Samsung HT-BD3252T/XAA Blu-ray Home Theater System (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought this system within a few days of it being available...the features I most liked were the wireless rear speakers and the included wireless internet connectivity - the included iPod dock was a plus. I am not an audiophile and felt like I was taking a bit of a gamble with a Samsung product since, while the picture is great, the sound on my 52" Samsung TV is not good! I have had the TV for 1 year and have been using it with an older DVD HTIB and just felt like it was time to upgrade. Had been looking at soundbar and other HTIB systems but wanted something wireless with Internet streaming - I am a gadget freak.
The system sounds great. It looks great. The Internet connection for Netflix, Pandora, and connecting to a PC work exactly as advertised. Very easy to put together and configure with limited directions. The wireless rear speakers make no noise other than what they are supposed to. I did go out an buy stands for the rear speakers...I just felt like I needed to get the speakers off the floor and I am glad I did.
The reasons I am not giving it a 5 star rating: First - twice so far it has lost the network connection and I have had to restart it...never during playback; only after doing some other function and then trying to switch to a network function. Second - I have my DVR connected through the BD3252 for both audio and video and there is a slight delay in` the sound when first resuming play after pausing or fast forwarding video. Third - it is not possible to change any of the configuration on the BD3252 unless you are in BD/DVD mode. To me, none of these are anything more than a mild annoyance but they are an annoyance none the less.
After about 1 month, all in all I am very happy with the purchase and would not consider returning it. I was able to get it delivered to my door for less than $650 which made it even better.


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VIZIO VBR231 Blu-Ray Player with Wireless Internet Application, Black Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I love Vizio products and just bought a 42 inch LCD flat panel which I am quite happy with. Needless to say, I was looking forward to purchasing the Vizio 231 blu-ray player expecting the same level of quality. On the outside the VBR231 is gorgeous and well styled and designed. Everything is perfect. However, the blu-ray player has 3 major flaws that cannot be overlooked.
Firstly, this model cannot stay connected to the internet. So once you log off any internet app, you have to go thru the entire reconnection process using setup all over again. This gets tiresome after about 3 times. Tech support has confirmed with me that this model cannot stay connected with internet unlike their other blu-ray models. No explanation as to why.
Secondly, because the blu-ray player cannot stay connected to the internet, every time you turn it on, it tries to reconnect to the internet on its own. It never succeeds but these means you have to wait to use it for up to 5 minutes until it's done trying to reconnect. Just putting in a dvd or blu-ray disc can take a looong time and it's very frustrating.
Thirdly, the VBR231 has no function codes for the remote. This means you cannot control the player with any universal remote and are forced to use Vizio's remote. This oversight is made even worse when you discover that the VBR231 has one of the worst remotes I've ever seen. You have to be Frankenstein just to press these buttons and get it to work. What were they thinking when they made this?
Because of these three major issues I'm returning my model and starting over again.

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VIZIO VBR210 Blu-Ray Player with Wireless Internet Application, Black Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased this Blue-Ray player from Target 2 weeks ago and love it. I read the reviews on the 220 model after my in store purchase and was really concerned at first but have not experienced any of the issues mentioned in those reviews. I am glad though I purchased the Target 2-year $19.99 replacement warranty just in case.
The Blue-Ray player comes with a set of composite cables included in the box which I used while I was waiting for my HDMI cables. The picture even with just composite cables was great. The Vizio 210 has one HDMI port, one composite video/audio port or one component video/audio port (cannot use composite if using component), one digital coaxial, one usb and one ethernet port.
Wireless setup was a snap and I was connected in 30 seconds. The only annoying thing is that the wireless adapter on the back of the Vizio unit has a red light which flashes continuously. No dropped wireless connections like reported with the 220 model. Vizio recommends using their router but this is no doubt a marketing ploy as any wireless router will work.
The upconverting works really well. We got the new Bruce Springsteen dvd/cd set which includes some really old video concert footage. It looked really dark and hard to see on the regular dvd player but looks much, much better on the Blue-Ray player.
Had no issues playing Blue-Ray movies and while it does take about 10-15 seconds to load the Blue-Ray disc I did not find this unexpected as the Blue-Ray disc contains a lot more data than a regular dvd. Also had no issues stopping and restarting a movie as it remembered where I stopped the disc. This was reported as an issue on the 220 model. It also gave the option to continue from the stopping point in the movie or restart from the beginning of the movie which I like.
There is a usb port on the Blue-Ray. It will play video and audio files contained on an inserted usb thumb drive and will also upconvert those videos files. I have not tried hooking up my laptop via usb yet but will provide an update. I use a 16GB usb thumb drive and the Blue-Ray player displays the usb drive folder structures and file names on the tv so it is easy to find stored media.
I have only used Pandora so far and that has worked really well. I will update this review after I have tried Netflix and BD-Live.
The only odd thing I noticed when I tested this player with hdmi, component and composite cables was that when I use component video/audio cables the zoom settings on my tv did not work correctly even though they worked fine with hdmi and composite cable. In all fairness this could be a tv issue and be unrelated to the Vizio.
UPDATE 1/19/11: Netflix works great and streams very quickly. However there have been a few incidents where the VBR210 froze either during streaming or at movie commencement and had to be powered down and restarted. There were also two incidents where there was severe pixelation and both incidents were resolved by powering down the VBR210 and restarting it after a few minutes. Overall in relation to the number of movies streamed these have not been significant issues and were quickly resolved. Still no issues playing either Blu-Ray or regular DVDs. It does appear though that because this unit does not have internal memory that the USB drive is critical for streaming to work properly. I use a 16GB thumb drive which is approximately 50% full. Also my Cisco-Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster has worked flawlessly with this VBR210.


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