Samsung BD-C5500 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player
Samsung BD-C5500 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player
The Samsung BD-C5500 Blu-ray Player offers Internet@TV, which delivers the best of the web, straight to your HDTV, with downloadable widgets and apps like Blockbuster, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Pandora and more. You can shop online, share pictures, catch up with friends and connect to a wide range of streaming digital content at the touch of a button. It also has wireless LAN built-in. Add to that AllShare, which enables content to be seamlessly streamed between DLNA devices, allowing you to play files stored on your PC or even to use your telephone through your TV.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Perfect for streaming Netflix!
I bought this player specifically so I could watch Netflix instant-play movies (without having use the computer) and it works great. I’ve had it for about a month now and have no complaints. It also plays DVDs without a glitch.
5 Stars The Samsung blu ray player rocks
After doing the research on both Samsung c5500 and LG BD550, finally I picked the Samsung one and it goes with my Samsung LCD TV. I have been a big fan of Samsung and this blu ray play didn’t disappoint me.
First of all, I have read a lot of review saying Avatar wouldn’t play on this machine. Let’s start sharing my experience now. First thing I did is download the firmware update from the Samsung website to my USB drive, then plugged into the player. The update took about 3 minutes to be completed and then it automatically turned off. The next thing I did is to put the Avatar blu ray disc in, then it stuck on the loading page. I turned the machine off again and took the disc out. The next thing I did is to hold the stop button on the player about 3 seconds, then it restarted again. I tried with putting in the Avatar disc again, this time it loaded and stopped on a screen showing the player need another update in order to put the disc, what I did next was very important, you press the FORWARD key on your remote, then it loaded and started playing. Now I am writing the review while I am enjoying the Avatar movie. I am totally satisfied with the quality of the picture and now I am using one remote control for the TV and the blu ray player which I really like about.
If you are looking for an entry level blu ray player with the basic function for blu ray and upscale DVD, this is definitely the one you should go for.
1 Stars Very Disappointed with Samsung
Purchased the Blu-Ray player from Costco last weekend and will be returning it tomorrow. The day I purchased the unit, I spent good 12 hours trying to update the firmware and trying to get all the different so called applications installed/upgraded. For some reason the upgrade process was very slow and painful. It took multiple attempts to get it to the latest version. For some reason the unit kept trying to upgrade between the memory and the Mahjong games, it must have attempted to upgrade just those two games at least 4 times. During this process for some reason the video kept flickering intermittently. I thought after the firmware upgrade that problem would go away but no such luck. The problem continues to occur even when playing regular movies and streaming video. And I’m using the same HDMI cable that I’ve had been using for my regular DVD player, the Sony Blu-Ray Palyer and even the samsung. As soon as I disconnected the Samsung player and connected by old sony dvd player, it worked fine. I guess I’ll be going back to Sony. At least I didn’t have any of these issues with Sony.
2 Stars Great Picture, Weak Parental Controls, Unreliable Networking
Let me start by telling you that I am technical person and using the device was not complicated at all. With that said we had to return the device.
We bought it because it had the ability to be networked and had parental controls. While playing netflix and pandora worked well the interface was clunky and not well laid out.
This unit has the Samsung Allshare capability which is suppose to all you to watch home movies, photos and music. I worked extensively with Samsung to help solve issues but the software does not work reliably. In fact, whether I was on XP, Vista, or Windows 7 it just didn’t work. Samsung will tell you that Windows 7 is not supported and yet it worked the best but not well enough. This ranged from the program working and the content not streaming to crashing itself or the computer.
The good news is that I found something that would network. It’s made from PlayOn. You try it for 14 days at [...]. It has the right idea where the decision making happens on the file server an just does the pushing to the player. The picture quality on this stuff was not good either.
The parental controls were not very good. The parental controls are either on or off. There’s no way to authenticate conditionally on a per show basis. Also, all a kid has to do to get around it is to turn on the player and press the stop button for 10 seconds and it reverts the devices to factory settings which defeats the parental controls.
The device had an exceptional picture and sound seemed really good too. It is definitely a good start just misses some key features that we wanted.
4 Stars Unbelievable Bargain! Everything You Need.
It’s rare that I actually take the time to write reviews, but this Blu-ray deserves one. This is truly a fantastic device. The DVD and Blu-ray functions are just like any other player, but it’s the expanded content where this system shines.
Without a hitch, I was able to stream Netflix, Pandora, and Vudu instantly. Also, I was able to stream videos from my PC with little effort. The only drawback to this is that you can’t mount your PC as a file share; you have to install the Samsung PC Share app. The other downside is that you can’t stream from a PC that gets its content from a file share; it only lets you stream local files. Also, the Samsung PC Share is obviously only for PCs - they don’t make a Mac version.
Other than the requirement for the PC Share software, this box absolutely rocks. It’s attractive, the remote is fantastic, and it’s chalked full of features. Even better, the features continue to expand, as Samsung allows developers to write apps for this system.
Filed under: Blu Ray Player Reviews