Why You Can Trust CNET Samsung BD-P1500 review: Samsung BD-P1500
Samsung BD-P1500
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Editors' note (March 30, 2009): The rating of this player has been changed since its initial publication to reflect changes in the marketplace.
Buying any piece of electronics gear is an investment, but the analogy is even more apt if you're buying a Samsung Blu-ray player. When the Samsung BD-P1500 was first released, it was a somewhat risky pick due to its $400 list price, disc compatibility issues, and long list of promised firmware upgrades. Since the initial release, however, its value has risen. The BD-P1500's online price has plummeted and it has received several firmware upgrades, making it Profile 2.0 compatible and ironing out compatibility issues. It's still not in the top tier of Blu-ray players--its image quality is a step below the best and it lacks DTS-HD Master Audio--but with the street price as low as $220, it's one of the best Blu-ray values available.
Design
We've knocked Samsung's excessively glossy designs in the past, but we're suckers for the BD-P1500's look. The front faceplate is still glossy black, but it's completely flat and doesn't have a bezel, unlike its predecessor, the BD-P1400. On the far right are some front-panel controls, including play, stop, and chapter forward/backward, but otherwise the aesthetic is minimalist. In our opinion, the BD-P1500 is the most stylish Blu-ray player we've seen.
Samsung fans will recognize the same remote the company has packaged with most of its products for the last couple years. There are playback controls just north of the center of the remote, and there's some slight differentiation--including Braille-like nubs--that make it possible to navigate in the dark. Overall, it's a good remote, but we'd really like to see Samsung give it an update since it's been unchanged for so long and there's still room for improvement.
While the menu of Panasonic's DMP-BD50 still features blocky standard-def graphics, the BD-P1500 has nice high-def menus. They're easy enough to navigate, and we had no issues with routine tasks like changing the output resolution or audio output format.
Features
Out of the box, the Samsung BD-P1500 is a Profile 1.1 player, but owners can make the player Profile 2.0 compatible by installing the latest firmware update. Profile 2.0 compatibility means it will be able to play back Internet-enabled BD-Live features available on some Blu-ray movies. We haven't been impressed with BD-Live features so far, but there have been some promising early attempts, such as director Christopher Nolan's live chat on The Dark Knight.
Soundtrack support is pretty good, although not flawless. The BD-P1500 has onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD, but not for DTS-HD Master Audio. While the lack of DTS-HD Master Audio decoding is annoying, we wouldn't stress about it too much--even the experts have trouble hearing the differences between soundtrack formats in ideal environments. All soundtrack formats are supported in bit stream output mode.
Connectivity is standard. The most important connection is the HDMI output, which is capable of carrying both high-def video signals up to 1080p and high-resolution audio. For analog high-definition video, there's also a component video output, but note that Blu-ray Discs are limited to 1080i over component and DVDs to 480p. There's also a composite video output (but no S-Video), and of course it's limited to standard definition.
For audio, there's the aforementioned HDMI output, plus an optical digital audio output. Analog audio limited to just a stereo RCA output, whereas more expensive standalone players, such as the Samsung BD-P2500 and Sony BDP-S550, have multichannel analog outs. There's also an Ethernet port, which can be used for updating the firmware and to stream BD-Live content content.
Performance
For our Blu-ray performance tests we compared the BD-P1500 with the Panasonic DMP-BD50 and the Sony PlayStation 3. We started off looking at test patterns, with all three players connected to the LG 50PG60, with each input set to its THX picture mode. The first disc we looked at was Silicon Optix's HQV test suite on Blu-ray.
The BD-P1500 got off to a bad start, failing the Video Resolution Loss Test, as certain parts of the screen had a strobelike appearance and the overall image appeared unstable. Both the DMP-BD50 and PS3 passed this test in the same scenario. Things didn't get any better with the jaggies tests, as the BD-P1500 failed both the pivoting three line test and the rotating white bar test. Again, the DMP-BD50 and PS3 passed both of these tests, with the PS3 performing slightly better than the DMP-BD50. We switched to the most difficult of the HQV tests--the Film Resolution Loss Tests--and as we suspected, by BD-P1500 failed the panning resolution test pattern. However, we were surprised that it handled the slow pan over Raymond James Stadium reasonably well, without the excessive moire that we sometimes see on lesser players.
Since nobody actually watches test patterns, we switched over to actual program material. We began with some scenes that we know often cause problems for players with mediocre video processing. The very beginning of Chapter 8 from Mission Impossible: III will often show moire in the stairs in the background, but the BD-P1500 handled it well. The blinds at the beginning of Chapter 12 and the limo in Chapter 16 can expose similar problems, but the BD-P1500 handled both with full detail and free of jaggies. Considering it failed so many of the test patterns, we were impressed.
Next up was Ghost Rider, and we fast-forwarded to the end of Chapter 6, with a panning shot away from an RV. We often see moire in the grille of the RV, but the BD-P1500 handled it perfectly again. We also looked at Tony Bennett: American Classic, which is actually on the disc in 1080i, which forces the BD-P1500 to deinterlace everything. We did notice some issues on this disc. For example, at the beginning of Chapter 7 there's a clapperboard with horizontal lines, and jaggies show up all over each of them. Jaggies showed up on the DMP-BD50, but they were much more subtle. Of course, very few discs are in 1080i natively, but it does give some indication that the issues we saw in test patterns can occur in program material. And we should note that the aforementioned issues will only be present when the player is set in 1080p mode, so if your HDTV has solid 1080i deinterlacing or can properly accept a 1080p signal at 24 frames per second, you may be avoid some of the problems we described.
When the BD-P1500 was first released, it was plagued with disc compatibility errors that made it impossible to load some movies. After several firmware updates, the vast majority of those issues are gone; we threw a wide variety of discs at the BD-P1500 and it didn't run into a single error. That means we're mostly willing to look past the BD-P1500's earlier troubles, although we'd add that there's no way to know if more compatibility errors will show up on newer releases.
Load times were just a tad slower compared to the newest standalone Blu-ray players. Mission Impossible: III loaded in about 29 seconds, which is average. Java-heavy discs naturally took a good deal longer--Spider-Man 3 loaded in 1 minute, 50 seconds. Similarly, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest loaded in 2 minutes, 3 seconds; the newer BD-P2500 loaded the same movie about ten second faster. While these speeds are solid for a standalone player, they still don't compare with the superfast PS3, which consistently loads discs in a fraction of the time standalone players do.
Standard DVD performance
DVDs are still cheap and plentiful, so the BD-P1500 DVD performance remains an important factor. We started off our DVD tests with the HQV test suite on DVD, and the Samsung performed admirably at first, passing the initial resolution test and displaying the full detail of DVD. The next jaggies tests were only mediocre, with significant jaggies showing up on a test with three pivoting lines. We were also disappointed to see the BD-P1500 fail a test with scrolling titles, as the titles looked jerky and difficult to read--most players pass this test. On the upside, the BD-P1500 had no problem with the difficult 2:3 pull-down test, successfully kicking into film mode in about a second.
Switching to actual program material, we looked at the opening sequence of Star Trek: Insurrection and the BD-P1500 correctly did its 2:3 pull-down processing, as the hulls of the boats and the curved railings looked smooth. We did notice some subtle jaggies on the text of the opening credits, but the same jaggies were present on the DMP-BD50, although they weren't on the PS3. Next up was Seabiscuit, and sadly the BD-P1500 performed quite poorly on the introduction, with a few scenes marred by jaggies appearing all over the screen. In other words, videophiles may feel the need for a separate DVD player if they choose the BD-P1500.