BD-UP5000 Universal Player Samsung [OFFICIAL OWNERS THREAD] & FAQ - Page 418

Hmm..very different than the E-mails I get back. Like I said, they hate me. However I have been told several times on the phone in the past 6 mo. or so that they are working on it and it is to be released "soon". I guess we all have different definitions of how long "soon" is.

I emailed Samsung this morning as well regarding the firmware update I've been waiting nearly 6 months for, that I was told 4 months ago would be available "soon". I expect I'll get an automated response back from the Samsungbots in the next 48 hours.

I don't trust that "soon" means what most of us in the real world think it means.... but I think it fair to trust this kind of response as a promise, especially since it included a quote of my original message that listed a bunch of specific non-playable movies.

IF they don't fix it... this is something to bring up later. My fingers are still crossed for a fix "soon"

I got through the last of the prequels last night... So I have now watched everything without any problems. It might be a while before I get to the bonus discs since I have some other new stuff I want to watch.

Finished Jedi last night, the only problem was the drop out and pixellation on Empire as stated before. I stand by what I said about the PQ of the originals, but the gorgeous visuals on the prequels, particularly Revenge of the Sith make up for it. Looks like the AVS review agrees with me.

Oops wrong thread

Hi all. Just a heads up. I was just informed that many folks out there are having audio drop issues with Star Wars and Denon AVRs. Apparently Denon will offer a "fix" for this as an in warranty repair regardless if you are under warranty or not? There are very few instances of this issue with Samsung players (those are mostly video issues). However I bring this up in case you run into it.

Fortunately I am not having the issue afaIcT. There is a quick test you can do to determine if you are going to have issues with audio on this set. Play episode IV and select chapter 16. Right at the 1st of that chapter when the ship is approaching the Death Star you will have 2 audio drops in quick succession within 2 sec. of each other within the 1st 30 seconds or so of that scene. I think it is 33:55 or 33:35. It is stated that if you don't have the issue that you should be fine for the set. This is of course if you bitstream. The fix as always is to revert to PCM to resolve this issue and of course with the 5k that means lossy core DTS 5.1, but should still sound fantastic.

So let's shout a "hooray" for the 5K. Given it's issues recently with audio drops I'm pretty amazed by this. Not sure if it is because I have fairly new DSP code on my Denon AVR-1909 or if the 5K just isn't affected by this issue or if it is just dumb luck that I have an AVR/player combo that likes each other. I do need to try 60fps and I suspect that may cause an issue.

Also beware that there are some player and esp. AVRs out there that are getting the DTS-HD MA "bomb" problem coming back with this set. So be careful out there. Here is a thread with a poll and more info in case you care:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1361400

In case anyone cares I tried episode IV at 36:55 (I think I reported the wrong time before?) right at the start of chapter 16 and there is no audio drop running 60 fps. I've played this spot numerous times through the screen wipe transition and I never have issues (with both 24 and 60fps). I also checked the THX trailer logo at the end that many are having audio drop issues with as well as places on the prequel trilogy that have issues, like at the beginning and ending credits etc. The drops for others seem to be correlated with various screen/scene transitions and chapter changes (of which are numerous on these discs). I think a couple of you have reported minor video/audio blips at various places?

Also another warning on the DTS audio bomb. It seems to be mostly affecting Onkyo AVRs and some that have applied firmware updates that fixed this in the past are now experiencing it again with this set. If you have an Onkyo you might want to check out the thread I posted yesterday above for more detail (you will need to wade through a ton of posts). And be very careful when playing and testing apparently the pops are very loud even at low volumes.

It appears that there is a high instance of folks having audio drop issues with the beloved Oppo players. I just noticed many postings about that along with numerous reports of video issues with Panny players. PS3s also seem to have more trouble than most with the drops and of course it is very common for Denon AVRs to have the issue regardless of what player is bitstreaming to it.

Can you provide a timestamp/chapter break for this issue or a approximate time into the movie? I would like to check that out.

Spy Kids played fine, however not without difficulty. The 1st load produced menu on the display and a blank screen (sound familiar it's a Lionsgate/Miramax release). Stop and menu are locked out at that point. Re-loaded and it came up fine, however I then had a stall at menu and a blank screen when I hit menu to bypass the 1st preview (Spy Kids 4 trailer after the green ratings screen). I just hit stop then menu to get it going again. You seem to be able to hit menu at any point other than right at the start of that trailer (including the green screen before it) and go right to the main menu. I haven't had any other problems with it other than this minor glitch.

I'm used to and not surprised when I have to re-load a disc these days, but it is a little hair raising when it does happen. It seems that it happens more often when the player has been off and I press eject right after the initial load screen comes up, then goes blank. Perhaps if I let it boot fully before ejecting or maybe start up the player with the disc in, like I used to do, then this would not happen so often. It's pretty rare given the number of discs I have put through this puppy over the years.

Just FYI - I have detected 2 bugs so far with SW ep. IV and this player. 1st the R2D2 loading idler screens do not manifest themselves unless you hit stop then menu when you are at the main menu. Then the idler comes up. This is what the player is supposed to be doing during all those nerve wracking blank screens on loading. Part of the long load times might be related to bells and whistles that Fox has added in and have no good function. BTW - I've seen plenty of Fox BDs recently that also don't show the idler screen but it is usually a small Fox searchlight icon and not something fancy like R2D2.

Second the resume movie function seems to not work correctly every time. Sometimes it does nothing and goes back to the menu other times it just starts you from the beginning. I have yet to have it place me back to where I stopped, turned off the player etc. however I have to yet properly stopped the movie. You are supposed to pause the movie then turn the player off for this function to generally work right. Not sure if a pause/stop, turning off during the movie playing or just a stop will do the trick.

I've stopped the movie and resumed from.the same place without turning it off. I.haven't tested turning off.the player. When I resumed it came up with a.prompt.asking me if I.wanted to resume or not.

Ya, me too just remembering now that I have not turned the player all the way off. It asks me the same question, but it has yet to put me where I was. Probably an anomaly I haven't really been watching, just testing, and have only messed around with it a couple times.

Grace loaded up and played fine. I must say that is one of the more bizzare movies i have seen in a while.

Bridesmaids loaded and played without a hitch last evening also. It was a better movie and funnier than I thought it would be, but only had a few laugh-out-loud moments. The only issue I had is that it was a rental version and had options for the unrated, deleted scenes, gag reel and extended alternate scenes, but when you selected them you got a note that those are only in the "full-retail" version. Kinda pissed me off that they would put those menus in there just to waste your time. I really wanted to watch the bonus material, but not willing to shell out the $s for just that.

A note on this disc. It loaded up faster than just about any movie I have watched in the past year or so. It surprised me since I thought I had a few min. to do some stuff and before I knew it the previews were running. Was just about as fast (or faster) than a regular old DVD. The bad thing is that the previews are forced and you have to skip through them, but can't bypass with the menu button. I wonder if Universal has tweaked things for faster load times and getting something on the screen sooner?

Tried to make it happen again today, but it played fine. Must have been dust or a dog hair or something. The scene was when they were walking down the ramp of the Falcon right after they landed at cloud city. Can't give the precise time stamp, as it didn't occur. I guess the whole set plays fine on the 5000. The menus on the extras seem a bit twitchy, takes a while to load them up. Play all seems to work well though.

Ok, sounds like a non-issue? But I would still like to check it out when I get a chance. If you can point me to a specific chapter or an approximate time that would help as I'm not that familiar as to where that scene occurs in the movie.

How many think Lion King will be on our list of unplayable movies next week? OR will it be one of the exceptions?

I am expecting it to play based on recent success with other Disney releases, but you never know. I haven't checked out the most recent classic Disney animated releases; Dumbo, Fox and the Hound 1&2 and Bambi II. Perhaps if the 3 latter play we should be ok. Dumbo would not be a good test since it was done long ago and released in a couple other countries before now.

Let's hope that one was mastered after the issues with the others and they have taken steps to avoid the Samsung hang issue.

We shall see next week. I ordered two copies from b&n with some discover cash back. One for me and one to sell online so i could use up most of a ecert and get free shipping.

As for recent plays...

Watched all of Supernatural Season 6 on Blu without any problems.

Am about halfway through season 3 of Fringe without any problems.

I don't think I've ever had any issues with TV on Blu though... well, not counting the bad audio glitches with the Walking Dead because of the known audio glitches that you can workaround.

Ya, they seem to be for the most part non-problimatic. The only problem I recall with any TV set was with The Walking Dead and the audio drops if you stream the DDTHD. If you have the player decode, you don't get the dropouts. Also someone complained about Human Target at one point, but that turned out to be an older firmware issue afaIcR. Oh and same dropout issue with at least set 1 of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. I haven't tried set 2 and 3 yet.

Anyone taking the plunge into the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon immersion edition? Just wondering if it is going to play and decode all the audio without difficulty on the BD?

I'm on the fence about it. Quite pricey and I only really want/need the BD and the Alan Parsons engineered early version and the quad versions. Over $100 is a lot to pay, just for that since I have EVERY other version and release of DSotM that has been released on CD (including MFSL and SACD).

I'll be getting Transformers: Dark of the Moon today... but not Pink Floyd

Transformers: Dark of the Moon played mostly fine...

During the last 15 minutes, though, there were several instances of audio skips/dropouts.

I noted that my audio receiver wasn't blinking or anything, meaning that IT thought it was getting a consistent stream... so I *may* have a bad disc, or there could be issues with the disc...

But if anyone else experiences audio dropouts during the last 15 minutes, let me know.

I watched in 24fps mode and use bitstream/audiophile via HDMI. If I get time I'll play around and see if any other settings correct.

This is a DolbyTruHD 7.1 track... and I'm not sure I have another movie with a 7.1 Dolby TruHD track... I think most of them are 5.1 and perhaps a 6.1... but I'm going on memory and can't say for sure.

edit: Just looked, and a few are discussing audio dropouts in the Transformers thread... so it isn't just me... which means it is either a bad pressing OR affects multiple players. Still, would like to know more in case I need to report to Samsung.

Switch to player decode (PCM) and see if that clears it up. Most likely related to the other DDTHD issues we have seen/heard over the past year. I suspect encoder/encoder software changes recently that are causing this since I have played many older DDTHD movies since 1.6 released without issues. It seems to just be the newer ones that are problematic. Still there might be something specifically wrong with Transformers 3 (other than terrible acting and a lack of a plot ;-) that is causing this. If there are issues with internal decode then it would point to the disc, if it clears it up then Samsung needs to fix something for this disc and other newer ones related to bitstreaming DDTHD audio.

Had a Film-Noir, or more precisely, neo-noir Sunday. Blood Simple and The Ledge both loaded and played flawlessly. At this rate with fall TV started and my BB by mail account still going, I may never get to Star Wars ;-(

I almost checked out Michael Bay's "bark at the moon" since there was a copy a BB this evening, but I just did not have time for a 154 min. movie that I have already seen in the theater (for free I might add) before Sunday evening shows came on. I will wait a week or so until things settle down at BB and Red Box and then check it out for the audio anomalies. I'm kinda curious if the dropouts are fixed or made better by using player decode and if I will have any audio problems at all with bitstream.

I haven't had time to fiddle either. My DVR is filling up fast with all the new seasons of shows... so I've been watching some of that... plus I still actually want to watch Thor and X-Men (though I know they both will play) and finish Fringe season 3 that I started before taking a break and watching Transformers.

i don't have too many Blu-rays with Dolby True HD... though I have several HD-DVDs. And I'm still not sure I own another 7.1 TrueHD audio track movie... so this one might be the only one I own with that configuration.

It's pretty rare and most often used by Paramount. You probably have more movies that you realize that have that codec. I have an even dozen of them; Megamind, Nightmare Before Christmas, all 4 Shrek, and all six of the original Star Trek movies (the 4 Next Generation ones are DDTHD, but the 5.1 variety). I keep meaning to check out the STs, but haven't got around to it. I don't recall anyone complaining about those and I briefly checked some of those with high action/explosion scenes a while back and had no problems. So this problem is not new since both Megamind and the Shreks have been reported as having dropouts, IF, you don't use player decode for the DDTHD. Given that "bark at the moon" is a Paramount release, that should give you an idea why you had issues.

You can check out the list for yourself. Just Google Blu-ray stats, one of the links that comes up is a specific filter for 7.1 movies, then you can use a specific filter for DDTHD 7.1 or any other codec you wish to filter for. Note there are some things missing (like the 1st Star Trek movie, but they do have it listed under the collection).

http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Stats.php