Samsung BD-2550/BD-P2500 Master Thread - Page 119

I also have a refurb 2550 coming from eoutletcanada. It showed out of stock online, but I gave them a call and they manually pushed it through instead of putting me on the waitlist for the next shipment. Good customer service in my opinion. They also have very good ebay feedback. I was originally going to purchase the 1500 from them on ebay but went with the 2550 through them directly. After reading this thread, I think I'll be overall pleased with my purchase.

What is the general consensus of the current best firmware version to use? The newest one? After reading, it seems like the newest one has some problems.

Thanks.

I have used the newest FW and have not experienced any problems.

I tried calling and was told that there is a waiting list with over 20 names. The person said that I couldn't order over the phone even if they did have them in stock, everything had to be done through their website. I tried giving CC info etc, no deal It looks like I'll be waiting until my name comes up, which looks like 2 weeks.

John

Thanks. I guess I can attribute hearing the problems to the online forum effect. Normally only people who post are people who have problems.

John:
I didn't order directly over the phone, I ordered online, but while I was on the phone, he did something to let me order online. He told me to click the add to cart button at a specific time while we were on the phone. Guess I just got lucky.

I just received my P-2550 and it does not play "3:10 to Yuma." Is this some type of recurring problem?

Interesting about 3:10. I have no problems with it on the 2500. But this is the second report with a 2550. No idea. As far as recurring problems playing discs the thread does not show this to be a problem.

I posted this in response earlier:


From here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post15971126

I was lucky enough to score today a Samsung BD-P2500 from the Circuit City blowout at $187 out the door. It has no remote control, but more on that later.

I figured what the hell, since I could not get this type of player at a cheaper price anywhere, anyway. I was by no means looking to get one, but i could not pass it up(even minus the remote).

Even though I do not have a remote, which I am thinking on buying from Samsung directly, or trying to program a $5 remote I got from CC that belonged to the Samsung 7.1 Home theater setup they were selling which included a bluray player(don't know if that is possible yet). No luck just trying to turn it on with that remote, but I am not licked yet. If it is programmable via a manual on Sammy's website, I will try to program either the Bluray button, or the AUX button as a BD 2500).

Anyway, I have a 32A450 connected to this thing for now, and used the ANYNET? setup in order to control it a little bit using the controler from my 32a450. The regular/real one will work much better, without question. But I was able to get the basics done.

I still have to download the manual from Samsung, plus load the Firmware update on a USB flashdrive. Amazingly, this I did not know, but my Samsung 32a450 will accept 1080p, but of course, will not display it(1366x768p Max/native resolution).

I have no Blu-ray's, but I played back a DVD-R(HQ original 480i digital 16:9 broadcast recorded at SP onto a DVD-R) I made on my Phillips DVD Recorder of Super Bowl XLIII, and it looked REAL GOOD upconverted. I was surprised, but it did not look bad at 1080p through HDMI.

Anyway, pleased so far, but I do have some questions, if they can be answered:

1. I will have my Sammy connected via 6.1 analog output from the back to my Yamaha HTR5590. I have older Polk RM7200 speaker setup with sub. Through my receiver, I have the front 3 speakers set at LARGE because they are connected to the subwoofer first, then to my receiver from the subwoofer(this according to Polk's reccomendations). I have the back set at small.

Should I set the audio in the menu on the sammy to the same? LARGE fronts, and center, and SMALL surround back? Or is there a better way.

2. My Sammy 2500 was made in 10/2008. On the back it is followed by the XAA label. What is the difference between those that are XAA and those that are not? If there is any difference at all?

3. My software version is as follows: 080919.02_091108B0_1254.08_XAA This is through the system info part of the menu.

My question is it better to download the latest firmware/software onto a USB Flashdrive, and get not only DTS MASTER DECODING and HD NETFLIX SUPPORT, or will it cause more problems that it solves? Meaning, are there some out there saying, "Boy, I wish I could just go back to the older version of the software/firmware, and get rid of these headaches. It worked just PERFECT(minus DTS MA and HD Netflix) up until then.

Also, is it better to use a USB 2GB flashdrive, or burn the firmware upgrade to a CD, or IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!!!(I just watched a replay of MeatBalls with Bill Murray, which I had not seen since I was about 12 years old)?

Also, any suggestions from those who may have my Sammy 32A450(or maybe a larger Sammy with a Blu-Ray connected via HDMI) for getting a better picture through adjusting some of the settings on the TV, and Blu-Ray player will be greatly appreciated.

Thanx in advance.

This won't be as detailed as it could be, as I'm about to retire for the evening (very long day) but I wanted to get you going in the right direction. Also, I'm sure the more knowledgable members here will chime soon.

1. You won't be hurting anything by connecting your satellite speakers to your AVR and connection your subwoofer to your AVR via RCA cable. You'll wake that sub up when you do so. Try it, you'll like it. Then, set the speaker size to "small" in the menu section of the 2500. Oh, and start by setting your AVR's speaker crossover at 80. I think 100 or 120 might be where they need to be given your set up.

2. Short answer: don't worry about the XAA stuff, there's no real end-user relevance.

3. Load fw version 2.4 via .iso disc, and follow the on-screen instructions carefully. I use Sonic to burn the .iso image.

Hope this helps.

For majority of AVRs out there, AVR's cross over setting has no effect on 5.1/6.1/7.1 analog input. It's the player's cross over setting that matters. And unless you connect all 7.1 and enable all 7.1 speakers in player setup, you can't use mixed speaker sizes without hearing poping sound from time to time, something unique to Samsung players with multi-ch analog outs.

I just bought the BD-P2550 this morning and was wondering how I know which update I have. I did what it says to check the system info, but all that comes up is S/W with a bunch of numbers. How do I know which version the firmware is? The player has a manufacture date of 01-2009. I just want to know which version is on it already before I update it.

I've been using the latest firmware for the last week and haven't had a single issue. The four BDs I tried played with no problem:

- Cars - Purchased
- The Shining - Purchased
- The Dark Knight - Netflix
- Tropic Thunder - Netflix

I have My Name is Bruce at home from Netflix, but haven't watched it yet.

I've tried several DVDs, both purchased and from Netflix and they all played with no issues. I also ripped a few to recordable media to see how the player responded to them and had no issues on DVD-R, DVD+R or DVD+R DL. I did have one copied disc freeze a couple of times in one section, but it did that on another player, too, so I assume it was a bad burn or a bad rip.

Neflix Watch Now has functioned fine except for The Parrots of Telegraph Hill, which appears to be something at Netflix's end - I was actually testing it for another poster here and experienced the same issue he did.

I only had one instance where the main player screen wouldn't display. Simply switching my TV to another source and back again resolved the issue.

I just bought a Harmony 610 remote for my system to replace my older Sima touchscreen and it works well overall (see the end of the post for my comments).

Overall, I'm very satisfied. I'd like to see future MP3 and JPEG support, but it's not a deal-breaker.

-----------------------------

My experience with the Harmony 610 remote:

The Good:

- I chose that model over one higher up because the 610 has hard buttons for the red, green, yellow and blue function buttons. The buttons overall seemed better laid out than some other models, too.

- While it doesn't have RF, it seems to be better about getting a response out of my D* HR21 DVR. I could never get it to work properly on IR with any other remote. I will miss not having to actually point the remote at the DVR to control it, though.

- It only controls 5 devices, but that's all I have. The software also makes it very easy to add or remove devices. I can always dump the old SD DVR in favor of another device if needed.

- I really dig the "Watch TV", "Watch Movie", "Listen to Music" hot buttons. Now I can set up to watch DirecTV, watch a movie on the BD player or listen to XM/Sirius music with one button press. I could kind of do that before with my old Sima remote, but it was a bit more clumsy and the macros were a pain to control. The process on the Harmony 610 was very easy, despite a few glitches (as noted below).

- I only paid $79.96 for it at my local Walmart. One of the stores had it for $89.97, so I went to the one I eventually bought it at because I knew it was cheaper there. I'm not sure why the prices were different at the two Walmarts barely 5 minutes from each other. The had another model higher up, but at nearly double the price, I couldn't see enough of an upgrade other than capability for two extra devices and a built in rechargeable battery instead of using AAAs. The other model also didn't have dedicated color function buttons for my DVR and Blu Ray player (both have that same red, green, yellow, blue setup).

The Bad:

- I did have to do a lot more tinkering with the 610's programming to get it to work with the Vizio, though. It doesn't seem to fully understand Vizio's source switching very well, but I think I've got it down, now. In defense of the remote, the Vizio method of source switching is kind of a hodge-podge. You have a single button that can cycle through the sources, but individual source keys, as well. The problem is, the source keys are for the type of input, not a specific one. So, if you have three HDMI ports, the HDMI button takes you to the last one you were on and further presses cycles you though them. The remote does remember what devices you last used, so it doesn't try to switch the input on the TV if you start up the same device group. It also didn't know a delay was needed after powering up the TV before the source could be switched. I had to add that manually. Since Vizio is a pretty popular brand and they all seem to work roughly the same way, it's a mystery why it didn't work better than it did straight off.

- I also had to manually add volume control for my AVR to the DVR, 2500 and older DVR modes. That's something it should have done automatically, since it specifically asks how I'll control the volume. Instead, it only added that control to the AVR controls - it didn't even override the controls for the TV volume on that device. In fact, volume wasn't even an option in the button menus for the other devices. I had to add a new entry, then use the AVR remote to program the code function.

- The select button in the middle of the arrow pad is really tiny. The whole arrow pad and select button combo is so small, my thumb covers the whole thing - and I have skinny thumbs. As a result, I have to be careful not to press an arrow key when I'm trying to hit select in the middle. I've been OK with it, but the select button should either be bigger or raised up more to make it easier to press.

- It makes me wonder why the software can't detect when the remote is connected via USB when you're ready to sync. Because it seems oblivious to that, every time I hit the "sync" button after making a change, it has to put up the screen that tells me to "make sure the remote is connected before starting the process". It's a minor nit, but I would really rather save hitting OK an extra time if the remote is already connected. When you're tweaking setting and the "soft button" controls, it's a pain to have to keep hitting that extra "OK" button.



Overall, though, the remote works great, has a lot of options. If you don't need RF, this model offers great value for the features.

If I was at home in front of my player I could give you better instructions. However, go to the main menu and then select I believe it is system settings or setup. From there you should see an option for FW updates. Select that and it will tell you what FW you have. It will prompt you before you proceed to load the new FW so that should not be a problem. I am telling you this from memory so some of this information may be incorrect.

Hey guys updated the new firmware,was all excited about it,put in step brothers on blu,it kept making a grinding noise and wouldnt play,"ok i thought it was the disc",put in the dark knight on blu,makes same noise said "no disc " pop the the disc tray open,"now i was worried" so i put in the hulk on regular dvd,same thing,grinding noise,and said no disc ,im taking it back tonight,does anyone know what the problem is?They have no more in stock at any of my bestbuys,so im getting my money back,im just glad i kept my pioneer bdp-51fd. i wanted to compare the 2 side by side,but i never got the chance to,espically the upconversion.If anyone can tell me the problem i would appreciate it thxs........

Yes and no.

I work from home and have listened to Pandora via the 2550 for many hours, almost daily, over nearly 3 weeks now. The skipping is spotty, but occurs several times a day, every day. Annoying when a tune you're digging ceases playing without warning! I've recently upgraded my router and cable modem, have the 2550 wired to the router via ethernet, I get ALL the Netflix signal bars when streaming an HD flick (though only 10 of 13, i think, when streaming SD content), and Netflix never hiccups, quality is very good on my 65" screen, so... I'm using the latest firmware, and never used the 2550 with whatever FW came installed in the box so I have no experience with any other FW.

Not that it's a likely cause for my Pandora woes, I suspect my 2550 was a "customer return/repack by Samsung/returned to Best Buy to be sold as new", for the manf. date was 9/2008 and the player was a bit dusty and had no plastic wrapping at all around the player (odd, since every prior new device I've bought has some material wrapped around it?). I bought it as "new" 3 weeks ago.

So did everyone's 2550 come plastic-wrapped? Anyone not having the Pandora issue? I did read in this thread, I believe, that the latest FW created the Pandora skipping problem. I wonder if there's some connection with manf. dates and FW version? I'm certainly convinced FW is the culprit, any idea when we can expect an update? I know this is hardly the reason anyone would buy a 2550, except I could've bought a 2500 and saved some pennies. Might still happen.

go to the samsung website. they will show you a video on updates. i believe the first numbers of the firmware reflect the date it has. year month day - example for today :09 03 06

Will be picking one up tomorrow at BB, one of the stores in my area had one left, so they are holding it for me. Hopefully it will be worth the wait....

Has anybody compared this unit (2500/2550) to the Pioneer BDP-51?
They are so close in pricing that it would almost be un-wise to not have compared them both...

Here is the version number, release date, and what was reported by System Information on my 2550, for each of the updates so far:

2.0 2008/10/23 081017.02_052808-1_1254.08_XAA
2.1 2008/12/02 081126.31_052808-1_1254.08_XAA
2.3 2008/12/31 081230.01_052808-1_1254.08_XAA
2.4 2009/01/06 090104.01_052808-1_1254.08_XAA

I suspect the numbers following the the first underscore ("_") in the system info are unique to each machine (they're certainly not part of the release ID). I have used the USB key installation method exclusively and have had no problems whatsoever.

was it working fine before the update? i'm expecting one and wasn't sure if i should update it right away or wait a while.

I bought it at best buy,they had 2 left,it didnt work before the update either,i took it back late last night and had the best buy guys check it,they said it was a bad dvd drive,so i got my money back.........

I'm going to pick on you because yours is the latest post of this type. I don't mean to come down on you, but here's my soapbox:

I see these post from people who see one or two comments about bricked players, yet seem to ignore the dozens of successes. Not only that, but it seems like there is no real common thread on what goes wrong when an update does bad things.

The fact is, if the latest firmware were bricking players left and right, the thread would be full of gripes - and that's taking into account that most people only post when stuff does go wrong.

I think it's safe to say the latest firmware is fine overall. If it bricks the player, it's probably either a) a bad copy of the firmware b) a bad install or c) a bad player. If it's a or b you can try again. If it's c, you probably are likely either having problems already or will be having them at some point no matter what you do.

I'd say the benefits of most of the upgrades (like Netflix, Pandora, resolution of some disc reading issues, more recordable media recogition and internal advanced audio decoding) have outweighed the bulk of the negatives.

Hey guys-if you go back 80 or so pages you could see my tale of woe when I tried to do a firmware update with a cd and how it bricked my BD-P2550/2500-yes-it's a hybrid unit-a 2550 case with 2500 guts. Since then I've done 3 firmware upgrades with a usb flashdrive and had no problems-methinks that's the best way to go with this unit.

Thanks for the clarification on CDV. Now the bad news. I tested Samsung 2500 with the latest firmware. it DOES NOT play Video CDs (VCD). But based on the performance and the price I paid ($279 + taxes), I am going to keep this.

-iKNOWN

Tell us more about your opinion on the performance...

In case anyone else is having trouble programming the remote with Panasonic plasmas, I couldn't get any of the four codes in the manual to work either. I started at 00 and started working my way up and 13 worked on my 42" PX80/HD18.

Is anyone else having an issue with Pandora, what happens is it plays a song from one of my radio stations, then when it goes to the next song, sometimes it starts a song, and like skips after a few seconds to a new song, sometimes twice before playing a whole song again...

Anyone having this?

You seem to indicate you can select speaker size through the analog input with your Yamaha 6.1 AVR. If so, that is a good thing. Do you have 6 speakers plus a sub or 5 speakers plus a sub connected? The 2550 is either 5.1 or 7.1 output so the number of speakers in your system is going to affect how you use the analog outputs.

If your Yamaha allows for setting speaker size through the analog input and you have 5 speakers connected then I would set the player to large for front, center and side surround and then set the rear surround to off. If you have 6 speakers then you should enable all 7 channels (to large) in the player and then combine the rear surround channels with a Y cable and attach it to the rear channel input of your AVR.

By setting all channels to large in the player full range sounds are outputted on each channel and then your AVR will take care of bass management to some degree. If your front speakers are full size and your center and surrounds are small you can set your AVR accordingly and it will redirect the low frequencies for the center and surrounds to your sub.

If your sub has an RCA connection I would try the same hookup that has already been suggested and that would be to connect your front and center speakers to your AVR and connect your sub to the sub woofer output of your AVR with an audio cable.

I would encourage you to update the firmware. The few issues of screwing it up seem to have occurred when done from a CD. I personally think it is easier to use a USB drive and there doesn't seem to be any reports of problems with that method. There shouldn't be with CD either but all the reported probems seem to have been through CD.

So far the perfroemance seems to be satisfactory. Though not as quick as PS3 for loading time, it is quite okay. I compared the load time with my Pioneer 51FD and Samsung is slightly better. In terms of picture quality, Samsung 2500 and Pioneer 51FD are tied. Both are very good in SD upconversion.

Pioneer seems to have better build quality, but Samsung is not that bad. The added features like Netflix streaming are considered as a 'bonus'.

Now I am returning my Pioneer 51FD which I bought last week.

-iKNOWN

Yeah, I tried one on mine and it didn't work, but I figured it was a bad burn. Of course, video CDs are quite possibly the worst attempt at making an audio format work for video since those Fisher Price video cameras that used audio cassettes. I'm thinking transfer the stuff to DVD-R/+R if you really want to watch stuff you already have in the format. Don't bother making new ones, especially with as cheap as DVD burners and media are now.

I have a 2550 that I just bought today at BB and when I hit the button to open the dvd drawer it is real noisy almost like something rubbing or grinding. Any idea's on what it could be or has anyone else had this problem ? I don't even know if its a problem, maybe some are just noisy.

My bd-p1500 has no noise at all when opening or closing the dvd drawer.

Thanks for any help

I forgot to ask, how good is netflix streaming movies ? I know there are variables such as how good your internet connection is and so forth, but say with an average connect speed, how good is the movie quality ?