Features:

• Playback Media BD-ROM, HD DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R
• Playback Formats MPEG2, VC-1, H.264, HD JPEG decoding
• Video - A/V Quality DVD Upconversion Selectable DVD upconversion via HQV
• Unit Dimension 16.9 x 3.1 x 12.8 / 9.3 lbs

Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Blu-Ray or HD-DVD - There's no question when you get the Samsung BD-UP5000 Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Combo Unit. This duo HD Video format player plays both. Plus your old DVD discs too. Your home-theater can finally reach fruition. Developed by Sony, Blu-ray discs offer picture quality beyond anything available, with full capability 1080p HD resolution in Blu-ray and up to 40 Mbit/secs, encoding 5-10X the capacity of regular DVDs. It also features theater-quality uncompressed audio up to 7.1 channels surround. Developed by Toshiba, HD-DVD playback at 1080p/1080i/720p, and 1080p at 24Fs/60Fs. These are the only 2 disc formats that are fully engineered to fill your 16:9 widescreen TV with a full image. No need to Zoom it up! The BD-UP5000 offers Blu-ray Disc playback at an amazing 1080p resolution, superb HD-DVD playback, and full interactivity from HD DVD and Blu-ray formats. With HQV and Full HD+1080p you'll enjoy the truest image reproduction possible. It has HDMI and HDMI-1.3 connectivity and i8s also 480p DVD backward compatible.

Rating : - DVD-R Playback Problem
First I have yet to update my firmware so keep this in mind as well as the fact I've only had the unit about two weeks. That said I'm not overly impressed except for the obvious fact that the BD-UP5000 does play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs. That is pretty cool for those of us who have HD-DVD discs. The less cool part is the the unit seems to NEVER plays a DVD-R recorded disc all the way through. Oh, it starts well and plays generally 3/4's the way through...Then it stutters for a bit and usually eventually freezes. What the heck is this about. The cheapest "Brocksonic" drug-store $[...] DVD players are able to play DVD-R discs? Do any of you that own this player have this problem too??? It could just be my unit, but likely others have experienced the same problem and I'd love to know if there is a solution.

The other uncool part is that this player is suppose to have a very highly touted upscaling chip that trickled down from the Teranex ($[...]) commercial unit. While the BD-UP5000 makes standard definition DVD's look good it is apparent if you have a Toshiba HD-A2 player handy from which to draw a comparison that the Samsung's upscaling is not as good as, at least in this case, a much less expensive Toshiba.

If I could just get this unit to where it did not balk on DVD-R discs it could be my one unit. Of course I'd like the upscaling to give me better pictures like the Toshiba, but mostly I just need it to play all my discs. Any tips on how to achieve this will be appreciated.

jwwerner@bellsouth.net