Review on Samsung BD F5100 Blu Ray Player Model by Rob Madden

I guess I should have expected that there was no ease of use and quality at this price point. I was hoping to replace my outdated HTPC with this device but it didn't work. Anyway, this was our first experience with a combo BD player. We used to have a regular DVD/BD player and always used some kind of HTPC to stream online content. Perhaps our experience with any other budget device like this would be the same. But I'm afraid to try something else because some have worse reviews than this one. I think we're going to stick with HTPC for a while. As a DVD/BD player, it works relatively well but is noisy. There's a loud whine of a spinning disc and loud clicks that are completely distracting when viewing in a quiet room at low volume. Otherwise, it's fast enough to access media and the image quality is satisfactory. My HTPC with all its fans is quieter than this little thing, the PC DVD drive doesn't make that much noise, I think it's because it's in a bigger case. Therefore, some sound insulation is required for this product. However, Netflix's implementation is a complete joke. Seriously, Samsung just wanted to add a feature to enable Netflix support. The software is complete bullshit, alpha quality code, damn buggy. It's practically useless. If you just need a DVD/BD player, the device works well, but if you're hoping to watch Netflix, look at more expensive devices or maybe get a Roku. Some Netflix highlights: 1) It's slow, my 5 year old PC is still exponentially faster and more responsive than this one with the same network connection. I don't think it's entirely fair to compare a full PC to a real processor and graphics card that cost ten times the price, but why add a feature to a product if you can't provide a decent user experience? That's the difference between day and night. Netflix support should be removed from this product and sold simply as a DVD/BD player. The software responds very poorly every time when you press a button on the remote, there's an annoying delay, sometimes for a few seconds, before the device responds or ignores keystrokes altogether, and you have to press a button multiple times for it to respond. A movie takes up to a minute to load before it's ready to play. Every time you try to fast forward or rewind, it takes a few seconds. It's so annoying that even my very patient wife said she couldn't handle it. 2) Once you start playing the movie, the playback is not smooth, it pauses, the frame rate is low. I played the same movie on my wife's computer, which predates our HTPC, an 8 year old Athlon with built-in video, and the movie played buttery smooth. This thing played the movie like it was on a DSL connection or something. We have a FIOS 80/40 connection and we can usually stream HD to multiple devices at the same time, no problem. Even our iPads play Netflix smoother than this thing. 3) Subtitles are out of sync, out of sync with real dialogue, or just disappear altogether 4) The software very often freezes for a few minutes, you have to sit and wait for it to come to life. Signing out of Netflix takes so long that the first few times I thought it was just going to crash. You can literally freeze in the bathroom while logging out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom while logging out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom while logging out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. Quit Netflix for now and go back to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom, while signing out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. Quit Netflix for now and go back to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom while logging out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. because we've been most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom, while signing out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. because we've been most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom, while signing out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. complete disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom while logging out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding that it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. complete disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. You can literally freeze in the bathroom while logging out of Netflix and returning to the home screen. We didn't even try YouTube because we were most interested in Netflix and it's just a complete failure. We also didn't try USB playback after deciding it wouldn't work for us. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all. So yes, a total disappointment. Two stars for a decent disc player. That's all.