Buy Cheap Samsung Products

Not up to the task (2009-01-06)
bought this DVD player for two main reasons:
1. To play upconverted DVDs on my new sony LCD
2. To play some of my DIVX encoded movies
3. To play international DVDs

Pros:
- nice overall appearance and design of the player
- The 1080P upconversion was standard - I haven't seen the upconversion output of many other DVD players, but don't expect any miracles from any sub $100 players. The artifacts / pixelation / mosquito noise ... made any of the DVDs I tried barely any better. The upconverted DVDs looked worse on my new 32" Sony LCD than on my 8-year old 32" Sony XBR flat tube.
- Price was right: $50 or so on Amazon

Cons:
- I couldn't get it to play non-region 1 DVDs. Not even DVDs with no region-coding. It kept refusing to play those too. I tried all kinds of hacks but to no avail --> That's the kiss of death
- The overall operation of the player was sluggish. Response to remote control key presses was slow and annoying. DVD door would not respond quickly...
- The menu was also fugly to look at and operate.
- I tried several DVDs with DIVX encoded files and it couldn't play any of them ! --> not good.

Conclusion:
Save yourself some money and some time. Don't get this Samsung DVD-1080P8 (mine went back to Amazon. great return service). Get instead the Philips DVP5990 (it gave me upconversion, USB playback, multi-region).

Good budget DVD player. (2009-01-06)
Setup was very easy, but then again no one should have issues hooking up a DVD player to a TV. The quality of the upscaling DVDs is pretty good on my Samsung A450 in 720p and 1080i using the HDMI cables I got from Monoprice. One of my only gripes is the lack of a visible clock and the generic remote control. It functions for the most part but is sometimes hard to use in dark rooms because of the black buttons.

I was debating on getting one of the Oppo series DVD players, but with the economy the way it is, this was the next best affordable option. Since my TV is a Samsung, it just made sense to get a DVD player of the same brand.

Stopped reading dvds and was very slow (2009-01-04)
I need to get a refund for this product. It stopped working in less than 45 days.

Great Player (2009-01-03)
This an amazing DVD player and if you use it on a smaller monitor the Blu-Ray is a unnecessary investment. If you have a 46" or larger set you would notice the difference. Mine has worked great once I set it up properly.

As for up-converting vs. upscaling, I really have yet to discover any difference between them. I advise sticking to the same brand as your TV when possible on whatever players you buy. The price Amazon has now is so cheap it is a no brainer.

Very, very nice (2009-01-02)
I have this player paired with a Samsung LN40A550 LCD TV via HDMI.
The picture quality is excellent and the Anynet+ feature is a big plus.
Sleek design matches the LCD and blends in with Directv STB.