IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A BLURAY PLAYER!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Very thin, wall mountable, unique design!

Cons: Can not stack this unit, and it's too wide for standard rack with loading drawer!

The Bottom Line: 
If you want a BluRay player to hang on a wall this is it, but if not, save your money and purchase the 3600! Time will tell if it's reliable!

Author's Review
I suppose as consumers, we all get used to various products. Refrigerators are tall and rectangle, ovens are sort of square, microwaves are rectangles, and BluRay players are those rectangular boxes!

That may have been true in the past, but no more. This Samsung BluRay BDP4600 looks nothing like a BluRay player. As a matter of fact you could mistake it for a video game or a base for another piece of equipment.

Samsung broke the mold when they designed this player. All the edges are curved, it has a glossy black color and a very slight red border around the entire player.

The unique thing about this player is that it can sit flat, be slanted slighty upward, or are you ready for this one: mounted on the wall! Yup it will attach with its own built in mounting brackets to the side of a wall. Samsung says they designed it this way to be placed below flat panel TV's, so you do not need a shelf to hold it.

Just like my earlier review on the Samsung BDP3600, this unit also has touch controls on the top of the unit. This means of course you can not stack any components on top of this player. The loading drawer is very thin and loads from the left side of the player. It opens to allow insertion of a disc but the problem is, if you have this 4600 in a wall unit, it must accommodate the width of the unit plus the tray opening. I measured about 24" width with the drawer open, so you need that much room in an audio rack to operate the Samsung.

To keep the aesthetics of the thin player, Samsung decided not to include many of the connections that other BluRay players have. It features the standard HDMI Output, Analog Stereo Audio Outputs and a Component Output. If you have an older receiver that does not take either HDMI or Component Video, skip this player and go with the Samsung BDP3600, which features all the required Analog Outputs.

 In addition, this BDP4600 has an Ethernet port, digital (optical) connector, and an external power connector. This to me was kind of tacky since you have to use a power supply connected to an AC cord. Samsung did this because they did not have enough room for the AC Supply inside such a thin unit, but then I guess you would have to see that electrical cord dangling from it either way!

As I mentioned earlier, the 4600 features touch sensitive buttons on top of the unit. The power light will always be on indicating standby mode. This is not very annoying I found, and you can live with it. The problem is when the player is in PLAY MODE, all the led's under the butons light up. Now this is not a terrible thing either, but if you mount this player on the wall under the flat panel, the LED's MAY bother you. I've asked Samsung about this and their response was there is no way to turn off the lighting on the function buttons. As I said, it jusy might annoy certain people who want to immerse themselvs in what is playing and do not want to be distracted by any extraneous lights.

This player comes with a USB Dongle which allows for wireless connection to a wireless router.

This will allow BD LIVE features as well as firmware updates.
Let me give you one key, and somehow overlooked important piece of advice here, from someone who had to learn the hard way. The remote control will allow you to input passwords and all information to set up the player's Internet options. If you try to set it up wirelessly, MAKE SURE YOUR ROUTER NAME IS ONE WORD ONLY! If you have something like Belkin Router, or Joes Wifi, it will not work no matter what you set. You have to change the router name to one solid string of letters with no spaces at all.  Doing this will save you a lot of hair pulling and frustration like I had until I talked to a Samsung engineer. Why they don't tell you this right up front is a mystery to me!

A word about its firware updates. Once connected properly and working with the Internet, turning on the player will sometimes give you an on-screen message reading: "There is a firware update available for you player, do you want to update now?" Just use the remote to hit YES, and away it will go by itself. Depending on the complexity of the update it may take twenty minutes or so, but just walk away and come
back when completed. You can NOT stop the update while it is progressing, or you can damage your player's internal software!

A bit of information here not listed on any spec sheets. The player will ask you for a few software updates when you plug it in. One update will add to the existing services the player provides. It comes with PANDORA RADIO and NETFLIX. By doing a major firmware/software update, the player will give you access to YOU TUBE, PANDORA RADIO, NETFLIX & BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO. NETFLIX AND BLOCKBUSTER need paid subscriptions to allow you to play movies. On NETFLIX, you have to go to your computer to select movies to place into your list to watch through the movies on to your TV. The new BLOCKBUSTER site will allow you to select movies right through the player with no need for a computer. AS of this writing, the BLOCKBUSTER software people had not completed their upgrades to allow this to happen, but they said it will be completed soon.This certainly will give NETFLIX some real competition.

The player itself outputs great video and pristine audio. Pretty much on par with any other BluRay player. The load time from inserting a disc to playing it, varies, depending on the complexity of the disc. The average time for me was about 30 seconds.

Let me give you some dimensions on this player so you can actually get an idea of size. It is about 1 1/2 inches thick. It is roughly 18" high and 8" wide. Still a very small footprint.

One addtion to this higher end Samsung BluRay line I like is that they include 1 GB of internal memory so you don't have to go out and first purchase a memory card.

The remote control is what I would categorize as okay. Nothing fancy with fairly clear buttons. When you press a button the backlighting will come on for a short period of time and then go off. The layout of the buttons could be a little better with more room between them, but the remote does not ruin the enjoyment of the player.

To sum it all up, this is a very uniquely designed player, with good audio and video. If you don't want to mount it on a wall, I would save some money and go for the Samsung BDP3600, which has a standard configuration and is about $100 cheaper. Either player will give you great features and make your movie watching enjoyable. Which one you choose is up to you!