Tried and Sold

Having tried the mini note, which has the Via C7 processor, I just found it too slow so I have sold the machine. Keyboard and Screen res was among the best however the CPU let it down big time. I may give the MSI Wind a shot.

End of an Era..

Selling my Empeg *snif* *snif*

Karma was a decent DAP in its time.

Backup HD Player

So I purchased an LG BH-200 after much thought, I knew I needed a backup player to play my purchased HD-DVD since later on they will start to become scarce.

I decided on the LG because of it’s multiregion Blu-Ray and DVD capabilities which will be an great advantage to me since I am in a B region.

Promising update to the Samsung BD-UP5000

According to Ben from Engadget HD his source has updated the situation

From AVS Forum

**Update** Samsung has said that a firmware update to address the compatibility problems with current discs should be out in mid January. Also, Samsung plans to released a firmware update during Q2 2008 that will enable bitstream output of multi-channel Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD (both HR and MA).

Meanwhile some users contemplate on whether Samsung will enable the blue light you see in all the pictures

Samsung BD-UP5000 not living up to the Hype.

There are some apparent major shortcomings of the Samsung BD-UP5000 Duo player, first and foremost the player is not capable of decoding nor bit streaming any of the latest HD audio formats, DTS-HD HR, MA and Dolby Tru HD only decodes to 2 channel, whats worse is it seems Dolby Digital Plus is only outputting plain old vanilla Dolby Digital 5.1!

There are also some disc compatibility issues where it is unable to playback some new releases, these are detailed in this thread on the AVS forums

There was and still is I believe so much hype surrounding this player with its 7.1 analog out and ability to decode the latest HD audio formats DTS-HD MA after firmware upgrade, as detailed in the spec sheet, Silicon HQV reon upscaler. On most parts it delivers the video quality is on par or better than my PS3. However the lack of ability to bitstream or decode DTS-HD MA or Dolby TruHD in multichannel is quite disappointing.

This is causing a slight uproar with the AVS crowd and lot of early adopters are vowing to return their players as detailed in the last few pages of this Owners thread at AVS forums, which contains almost 3000 posts. To date there has been no clear concise announcement or response from Samsung regarding these issues. Whats worse is that at the recent CES show in Vegas Samsung unvieled the BD-UP5500, people are specualting that Samsung is dropping the 5000 in favour of their new announced player, however the BD-UP5000 hasn’t even been released widely.

Samsung has stated that new firmware is due out end of Jan to resolve the disc compatibility issues however it is not clear whether this firmware update will add the bitstreaming and internal decoding support for the HD audio formats.

The specific shortcomings of the player are:

1. Bitstream audio output of advanced codecs: currently CANNOT bitstream advanced audio codecs, DTS-HD MR or MA, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus

2. Internal decoding of advanced audio codecs: currently only decodes 2ch Dolby TrueHD, NOT multichannel DD-THD; currently CANNOT decode DTS-HD HR/MA.

3. It doesn’t seem to play a number of recent BR disks. Many reported problems with Fox discs. Sunshine, 3:10 to Yuma and Resident Evil also don’t play.

4. Audio drop outs on quite a few SD disks. Seems to be a random problem.

5. It automatically forces 4:3 films to stretch to widescreen mode.

6. Speaker setup in the Audio menu only has 100Hz output for the Sub, most people and THX specs state should be 80Hz

Recently Ben over at Engadget HD has stated he is waiting for a review unit from Samsung, however he is also amazed at the shortcomings of the player he has preliminarily posted about the problems over at EngadetHD. http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/12/samsungs-bd-up5000-is-failing-to-deliver/

As for my stance: As I went through so much trouble of getting it and to return it will be a headache as it will have to go back to the US. I will for now keep it in hope that Samsung make good on their statements about firmware upgrades.