The Samsug BD-P3600 is a unique product. It’s a blu-ray player and streams Netflix, Pandora, YouTube and BD Live 2.0. Just with cutting edge technology, things aren’t always perfect at first. Before purchasing a BD-P3600 I read all the reviews – and they ranged wildly. So were all these “issues” really problems, or just people that expect everything to work flawless when a company releases a trail blazing product?
After unpacking and hooking it up, I pulled a random disc out of my collection, South Park Season 12. Guess what, it didn’t play. Instead of running to the internet to blog just how crappy it was, I preformed the firmware update, which is the first thing is says to do in the start guide and inside almost any BD disc you buy. Problem solved. Many people talked about how long it took and how it cripples the player. Yes, you can’t do anything else, but I don’t think 2 minutes is unreasonable to download new firmware, re-flash it and then reboot the system.
One of the primary reasons I purchased this unit was to stream Netflix. I was a little put off by the process, all movies must be added your queue ahead of time and the order can’t be changed from the BD-P3600. Set that aside, it was easy to setup and watch movies. The quality isn’t quite SD, let alone HD. It is suitable for watching a movie on a 37” TV from 10 feet away. I definitely would get the disc if you’re going to watch the latest James Bond flick on a 65” big screen.
I haven’t used Pandora, no real need considering every other device plays music now-in-days. But alas, I will test in soon and provide feedback on Pandora, BD Live and media streaming from a PC!
