Samsung BD-C5300 Blu-Ray Player

[threegee]

Is the Samsung BD-C5300 Blu Ray Starter Kit the best bargain ever?

http://www.rgbdirect...SAMSUNG-BDC5300

..and also from many other suppliers.

Well it depends. Take away the six Blu-Ray disks and you've got a cracking top-quality and state-of-the-art Blu-Ray Player for maybe £80 or so. But wait, there's a lot more! This sleek little baby has an RJ45 Ethernet port, and - unlike several other home entertainment items I've bought with an Ethernet port - this one actually does something; the software is there to use the Internet connection! The software is Samsung's internet @ tv that's built into other recent Samsung products (like TV's and Home Cinema Systems) currently on store shelves.

Samsung want you to buy their USB WiFi dongle for £50 or so to be able to connect to your home wireless LAN. But you can wire it directly to your ADSL box with a budget Ethernet lead and enjoy higher performance without shelling out any more cash. That's the route I went with a couple of l-o-n-g custom made leads butted together and hung from room to room, just to see if it was worth stringing a permanent Ethernet connection around the outside of the house. The answer I eventually arrived at was that it is! But, I was going to do this anyway. Now, it will probably be this week or next rather than after Christmas.

Internet @ tv promises a lot more than it actual delivers just now. For instance when you select Facebook you get told that it will be ready in April (note to Samsung: Which year will that be? It's now July!). But what it delivers is already well worth it. Google maps on a 50" full HD plasma TV has to be seen to be believed, and YouTube has taken on an entirely new perspective now that I don't have to juggle it around in windows an 8.9" screen, and can view it from the comfort of the sofa. The hardware (?) graphics codecs already in the Blu-Ray player are obviously put to good use here, as the playback is a lot smoother than on any of our netbooks.

On a note of caution: it wasn't easy to get the first Internet connection, and I can imagine that many people have thrown internet @ tv back at suppliers for just this reason. Once I did get a connection it was possible to upgrade the firmware from xx.8.1 to xx.13.4 in about ten minutes and this seems to have solved the connection problems. I've seen other reports of this on the net put down to poor cable drivers in the box's Ethernet connection, supposedly only good for tens of feet. This isn't so - my BD-C5300 is working just fine into a couple of very long daisy-chained Cat 5 leads right now.

I think the problem may have been confusion due to the auto-sensing on my router ports. Anyway, I overcame it with a bit of fiddling with the Samsung's Network settings and inserting an old (fixed gender) Ethernet switch very close to the Samsung, then playing with the connections until the LEDs on the Ethernet switch showed what looked like a promising conversation. When the box upgraded itself over this connection the lashup proved to be no longer necessary, and the Samsung connected to my rather complicated LAN purely on automatic everything (no manual configuration required), and without any extra hardware assistance. People with little computer networking experience might want to insist on the box having the latest firmware before delivery, or ask a local hardware hacker for a bump start.

The BD-C5300's performance in its advertised role as a Blu Ray player is faultless. An HDMI cable straight into our TV, and in seconds 1080p HD pictures were wowing all around. I've used the cinema 24 fps option as my (non-Samsung) TV does seem to support this and this seems to result in very smooth motion on the big screen. True home cinema at long last, and at a price that's amazingly affordable - even for a pensioner!

The box also has USB ports front and rear so you can play HD material on USB Flash Memory keys and external hard drives (which must be self powered).

Conclusion: If you don't already have Blu Ray then grab the package whilst it's still available! (But don't spend £19.90 on a £3 HDMI lead! )

[Monsta®]

does it support MKV files?

[threegee]

Yes.

Full spec. here: http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/tv-audio-video/blu-ray-player/blu-ray-player/BD-C5300/XEU/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail&tab=specification

User Manual here: http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/201004/20100424150739437/01941P-BD-C5300-XEU-ENG-BM-0423.pdf

Features here: http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/tv-audio-video/blu-ray-player/blu-ray-player/BD-C5300/XEU/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail&tab=feature

[John Fox (foxy)]

So where do we go from here?????????