Samsung BD-P1500 update finally enables BD Live

Love it or not, BD Live is the latest must have feature for Blu-ray players. Samsung is finally delivering on its promise today by making a firmware update available for download that turns on the internet magic of your Blu-ray Discs when you load them in a BD-P1500. Of course you'll need internet access behind your TV for any of this to work, but if you prefer, you can still download an image of the update disc if you don't want to use the player's auto-update feature. Now that the BD-P1500 and Sony BDP-S350 do BD Live, can both be had for less than $300, and offer just about every feature you'd want, it combined with Hollywood's impressive slate of titles released on Blu for this season, we can't think of any other excuses that an HD lover could have to not jump on the Blu-bandwagon.

[The Fuzz 53 Posted Oct 7th 2008 3:39PM]

Do you also need a 2GB USB drive to enable BD-Live?

[Mitchell Posted Oct 7th 2008 5:06PM]

i had the same question....i contacted Samsung and they said all it needs is the firmware.

I'm going to update mine soon...but i dont think i have a bd live disc....so not in a big hurry..

Mitchell

[DrXym Posted Oct 7th 2008 5:28PM]

Unless the player has 1Gb storage, the answer is yes you have to plug a USB device into the back since 2.0 needs space to download content to.

[The Fuzz 53 Posted Oct 7th 2008 3:51PM]

$235 on Amazon.

Should I buy this thing or wait and see what Black Friday brings, or get the new one from Panasonic?

Also, has anyone reported issues connected this to an Onkyo AVR? My Samsung HD-906 upscaler has issues with my Onkyo AVR where the picture and sound drop intermittently.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 7th 2008 5:19PM]

I have had this unit for a few months now, and it is excellent. To be BD Live enabled, you need to keep at least a 1 GB USB stick plugged into the back.
The only issue I have is when playing Bonusview picture in picture in its bitstream audiophile mode, the secondary audio does not play - this can be "fixed" by switching to PCM output, but obviously, I would prefer not to switch.
This player matches VERY well with Onkyo HDMI receivers - I can speak from experience (I have an 806). If your receiver has HDMI and supports the latests DD and DTS formats, you switch the 1500 to its Bitstream Audiophile mode, and you are all set (besides the one mentioned bug which I have reported to Samsung Tech-hopefully to be fixed in a future firmware update)

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 7th 2008 5:27PM]

Diamond204,

Re: PiP audio with Bitstream audio.

There is no way around this 'issue' because current HDMI standard only transmit one audio stream to AVR. Maybe in the future of HDMI 3.0, we will have multiple audio stream from player to AVR. Then, you can have your PiP audio and bitstream on at the same time.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 7th 2008 4:12PM]

Nice, I just bought this two weeks ago from that radioshack.com price mistake, $190 shipped.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 7th 2008 6:49PM]

"we can't think of any other excuses that an HD lover could have to not jump on the Blu-bandwagon."


How about a $100 price tag. I have said I would go $120 or $150 with 2 or 3 free movies but most are waiting for better prices.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 7th 2008 7:03PM]

I installed the update via ethernet and now the player is responding incredibly slow. If I unplug the ethernet cable it runs like normal. I am not sure what is up with it.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 9th 2008 12:55AM]

I had the same issue. I fixed it by not using DHCP. I put a static IP and putin mask, gateway and DNS manually. But still, none of the BD-Live disk that I have work, it keeps reporting the player is not BD-Live capable or it is not connected to the Internet. I know the Internet is working because when I try to update the firmware, it tells me I have the latest firmware.

[MickBurke Posted Oct 8th 2008 2:07AM]

Hows the load time on this? Any comparison to the Sony 350?

[Galley Posted Oct 8th 2008 9:36AM]

Supposedly Circuit City will be giving a free copy of the Ultimate Matrix on BD with the purchase of this player next week.

[Galley Posted Oct 8th 2008 9:37AM]

Supposedly Circuit City will be giving a free copy of the Ultimate Matrix on BD with the purchase of this player next week.

[The Fuzz 53 Posted Oct 8th 2008 10:03AM]

How well does this thing play standard DVDs? I've read some problems with it freezing when switching chapters on standard DVDs.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 8th 2008 11:40AM]

I haven't seen any issues with regular DVDs up to this point - I have read of a few others. The current firmware is the 4th version - each one updates disc compatibility, so at this point, things should working pretty well.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 12th 2008 9:03PM]

I bought mine along with a new Samsung LCD TV from Amazon and they threw in a BD-P1500 for another $80. Great deal! Doesn't look they are offering that again right now, but you might want to watch for it if you're in the market for a TV, too.

I also just updated to the new firmware. Why isn't there some kind of release notes somewhere? Nothing official I can find from Samsung that says what the firmware update does and if you need the extra ram on a usb drive.