Awful Product

Author's Rating:

Pros: Inexpensive

Cons: Cheap materials
Lacking in features
Ineffective firmware updates
Awful technical support

The Bottom Line: 

Unlike other components, the quality of a blu-ray player rests on the quality of its firmware updates.  Samsung falls down in this area.  Do not buy this product.

Author's Review
I bought the BD-P1500 blu-ray player because it was discounted with my new Samsung TV.  From the beginning, it didn't play certain blu-ray discs, but the store told me that maybe the discs were defective.  It also did not take advantage of features that certain discs offered.

By the time I brought it back, it was already past Best Buy's return date, so they sent it to Samsung, who gave it a firmware update and sent it back, three weeks later.  One thing they don't tell you when you buy a blu-ray player is that these players all require firmware updates every few months to play the latest discs.  I learned how to obtain the firmware updates online.

Even after its return, it failed to play many discs, coughing them out with the notice, "This disc can not be played" ("cannot" was indeed written as 2 words).  I went online and downloaded another, more recent firmware update, burnt it onto a CD, and installed it in the player.  Certain discs still do not play--I'm not talking about obscure titles here--the discs that do not play include "Slumdog Millionairre," "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," and "Marley and Me."  In fact, the only discs that do play on it are older blu-rays or DVDs.

I phoned Samsung technical support, who said I would just have to wait until the next firmware update and try it then.  They could not tell me when that would be.  They did tell me that my player was no longer under warranty (just past 90 days), so they couldn't do anything else.

I relegated this player to the bedroom and went out and bought another blu-ray player from Denon that plays all of the discs.