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.
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