Samsung BD-P1500 review

The BD-P1500 is the cheapest Blu-ray player to date, excluding a few end-of-line clearance deals.

It's also one of the most stylish, with barely any interruptions to its glossy black front fascia. The disc mechanism can be quite noisy but this is only an issue when shuttling around discs during startup and menu navigation - not while watching videos.

The player was Profile 1.1 at its launch, but we're delighted to see that after the latest firmware update it now supports Profile 2.0. As with Sony's S350, you'll need to leave a flash drive plugged in at the back for downloaded BD Live content. DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks can't be decoded internally, so the player will revert to using the compressed DTS soundtrack for discs that bear the DTS rather than Dolby logo. Home video enthusiasts should note that this player was fussy about reading HD video from DVD media: it accepted AVCHD discs made with Nero but not Ulead, and not Blu-ray data on DVD from Sony Vegas.

The BD-P1500's performance is excellent. It took one minute and 57 seconds on average to power up and get to the main menu of a Blu-ray disc, and it was the quickest set-top player at reloading main menus. However, on a couple of occasions it got stuck when trying to resume playback on a disc that prohibits this action, as many Blu-ray discs regrettably do. More annoying was that the player dropped the HDMI signal when moving between menus and videos on a disc. This resulted in the TV showing a No Signal message, and meant we didn't see the beginning of a video until the TV locked on to the new signal.

DVD upscaling quality was excellent and the BD-P1500 displayed 4:3 video correctly. However, while we struggled to distinguish between most players for the image quality of Blu-ray playback, the BD-P1500 exhibited a touch less detail than the others. The difference was imperceptible except when sitting one metre away from a 37in TV, so it wouldn't put us off recommending this player. However, the Sony S350 has even faster performance and fewer niggles, making it our top choice.

Author: Ben Pitt