Samsung BD-2550/BD-P2500 Master Thread - Page 189

The Samsung Wireless Dongle is only compatible with the 2009 Samsung Blu-ray players. I am assuming that you are purchasing the BD-P2550 from Best Buy because they never sold the BD-P2500 to the best of my knowledge. The BD-P2550 and BD-P2500 are both 2008 Blu-ray players. You can buy any wireless access point and make any device that has an ethernet port a wireless device. A quick search on Amazon should provide you with several options.

Another option is to purchase an ethernet power adapter kit. This option will allow you to use your houses electrical wiring to transmit the internet. My father-in-law is using this option on his BD-P2550 and this option works great. He purchased the Linksys Kit (200 mbs).. A search of Amazon for "ethernet powerline" should provide you several options.

I believe you should be fine using 5 meter HDMI to DVI cable.

I hope this information helps.

OK, been reading for half an hour now but can't find an answer. I am currently running FW 090104.01 (2.4) on my 2500. I thought I remember reading where there was an issue with v2.5 and Netflix streaming. I don't want to upgrade the FW if there is an issue, but it's getting old replying "no" to the upgrade message every time I power-on the player.

So what's the verdict? Is the latest FW version safe, or should I stay where I'm at? I do a fair amount of streaming.

Thanks for the reply. This is what I've ordered through BB:

Samsung-Factory-Refurbished Blu-ray Disc Player with 1080p Output-BD-P2500/XAA

It is interesting they are selling it.....

If it's working for you (e.g. no "bad" titles, streaming OK), then leave it (don't update). And if they DO come out with another update (rumors persist), DON'T do it until someone can verify it doesn't create more problems than it solves. I treat this player like my iPod now: if it does what I need it to do with whatever firmware version it has, I don't mess with it.

I believe these models have the "guts" (motherboard) of a 2550 inside. That means you should get Netflix AND Pandora. It would be interesting to confirm this with a post after you get it.

This was mentioned quite a while ago-fw 2.6 disabled AVCHD playback-I instantly went back to 2.5.

I'm on fw 2.6 and avchd plays fine.

I've been running FW 2.5v2 (090419.01) since April and have streamed dozens of Netflix shows since then with no problems whatsoever. I forget what was said in this thread, but the problems you are referring to may have been with the first version of 2.5 (090407.01), which was promptly pulled and then replaced with 090419.01.

Having been very happy with my first 2550 that I purchased over a year ago, I ordered a second 2550 from refurbdepot.com (3 weeks ago). It arrived in good shape but would not load any disk, but I could get into the setup menu and determined that it had FW 2.5v2 (090419.01). I called Samsung to get it repaired and actually got someone to email me a pre-paid UPS shipping label. I got it back yesterday, and the repair history sheet shows that the mainboard (AK92-01749A) and BD-ROM drive (AK97-02406A) had been replaced and that the firmware had been upgraded. When I looked in System Information I found that it had FW 2.6 (090622.01), which is the version that had been pulled in July. It appears to work fine (I only tried one DVD and one BD -- will do more thorough testing this weekend), but it seems peculiar that Samsung would install firmware that was pulled from their web site almost three months ago. Perhaps they now believe it to be perfectly fine, in which case you'd think they'd make it available again. Puzzling.

By the way, the unit I got back was the exact same chassis (and S/N) that I had sent; they just replaced most of the guts. (Someone had asked about this a week or two ago.)

Thanks for the replies.
Is there a way to revert back to V2.4 if I have a problem?

how do i determine what fw version I have i'm in system info there are a lot of #'s

I applogize if this is not the right form forum for this question, but I have a BD-2500, and all the Blu-Ray titles I have viewed have been in the wide screen format with the horizontal bars. Are all blu-ray disks formatted this way, or is it a configuration on my player?

Yes, many posters to this thread have reported that you can revert by using the USB (or the ISO/CD-ROM) update method. Old USB firmware files for the 2550 (and 2500) can be downloaded from my Windows Home Server. Instructions for doing this can be found in my post #3748.

The first six digits of the firmware version number reported by System Information are the date it was created, in YYMMDD format. Here's how these dates map to the conventional version numbers:

080704 - 1.0 (original)
081017 - 2.0
081126 - 2.1
081230 - 2.3
090104 - 2.4
090407 - 2.5
090419 - 2.5 (v2)
090622 - 2.6

There may have been a version 2.2, but I never saw it (as you can see, updates were being released pretty frequently last fall and winter).

Blu-ray discs are released in the aspect ratio in which the original movie was produced, which is usually either 1.85:1 (US/UK standard widescreen) or 2.39:1 (CinemaScope and Panavision). A 16x9 HDTV has an aspect ration of 1.78:1 (16/9 = 1.77777), so in order to view the entire frame without distorting (stretching) the image, the black bars must be inserted. Many TVs allow you to zoom in on the image to eliminate the bars, but this will also push some of the image off the left and right edges of the screen. The 16x9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio is a reasonable compromise between these widescreen movie formats and the SDTV (and original silent film) ratio of 4:3 (1.33:1). Over a dozen different aspect ratios have been used for films (check here), and any material that is not 1.78:1 (which is pretty much everything that is not produced for HDTV broadcast or cable) will require either horizontal black bars at the top and bottom (letterboxing) or vertical black bars on the left and right (pillarboxing) to fill in the unused space. Otherwise you will either get a distorted image (e.g., wheels will look like ovals and people will look overly fat or skinny) or you must lose some of the image (as was the case for "Fullscreen" pan-and-scan DVDs made for viewing on old 4:3 SDTVs).

FWIW my 2500 stopped playing blu-rays a little while back. I tried to download the latest firmware using a cd and the player would not accept it. Retried using the ethernet port and the player showed a firmware of April 2009 and said I was up-to-date. The player would still not play blu-ray discs, but would play everything else. I reset to factory defaults and downloaded latest firmware(which again said April 2009) and the player works great.

[quote=wobbegong;17243640]Blu-ray discs are released in the aspect ratio in which the original movie was produced, which is usually either 1.85:1 (US/UK standard widescreen) or 2.39:1 (CinemaScope and Panavision). / QUOTE]

Is there any speculation that Blu-ray dics will ever be released in the 16:9 (1.778:1)format to fit HDTV's?

[quote=dfitz40;17244716]
Is there any speculation that Blu-ray dics will ever be released in the 16:9 (1.778:1)format to fit HDTV's?

[quote=dfitz40;17244730]
many have been, are, and will be.

Discs of TV shows (e.g., Lost, Dexter, Weeds) ARE released in 16:9, because that's how the shows were produced. I doubt that movies that were created in other aspect ratios will be reformatted to 16:9 for BD, because that would mean that some of the image would have to be discarded (as was/is the case for pan-and-scan "Fullscreen" DVDs), and I suspect that most people would not want that (I prefer to see everything the director intended us to see). If you want a larger image (not counting the black bars), then get a larger TV.

Well I decided to try the upgrade, now I can't stream HD movies.
I'm getting a message on most movies that says I don't have enough bandwidth (8 MBs Comcast). The few movies that do attempt to play take 10 minutes to load, then when they start to play, the screen goes blank.

I'm hoping that NetFlix is having a problem. I'll try again tomorrow.

I've never heard of bluray firmware causing this... most likely it is comcast or netflix. Try running a speedtest on one of your computers to see if the problem is comcast.

DSL reports is showing me 7900 Kb/s down and 2300 up. I still can't watch anything in HD and even the SD stuff is low bandwidth quality now. Against my better judgment, I installed Silverlight on my PC. I don't have a problem streaming HD on the PC so I don't think it's NetFlix.

I tried unplugging the 2500 for a minute and then tried streaming again - same thing.

Which upgrade (from what version to what version)? If you revert to the previous version, does the problem remain?

I have a recurrent problem on my 2500, which I have now reproduced many times. I probably wouldn't have noticed it watching just movies, but in watching streamed TV series it happens quite frequently. If I stop an episode in mid-stream, the information is saved and the menu displays a menu option "resume watching episode 7" (or whatever). However, when I resume (the next evening usually) the episode starts up at the point I left off and the screen then immediately goes blank. I then have to turn the player off and on again to do anything else (which takes a minute or so). If I then try to resume, or even to start that same episode from the beginning, I get the blank screen again. However, if cycle the power and erase the system memory by reformatting, and then resume, all is well. This only happens with streamed content. I have never experienced any blackouts while watching DVDs. Has anyone else experienced this. Any guesses on a permanent solution?

-Doug

Hi guys --

Does anyone know where I can get the CD ISO for the 2.6 BD-P2500 firmware upgrade that Samsung pulled back in July? I've been searching everywhere and I can't find it to save my life. I know they pulled it for a reason, but I heard it fixes the menu problems I've been having with the Ghostbusters blu ray.

I also want to see if it'll solve this problem...I have two blu rays that incorporate seamless branching (both coincidentally from Universal -- King Kong and American Gangster), and for some reason the video falls behind just enough to be distracting. My setup is as follows -- a Samsung LN52B630, the Onkyo HT-S6100 (with the A/V Sync set to 100ms, and it's still off), and the Samsung BD-P2500. Everything else I've watched has been fine.

Any help anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated!

-Brian

I mentioned how to get the USB firmware files just a few posts back (#5653), in which I referenced my original post (#3748) which has the instructions for downloading these files. (Those instructions are a bit out of date -- the recent firmware files for the 2500 are there as well. But all I have are the USB files, not the CD ISO files; I find writing to a USB key to be far easier than burning a CD.)

OK, I went from 2.5 back to 2.4 on my 2500 (thanks to wobbegong for hosting the files), and did a hard reset (hold down the FF button for 5 secs.). I then had to re-resister my player but now I can stream again. I'm not convinced it was not a NetFlix bandwidth problem, but I could stream without a problem on my P.C.

Now that I know I can revert back to 2.4 if needed, I may try the upgrade again and see if it really is the FW version or if it was NetFlix, but right now I'm happy as-is. Thank you very much to those who offered suggestions or answered my questions.

The 2500 FW version 2.4 I downloaded from you was a compatible CD ISO file. That's how I reloaded my FW.

That's what another person said-but it isn't true-properly authored AVCHD discs that played perfectly with 2.5 would not load with 2.6-so it's the firmware-not the discs.