing out its BD-P2550 ($350) seems to have been to design a machine so stuffed with must-have features that there would be no good reason why anyone wouldn't want it. Along with the highly regarded Silicon Optix Reon video-processing solution to deinterlace and upscale standard DVDs (along with those rare 1080i Blu-ray Discs), the BD-P2550 provides both built-in Dolby TrueHD audio decoding (according to Samsung, a firmware update with DTS-HD Master Audio is on the way) and 1 GB of internal memory for data downloads when exploring BD-Live features on discs.

Samsung's latest player also lets Netflix subscribers stream movies they've added to their Watch Instantly queue on the Netflix site. More than 12,000 titles are available, with at least 300 in high-definition. As a regular user of Pandora personalized Internet radio (okay, I'm an addict), I was also psyched to see that Samsung lets you use that service to stream music to the BD-P2550. Can there be too much of a good thing? Apparently not.

The Samsung has a pleasing look, with a gloss-black façade that's virtually uncluttered except for a simple control disc. Rear-panel connections include HDMI and component- and composite-video jacks, along with an optical digital and 7.1-channel analog audio output. The multichannel analog jacks, which permit owners of older, pre-HDMI receivers to hear high-rez soundtracks in native form when hooked up to a receiver with a 6- or 8-channel external input, is particularly notable on a player at this price.

Samsung's remote control is slim and has a keypad dotted with small buttons. A few of these glow in the dark, including the main ones used to control disc-transport/menu navigation. Hitting the Bonus View button gives you direct access to any PIP features on discs. And the Info button calls up the player's onscreen display, which provides only a limited level of information about video and soundtrack formats on discs.

Setup & Performance

The BD-P2550's operation was satisfactorily speedy. It only took 5 seconds to power up and pop open the disc tray, while regular Blu-rays took only 23 seconds after insertion to display an image onscreen. And those with advanced Java and Bonus View/BD-Live features like Sleeping Beauty took just over a minute.

Overall, the Samsung's video performance was first-rate: Blu-ray movies like Wall•E looked wonderfully crisp and solid, and the player easily sailed through the full suite of Silicon Optix HQV DVD and HD tests -- performance benchmarks that we use to evaluate video processing on both Blu-ray players and TVs.

Just as I started testing the BD-P2550, Samsung issued a firmware update that let me stream films from Netflix in high-definition. After running the Netflix setup for the player and adding a bunch of high-def selections to my queue, I then chose "Genesis" from Season 1 of Heroes on the player's Netflix screen. A bar graphic indicated that it was streaming the show for playback and that the player would display it at full HD quality. At that level, the picture looked quite good -- aside from being in widescreen, the image was reasonably crisp, although it did have a slightly mottled, noisy texture. But when I next tried to stream the Spanish horror film The Orphanage, the quality level dropped to one bar, with the resulting image looking like a YouTube video blown up big -- not a pretty sight.

Setup options for the player's multichannel analog audio output are somewhat limited. You can select between large, small, and none for the main speaker channels, but there's no way to adjust for speaker distance or even tweak output levels for individual speakers. (A cycling test-tone option is meant for speaker verification only.) Nonetheless, my surround processor was able to adequately compensate, and Dolby TrueHD soundtracks coming from Samsung's multichannel analog output sounded great, with no shortage of bass compared with its HDMI connection. It was also a trip to hear my Pandora Internet-radio stations on my main system, as opposed to my computer or iPod.

Bottom Line

Like Sony's PS3, the Samsung BD-P2550 is a machine that offers much more than just Blu-ray and DVD playback. As a Netflix subscriber and regular Pandora user, I found that this player's ability to stream content from those services put it over the top in terms of desirability. And then there's its flawless handling of both Blu-ray and DVD video, and a 7.1-channel analog output. To paraphrase Marlon Brando in The Godfather, this is a Blu-ray player you can't refuse.