LG bd-530 - Page 4

Well, we aren't the ones who bought and kept products that we are dissatisfied with, are we?

lol nice subject change, but I'll bite. I mostly use it for streaming and playing my DivX HD rips (AVI, MKV, MP4, etc...) which it does flawlessly, so I kept it for that. I know that these firmware issues will eventually be sorted out, so I'm just going to complain a little in the meantime. There's a 95-page thread here on these Blu-ray players, filled with people just like me who like the product for enough reasons not to get rid of it, but as customers, still have the right to complain when it doesn't perform as advertised. Are you implying that we should not talk about such things? Then what's the point of this whole forum? To only talk about the positive aspects of these players? Come on now.

One of the reasons why a few two year old players work with most disks is that the manufacture was bending the rules regarding copy protection. They were 1.1 players and probably the film companies never took the time to check things out. The early Magnavox and other Fuani players had few problems playing all disks. If one checks things out even Fuani had to offer a few firmware updates because certain disks would not play on their machines. The Fuani players also had issues playing some times of DVD+ burned disks. Since copy protection change was built into the Blu-Ray spec I would think that one would want a player that can be upgraded. Yes, a few old players out there will play most disks but there are many others that will not and have not been supported by their manufactures.

Can someone tell me if the front panel display is greenish or amber? It's hard to tell from pics.

TIA!

more green than amber. It's not it's strong suit!

Hey DeAd MiKe!
Can you possibly give me some more info about this? The only fix I found so far (for non-working mkv files) is to completely re-encode them using DVDFab! Are you saying there is another way to make them playable? Please LMK :-)

Remuxing with mkvmerge 4.0.0 usually does the trick. You can try it with later versions, but then you have to manually click on the tracks and then click Extras, and set Compression to "none." - Basically, it's less time consuming if you use version 4.0.0 because it will have the correct settings enabled by default. Let me know how it goes.

I just bought the bd530 from walmart for $65, so far its AWESOME. I have had no problems playing my mkvs on it.

I was wondering should i update to the latest firmware? I havent even checked if it has the latest firmware just thought i would check with everybody here. Thanks

Anyone know if any retail B&M stores are selling this tomorrow? I thought I saw some BF ads with it, but now I can't seem to find it anywhere! Frustrating!
Thanks
Mike

If you haven't already tried getting it at walmart, try this link, then copy this javascript in the same browser window to see if any walmarts around you has it in stock. 85% of the stores around me were soldout, i had to go to a couple different ones yesterday until i finally got one.

javascriptpenFindInStore(15140696)

Walmart BD530

Thanks for the tip TheNeck. That trick worked for me, and it said it was in stock in our local Walmart. I called them to verify and found they were selling it for $75 instead of the $65 it says online. They said those are online-only deals. Will this be $65 in store tomorrow?
Thanks
Mike

Is walmart open today?

Every walmart i went to had it for $65, which is why everybody was soldout. So im not sure why they are selling it for $75 at your walmart.

I assume it is open. I talked to someone at the local Walmart. Hmmm, maybe it will be $65 tomorrow. They said they had a whole end-cap full of them there. This is in Plover, WI.
Thanks
Mike

Just yesterday it was $79.99 on amazon, glad to see amazon dropping the price for BF.

So I bought this because I think I need a standalone player that can do MKV files off of USB and PS3 doesn't support mkv.
I will eventually get a PS3 for any wifi needs..

did I make a good choice? Do I NEED wifi or any of those internet apps if the TV I have will have em anyway?

I think you made an AWESOME choice, so far every mkv i have tried on the bd530 has worked without any problems, which is the main reason i got the bd530. So for $70 this player is a steal.

As for your 2nd question i have no experience using the built-in network connection on the bd530.

If I can just hook up a harddrive to it I think it'd be an awesome media center

the TV will have builtin netflix

Just installed the 530 yesterday. I couldn't hook it up through the HDMI cable to my older Onkyo 705, like I did with the PS3 it replaced. Possibly a handshake issue with the Onkyo. Hooked up straight to the TV and had to run a digital coax to the receiver. Everything seems to work great. Major plus in ease of use of the PS3, which had a very low WAF. I can use the 530 remote to turn the TV (LG60PK550) on and off, and I just change the input from HDMI 1 to 3, which is the side input on the TV (I need to get another ninety degree HDMI cable from monoprice as the TV is close to flush mounted on the wall).

Through the receiver (for cable) I have the HDMI audio out set to mute, so that the 5.1 surround speakers only are used. I have to hit the mute on the remote each time I watch a disk. The upconversion seems OK, comparable to my Oppo 971 and Pioneer BDP 320, which are both just below my Toshiba HD XA2. I changed the output from 1080P/24 to 1080P/60 for DVD and I think it helps, but I am not sure it really does anything different.

I have used a USB flash drive through the front port to play a picture slideshow, which worked well. Still need to check out audio performance, and maybe an external hard drive with other video files (which to date I really don't have anything to watch as I don't download internet TV stuff). Also will try my camcorder to check out AVCHD performance. No plans at present to run any cat5 cable to it.

So far I am very impressed that for $65 it has replaced the PS3 with at least as good video quality and is much easier to use. Going to pick up another and replace the Oppo in the den. Thanks to Winston9332 and others that reviewed it, hopefully it will last until the Oppo 93 becomes mainstream and affordable (at around $200) sometime in the far future ;-)

How good is the dvd picture quality on the LG BD530 when comparing it to the Panasonic DMP-BD65?

I don't have the Panny, but I do have a Pioneer BDP-320 and the picture quality is not near as good on the LG as it is on the Pioneer, IMO, (LG is straight out of the box).

However, I also have a Samsung BD-P1600 and the picture quality on the LG is much better.

I haven't attempted to tweak settings on the LG yet. It was $65 at Wal-Mart so I bought it for my daughter's room. But, I will probably end up putting the Samsung in her room since the PQ is better on the LG and since she ripped the front flap off of the Samsung when she was 2 (regardless. it was just a matter of time before that crappy plastic flap broke off of the Samsung).

Thanks DeAd MiKe
I tried that version and noticed that "Compression" field in "Extra options" is grayed out and nothing selected in the drop-down box! What am i doing wrong?

I just picked one of these up last night from Walmart to go with my new LG50PK250 I bought from Sears last week. I paid $699 for the 50" plasma and $65 for the BR player. $764 for both, not bad. Now I just need to find a great deal on a surround sound setup, maybe Onkyo. I'm still trying to figure out how Im going to hide wires since the living room has no attic. Guess I need to read up on the wireless setups. Anyone know of any hacks for the BD530? Netflix support would be nice.

Nothing! If you use the version I suggest (4.0.0), the setting will be good by default. It may even be grayed out - don't worry - it will work. If you use a different version, you have to actually change the settings. So, if you're using 4.0.0, you don't have to actually do anything - it's already done. Just mux it and you're good to go.

OK -- I see! The only problem is -- I tried that and it didn't fix the file. Here's what I noticed (don't know if it's related to the issue, but seems to be some consistency). When I check "Media Info" for this non-working mkv I get this:

For all the files that are working fine I see this:
Even after running non-working file through mkvmerge 4.0.0 I'm still showing 5.1 under Format profile and Muxing mode.

Will this player play/stream .mkv files over the network port? I keep my files hosted on a server and don't really want to mess around with coping back and forth to a USB drive.

I've had the player for a week now and watched a few movies. I'm not sure how well the upscaling is on the DVDs, but I wasn't wowed when playing something like Ponyo, for instance. It wasn't as bright and vibrant as I remembered it, but that could be me. It may have something to do with the machine's settings as well.

Dropping down the brightness seems to be a must, just one setting. I noticed a graininess when playing Blu-Rays out of the box, but dropping the sharpness fixed that. It seems to be a decent player, but I don't have much experience with BR players other than the PS3, which I think is a great player.

I ordered 4 BRs yesterday from Amazon (Dark Knight and Batman Begins for $5 each, and Time Bandits and The Mist for $6 each) as well as the first three seasons of Mad Men Blu-Ray for $9.99 each. So we'll see how they look.

My 16 month old son has been using it more than anyone. It plays DVDs on a loop, so we while were were busy around the house yesterday putting up the tree and stuff we popped in a Go Diego Go DVD and it played all episodes and restarted again. It was on most of the day. My 360 was our last movie player and it was too loud to be used for any extended period of time.

my wife and I decided to visit Wal Mart last night at about 12am. We desperately needed some necessities before the weekend is up and thought going at midnight would be the best time to avoid the crowds. We must have been right because the place was dead. Of coarse the store was in complete disarray from the chaos earlier. I was hoping they still had this player for $65 and the first thing I did was go back to electronics. However they had none in sight. I then went over to the TV's and tucked behind a TV box was 1 BD-530. I was like NO WAY and grabbed the last one as far as I can tell. I had the teller do a price check just to make sure and was still $65. After a bit of drama with the wife (Do you really need another blu ray player?) she let me buy it.

My usage is brief. I removed my Samsung 1400 and put the BD-530 in its place. First thing I noticed is it loads up quicker. Also moving the cursor around the menu seems faster and smoother. Last but not least its 100% stable on the 2 disc I tried.

I played a DVD for a few minutes and its not half bad. I think the 1400 was better but not much. Its hard to say without doing a complete A-B comparison.

Build quality is not exactly good but not bad either. Seems indifferent to a lot of other brands sold today.

I would say overall its pretty average and a worthy replacement for some of the 1st and 2nd generation players. In brief not bad at all for $65. Hopefully it actually holds up for a while.

Ah, profile 5.1 - yeah, a lot of hardware doesn't support support profile 5.1 - but never fear. Pretty sure you can change the profile to 4.1 using mkvtoolnix.

If you can't figure it out with mkvtoolnix, a program called H264info (http://sourceforge.net/projects/batc...6.zip/download) should have you covered.

You can try multiavchd to try and compress the audio track. That would be alot quicker than compressing the video.

Also, for the others that need to change the profile of their mkv's can try tsmuxer. I think it might be able to do that. Just takes a couple of minutes.

Did somebody say that the 530 doesn't have an audio optical output?
I was ready to buy one til then..