Official Samsung BD-C5500 master owner's thread - Page 46

The only apps on the system are those that it came with: Netflix, Vudu, Pandora and one other I can't remember.

Only those USB devices formatted in FAT file system (DOS 8.3 volume label) are supported, and it is recommended to use USB devices that support USB 2.0 protocol, 4 MB/sec or faster read/write speed.

For BD-Live you need at least 1GB of freespace but some Apps might need more.

I have 8GB connected and never had issues (but don't use these features often)

Thanks; that's good information. The drive I used is only 1 GB (had it a few years), but appears to be formatted in FAT32 and is rated at speed "Up to 480 Mb/sec."

Perhaps I should buy a bigger drive and try that, but I'm not sure I can properly format it from my Mac...my Disk Utility only gives me two options for non Mac OSs: MS-DOS FAT and something called ExFAT.

I use a USB 500g NTFS - windows 7 formatted drive, with my large MKV videos, so I don't have any file size limits.
I have problems using imbedded subtitles in MKV, but if the subs are in files with the same name of the MKV then the player uses them.
IF the MKV has imbedded chapter stops the player will use them, strange that it will not use my imbedded subs!

How exactly do you accomplish this? For example if I have a file labelled Film.mkv, then would Film.txt be used as the Chapter file?

Also would the same apply for other compatible formats? Like MPG and VOB?

Cheers,
Kurt

Like this:
MovieName.mkv
MovieName.srt

The srt file is just a text file that can be opened with a text editor.

This generation of Samsung Blu-Ray players does not support embedded subtitle tracks in mkv files. It does support a separate subtitle file in .srt format with the same name as the video file. Only one at a time though - you can't select from more than one language without changing the file names.

Since .srt files are text files with a simple time-ordered list of "time code: subtitle text", there is no direct way to convert DVD-type subtitle tracks in video overlay format to .srt text format (one uses video images of the subtitles, the other is plain text). There are some free utilities that attempt to do it by automated image to text conversion using character recognition, but they usually need some interactive help and a lot of editing to fix errors. Fortunately someone has already done this for most popular movies, so just do an internet search for .srt.

My BD-C5500 has been working fine for several months, however when I turned it on today the boot screen came up but the I started getting a flashing pink screen and I cant get to the main screen. I unplugged the player for a few minutes but that made no difference. Any ideas?

When I try to watch a movie via VUDU, with the HD or HDX quality, the movie keeps going to the Loading screen or drops and it says I should watch in Standard. I assume this is based on the size of the HD movie. This also happens when I watch a trailer of a movie, and I select HD. Last night the trailer went for about 10-seconds and then went to the Loading screen...kept on doing this.

I have my BDP hardwired to my router, so no wireless is being used.

My question, should I have a USB Stick plugged in for more memory or something? (Not sure if that is the correct term) Will this fix the problem? If so, how large of a thumb drive should I connect?

Thanks for any help!!

That's a connection speed problem, not a memory problem. Do the usual diagnostics on your network and internet connection to figure out where the bottleneck is. If it's with your ISP, there's not much you can do (except change ISPs), but it may be temporary.

^^
Is this something I do with the BD player? Or, do I need a special program on a computer to check my Internet Diagnostics/Speed/Bottleneck?

Vudu has a diagnostic section on the player app. It will tell you the speed.

Thanks, I will try this.

Does VUDU also tell me what the speed needs to be in order to stream an HD or HDX movie?

I did some more checking today and the composite output doesn't have this problem. There was a power outage the day before I noticed the problem with HDMI, but none of my other equipment was affected (the C5500 was on a surge protector). I'll dig up another cable to try component, which would be better.

Edit: It works normally using the component outputs so the problem is only with HDMI. At least I don't need to look for another player.

For what its worth i stream netflix on both my computer and somethings through the blu-ray player. On connection speeds i find my computer makes the most of what is available. Running a test at speedtest do net gets let's say between let's say 1.6 and 2.0 (DSL) . I can get a good at least SD picture (32'' screen). On a good day it may catch a HD stream. Thats on the computer connected to the HDTV. Now on the blu-ray player going into settings under network in there there is a speed test that goes through the Samsung servers. I can only get 1.0 Meg when using this test. Its like the player eats up bandwidth. I find it better to employ the computer for streaming whenever possible.
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About adding a USB stick for more memory. I have added a 4GB USB stick to the rear USB port. I formatted it using Windows 7 64 bit. The blu-ray player sees it and shows it connected with 3.79 or something like that available. I enabled allow all under BD Live in case this allows it to use the USB memory. It seems to have helped the picture quality especially on some AVI disks i burned that were rather poor in quality to begin with. Also seems to have speeded up the boot time a little bit . The netflix APP however is still kind of clunky and takes forever to load the interface although i recall it being even worse WITHOUT the memory stick inserted. One more thing i did was cleared out all APPS EXCEPT for the 5 on the top that are "built in" and can not be deleted. This helps free up space on the 64 meg flash storage built in to the player and gets the load of the limited CPU.

The built-in speed test that contacts the Samsung server in Korea never shows very high speeds. It's not indicative of what you actually get with streaming apps using servers like Netflix and Vudu. It's mainly just for checking your internet connectivity.

I don't think the presence or absence of BD Live memory on a connected USB drive has anything to do with how the built-in apps run. They are stored in the 64 Mbyte flash memory, but they run in RAM and use RAM for buffering.

Ok, someone please tell me what silly mistake I am making.

I am trying to convert my movies to mp4 (h.264) with AAC audio for the dvd player (bd-c5500).

I am using mediacoder, and none of the files will play, I get "Video format is not supported".

Now, if I encode the same movie using iSkysoft converter, it will work just fine.

The reason I want to use mediacoder is that it has a max file size option that I need ot use for my touchpad (cant have over a 2 gb file).

All the files that I convert using either program, play on the touchpad or my computer, but not the dvd player.

Anyone have success with media coder?

Thanks

You are right. I retested last night under ideal conditions making sure iPods , iPhones and the like were off the network . PQ / streaming were good and at least DVD quality .

I guess i can turn off BD live and it would not matter. Also an update on the netflix APP. Once it loads the first time it is zippy after that you can navigate through the APP and things just load. Takes about one minute to load the very first time. This is much better then it ever was before i added the 4 GB USB stick. I have one more Walmart report but i will put it in a new reply.

Special Report: Yesterday 2/2/2012 i stopped at Walmart on way home from work. I noticed Walmart still carries this model (BD-C5500) in stores. However there has been a change in the specs on a later production run(s). The component red,blue, and green RCA ports have been eliminated. This means if your TV lacks HDMI inputs 480i composite is the only other option.
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The player (BD-C5500) i purchased was in September 2010 and has component 1080p output as well as HDMI and composite. Later there was also a 3D version (BD-D5500) that reduced the component output to 480p only.

I think issue maybe that some conversion programs use features that samsung dont support. Thats case with MKV. I now convert everything to MKV using an old version of MakeMKV.

I think you may be a little confused on the model numbers. It's very unlikely that Samsung would change the manufacturing spec on an old model.

The BD-D5500 is a D-series model, this year's version. The BD-C5500 is a C-series model, last year's version. Last year's 3D models were the BD-C5900 and BD-C6900.

I could never get MakeMKV files to work with the Samsung. MakeMKV quickly repackages the DVD mpeg2 video into an mkv container without transcoding. It's fast, but not as compact as transcoding to H.264. Unfortunately the Samsung doesn't seem to like it. Are you saying that you have a version of MakeMKV that does output mkv files that the Samsung plays successfully? What version is it?

v3.4.0 Repunzel works fine.

Often I'll use Handbrake to create the MKV with H.264/AC3 then I'll run it thru Mkvmerge v3.4.0

That's MKVMerge v3.4.0 Rapunzel. I was asking about MakeMKV, which is at version 1.7.1. I think you probably wrote MakeMKV above when you meant to write MKVMerge.

Sorry, Yes I also have MakeMKV 1.6.8 but prefer Handbrake for compression. Either way run everything thru MKVMerge and never have any issues on the 5500

OK, so does anyone know if it's possible to remove the built-in applications in this unit? I'd like to see if I can free up some memory for the new version of Vudu, since putting a flash drive on the unit didn't help.

Thanks...

I checked quickly with MakeMKV 1.7.1, but it's no better - the Samsung still can't ff/rw/skip in mkv files made by MakeMKV. I also prefer to use Handbrake to make mkv files with H.264 compression.

Incidentally, while I was checking this I noticed that firmware version 1025 seems to have fixed the loss of audio in Netflix after playing a local video file. I went back and forth several times playing different video files and then switching back to Netflix, and the audio remained fine.

You can remove all the APPS EXCEPT the 5 recommended up on the top. You have to go into internet @ TV settings. Its under manage APPS in there . A listing will come up with a trash can beside each just click the trash can. Once you delete what can be deleted you will have about 22 MB of RAM used and the rest free out of 64 MB.

Yeap Walmart put a BD-D5300 it appears in the place where a BD-C5500 was supposed to be and the housings are almost exactly alike.

Excellent! I wasn't aware of that part of the system. I went in and removed enough junk (Sudoko on the TV...really?) that Vudu (which also self-updated) now loads OK.

A little more poking and I was even able to disable that insufferable tune that blares whenever the device is turned on/off. This thing just got a lot more usable.

Thanks!