BD-UP5000 Universal Player Samsung [OFFICIAL OWNERS THREAD] & FAQ - Page 327

^haha, you just heard about this? It was also the case when I bought my first player back in November 2007...I think this is the case for many manufacturers of this type of product. In fact, LG is no different. Doesn't make either of them less suckier, just leveling the playing field here.

HDMI 1.3 supports deep color which adds bandwidth above what you'd get with HDMI 1.2. My Pioneer plasma reports getting 36 bits from the 5000 so that's 50% more bandwidth. Normally you'd experience video problems with bad HDMI communications (green streaks, snow/speckles, etc.) but it's possible the audio would get garbled too as it's on the same wires.

If you haven't done so, try a different cable especially if it's longer than 15 feet.

Well, I guess I have been spoiled lately. All my Oppo players of the past few years have 1 yr warranty, my Onkyo HD DVD player = 1 yr warranty (and that's a refurb), my Onkyo receiver = 2 years, ect...
Only thing I am currently useing with a truncated warranty is the 5000.
I have 2 of them, both purchased as refurbs. The warranty on them was 90 days. I just assumed it longer for a new one.

Hey Samsuck, I'm not sure how long I will ride the 5000 train, but I am most likely never going to buy a Samsuck product again for a long time... if ever. Your customer service and support SUCKS!

Yeah, And like I said, I read someone sent it in, they found no problem, and still paid for the labor. Turned out it was a problem with a particular disc (Hitman) and when he replaced it it was all OK. But Im having multiple problems with multiple discs. Some old, some recent. Multiple studios. Some used to work, now they dont. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. All I know is the bulk of my BDs either stay loading after 10-20 minutes until I shut it off and eject, or get a disc error, or occasionally one particular title is OK. And I tested 2 HD DVDs and 1 SD DVD and they are OK. So I dont know what to think. That's why I'm afraid they'll test it and say it's fine and I'll be charged for nothing.

Here is what I've tested:

Blu-rays With Problems
The Mist: Hangs on loading (Rental, thought it was the disc, but then I saw it was not alone)

Spider-Man: Hangs on loading after waiting for 5-10 minutes. Have to restart, like the others that hang up on loading.

Spider-Man 3: 0x000000ff error.

Indiana Jones: Hangs on loading.

Incredible Hulk: Hangs on loading.

The Day After Tomorrow: Hangs on loading.

Independence Day: Bought when I got the player, worked fine before. Now it hangs on loading. Occasional 0x000000ff error after the update.

Superman The Movie: Used to give the 0x000000ff error every time but now will play after waiting 5-10 minutes after reflashing the FW. Hitting the MENU button causes it to freeze. This also worked flawlessly before the update.

X-Files-Fight the Future: Hangs on loading.

The Godfather: Hangs on loading.

I think there are 1 or 2 more, but Ive been at this for 2 days so I forget what Ive tested.

Blu-rays That Worked
Robocop

Saw II

1408

Hostel

The Terminator


I also tested 2 HD DVDs (Wolf Creek & The Thing) and 1 SD DVD (X-Files Season 1 disc 4). They booted right up. Also, I tested a couple of these problem discs on the PS3. No problem.

hey guys,

I am a BH200 owner popping my head in over here.

I am just about the pull the trigger for one of these on ebay and had a couple of (hopefully) easy questions.

1) how steady do you anticipate f/w updates in the future? I have heard that samsung is really trying to step up consistency on this front. Is this true? LG has been slacking with our BH200 updates lately.

2) is bd live a possibility in the future?

3) I assume all is well with u-control and 1.1 features?


Thanks !

Perhaps in your case. After all, we can have no idea of your apparent competence in the area of CD burns. I maintain that in a large number of cases the problem has been traced to burns. And in this respect I wonder if the quality of the download from Samsuck may vary from time to time if that is possible for whatever reason..(Vinnie???).

John

VERY unlikely that the download would be affected. The firmware image itself is encapsulated in a zip file. If the zip file is not transferred to one's PC completely, it will just be reported by your favorite unzipping program (WinRAR, 7zip, Winzip, etc.) as being damaged and not allow decompression.

That's why I got a refurb. The warranty is worthless anyway.

I dont doubt people have trouble burning CDs when it comes to this stuff. People burning the zipped file, people opening the disc image and trying to burn the contents of it, etc. That is not what I did.

There's only one way to burn an image file. And if you do it wrong, the player won't even recognize it, let alone check the firmware version, ask if you want to update, update, then show the firmware number actually changed.

And there would be no reason for the file on their server to change unless they are changing it and putting a different one up every 5 minutes, which they are not.

Its not me, its not my method, its not my discs. And other people reporting disc errors and such with 1.4 cant all be idiots with the CD burner either.

With all this talk about burning bad firmware, even though I know better, I thought I would try one last time to see if I could run v1.4 firmware without my previously stated audio dropout issue. (Problems with the Eagles Live in Melbourne HD DVD playing the DTS-HD track and with Cream: Royal Albert Hall playing the DTS-HD track)

This time, I used one of my Kodak Ultima CD-Rs to do the burn. They are by far the best I've ever used for readability in almost all players due to their extremely high reflectivity.

I used Nero Burning ROM to burn an ISO image of the firmware file to the Kodak disc using only a 2X write speed instead of the max speed possible. I also verified the burn "bit by bit".

Updating the BD-UP5000 went without a hitch (as always) and I did a reset prior to playing an HD DVD. I also set all settings to those which had been used with v1.3.

After the upgrade. once again, I had the audio dropout issues on the two previously mention titles. Curiously, I noticed that the dropouts became much more frequent if I set the output resolution to 720p instead of my normal setting which is 1080i. This was verified numerous times by switching back and forth between the two resolution settings.

I also noticed that with v1.4, if you hit pause while playing an HD DVD, the audio stops immediately but the video keeps playing for about 0.5-1.5 seconds before it stops too! Firmware v1.3 never had this issue nor the audio dropout issue. This is bizarre to say the least.

I then tried the newly burned Firmware disc in my other BD-UP5000 and got the exact same results.

Needless to say, I reverted back to v1.3 in both players, once again, and ALL the issues went away.

In my case the burning of the ISO file is not the problem and I agree that you can't get a corrupt *.zip download and still be able to unzip it without a warning.

Don't get me wrong....v1.4 seems fine with the vast majority of my HD DVDs and Blu-rays but in some cases, (and I probably have more discs that will expose this problem) it appears that anything that really taxes the processor(s) in the 5000 causes issues with the audio out over at least optical.

Oh, 1.4 isn't perfect by any means. It appears that while they improved Blu-ray playback, HD DVD was overall neglected (minus a few fixes) during the course of the last update. What you're experiencing (and what I'm experiencing with the bitstreamed dropouts with a few Sony titles) is definitely not the result of a faulty burn. I burn at max speed as well using HQ CD-RWs with no ill effects. I'm pretty sure the player does a CRC checksum before ever initiating the actual firmware writing process...so I suspect the disc would be ejected and the update canceled if the disc was unreadable.

So far, though, I've only seen a very small percentage of BD-UP5000 owners (those who've updated in any case) complain that 1.4 results in catastrophic playback failure of most discs, which suggests to me it's just a matter of prematurely failing hardware components. It's all speculation at this stage, though...and will likely always remain as such. :/

Samsung just released DTS-HR and MA decoding firmware (v2.4) for 2500/2550 today! What the chances to see it trickles down to us 5k owners?

IMHO, the problem with players after upgraded to 1.4 is probably a hardware fault that was already there in the player. A new firmware update probably just bring the problem up front. Samsung did virtually no QA on these players when they left factory (that's my feeling). It's pure luck to get one working flawlessly. Mine is almost perfect (never had any issue updated from 1.0 to 1.2->1.3->1.4) with one exception from day one: it requires power cycle twice (about 60% of the times) when I turn on the player before it can play any disc without freezing up. Other than that it played all my discs (over 50 HD DVDs and even more BDs) without issue (other than those known common issues). No audio drop what so ever. That's one reason I refuse to send my player back to Samsung to fix the power on issue fearing I'd get back a different player with more issues.

^Viable theory...but with all the delays this player saw, it's a wonder it didn't see more QA. I guess they spent all that time developing the player.

Re: firmware updates, I guess our chances to get DTS-MA encoding increase if the P-1500 also gets the capability with its next update (also 2.4?). The BD-UP5000 is definitely due another update anyway. ALL of their other players have seen updates since the 5000's last, so I they continue down the upgrade path fairly...with the increased frequency of updates they are now providing, I guess they realize we expect the next update before May.

Remember Samsung has to write its own implementation of HDi (it sucks). It's like writing a Windows OS from scratch by itself while refusing to pay MS for a mature implementation.

I think Samsung promised to deliver DTS-MA decoding for 1500 as well. It is interesting to see that it is 5k that gets the first firmware release of BD playback compatibility (1.4) before 1500 and 25x0. I'd expect 1500 update with DTS-MA decoding will come soon. And for us 5k owners, we probably need to let Samsung know/hear that we want it too.

It doesn't matter as much to me (though the added perk of PiP commentary is nice) as BD-Live and bugfixes actually but letting them know we want all of the above can't hurt either.

Embellishment..I hope they put "Remaining Disc Playing time" in the Info screen !!

Until my complete HD-DVD failure you've described my findings exactly. My 5000 is a Nov. 07 build and has worked very well. When the drive failed I brought it to BB on warranty and they replaced the drive and the whole PC board. Has been working better than ever since then except for the same freezing issue that you describe to a tee. Many, mostly Blu-ray discs seem to freeze at some point and I have to reboot. After that everything works perfectly. Seems like a weird memory problem to me but who knows.

That's pretty sad considering how long it's been out, so people had to wait till today to get what other players already had when bought off the shelf! Sorry Sam but I will never buy any blu related product from you ever again.

They really need to put a stop to this crap if they sell something retail it should work out of the box period! I have learned a lesson on this player never buy anything with a promise if it doesn't do as advertised stay away.

Being that I have four years on this thing I'm almost positive this thing aint going to make it. So which player would I get if this craps out most likely a Sony player. Seems when hardware is released from the manufacturer everything seems to work as advertised no waiting for this to fix that and break this in the process.

Samsung has got to be the worst when it comes to releasing hardware that doesn't work as advertised there really should be a law to stop these back alley tactics. I mean seriously how many other company's can get away with selling you something that doesn't work as advertised.

If I did this kind of tactic on my customers I would have been out of business 10 years ago. There is no way I can get away with a line BS after I sell a Pool/Spa heater. Customer calls and asks I thought this was a remote control system? My answer: It is but have to you wait for Rapak to come up with the update for the remote.
Customer well how long will that take?
My answer: I have no idea.

Now come on... would I still be in business if I sold heaters that didn't work as advertised sh!t no. I'd have a line of angry customers waiting to sue may ass off. There is no way I could get away with that type of business tactic not in my life time not even on this planet. Typical Samsung product buy it now and wait for it work as advertised how long you have to wait is the game they like to play. Samsung has forced me into religion because I keep hoping and praying they will fix this FW when? you want it when??? laughing.....

You have four years on the 5K? I thought it only came out last year?

Sorry I meant 4 year BB warranty, and I'm sure this player will not last for four years.

Neither Sony S350 nor S550 offered DTS-MA decoding when they first released. A firmware update is madatory. No one is immune to this. The BD spec itself is also contantly evolving. On top of that studios continue to pump out faulty release that requires constant firmware update from player makers.

You're correct to say that you should buy a product based on what it can do not what will do. This applies to all manufacturers.

Bought the Panny 35K today. I. sending the Sammy 5 K to be fixed but from what I hear, they cant based on the descriptions of my problems. If they can, I bought it from Costco so I can return it in 30 days. If they offer me a refund, it pays for it. Checked all around on the prices and it's hard to beat $229 and 2 free movies.

Yes the Sony was released with no dts MA support but at least they got True HD. The 5k didn't have True HD when it was released, and I think the Panny was updated way down the road also. My rant wasn't just towards Samsung but also directed at the other CE manufacturer's as you stated.

I guess what I'm trying to say is Samsung didn't as you know go with MS HDI and therefore this player will never work as it should compared to units using MS's HDI implementation. My Toshiba XA2 does what it should and reads sub titles of all of my imports, the 5k can't do this and I'm afraid it will never be resolved. Brotherhood of the Wolf is a perfect example of the 5k failing to do English subs. The 5k has trouble with a lot of imported menus and they seriously need to address the performance issues on this thing and fix what they broke and then some..

To be fair thought, S350 was released in the middle of 2008. 5k was released in Oct. 2007. At that time, it is Sony's S300 which does not support TrueHD out of box either. If you want to stay in bleeding edge, there is alway price to be paid

I need to get a back up for my BDUP5000 and HD DVDs. Does anybody know/remember:
Who made the best HD DVD player?
Was Toshiba's XA2 the last and best of the HD DVD players?

Without a doubt. As an alternative, I'd sell my perfectly fine 5000 for your backup

Yep, the XA2 was the best player.

You can also get by well with the Toshiba HD-A35. That actually was the last HD-DVD player Toshiba made. They dropped the HQV Reon, but it still upscales SDVDs well enough and it both decodes (Dolby TrueHD and Plus), has 7.1 analog out and bitstreams (audiophile mode) all the HD audio codecs. You can find it for half the price of the XA2. I have one and, personally, I wouldn't pay any extra for an XA2.

Might take you up on it although I have found one 5000 at a Best Buy (It is listed on inventory, but they couldn't find it and think it may have been sent in for repair. I'm supposed to check back.) and three at another Best Buy that I didn't have time to go to today.

The salesman at the first store checked the inventory to find the three at a second store. He also told me he would knock 15% off the $299 listed price if they find the unit. All the units are open box returns.

From some of the deals I see here on AVS Forum that might not be enough for me to bite.

What do you guys think?
Have you guys seen either of the Toshiba models for sale anywhere?
What are they going for?
Thanks for the info.